Color Matching HFG10, XHA1, HV40 Indoor Ice Rink

ChipGallo wrote on 1/3/2012, 1:22 PM
[repost from HV20 forum]

I just spent several days coming up with a method to match the subject cameras under mixed and varying light sources in an ice rink. The show started while the sun was up and two doors allowed this external light into the mix. There are fluorescent fixtures along the walls and some kind of mercury fixtures over the ice. By the end of the ~2 hour show the sun had set so no external light was in play.

The XHA1 was on one end of the rink, panning from an entrance door on the long wall and widening to a shot of the expanse of ice. The HFG10 was in the middle door, panning from side (door light merc mix) to center (fluorescent and mercury mix) to far left with a door spilling onto the ice and overhead mercs.

We manually white balanced off the ice with each camera but this was essentially unusable without further correction. Key indicators are the color of the ice and the synchronized skating costumes which should look the same on each camera. A yellow stripe runs along the bottom of the kick boards in this hockey rink and the XHA1 represented this as orange. The HFG10 showed it as greenish yellow as did the HV40. The output is an MPEG2 file rendered by Vegas from the DVD Architect NTSC 16:9 template.

The best matching in Sony Vegas Pro 10 was with the AAV Colorlab plug. It allows the yellow stripe to be matched as one of the six color controls in addition to picking white. The render time for 48 minutes of video was around 90 minutes. The initial trial software I used was the FBmn Software white balance plug, which I was not able to successfully adjust costume color on and took nearly 4 hours to render the 48 minute Act 2 segment (guessing that it couldn't use my GPU).

For 2012 I hope to migrate to FCPX so I didn't want to sink a lot of money into additional Vegas/Windows product. If FCPX isn't ready to do 3-cam edits, I may have to do this at least one more time in Vegas. I have a license of Vegas Pro 11 but am not confident enough about its stability to upgrade right now.

Sorry for the long post. If anyone has dealt with this in a rink, I'd love to hear ideas on better, cheaper or more efficient methods to match colors. We usually don't walk onto the ice with white cards or color charts but this probably could be arranged if it aids in post production color matching.

Thanks in advance and happy new year!

Comments

Frederic Baumann wrote on 1/3/2012, 3:13 PM
Hi ChipGallo,

Regarding the FBmn Software part of your post: according to your system specs, you have ATI graphics cards, and so far, FBmn Software only supports nVidia cards (as mentioned in http://www.fbmn-software.com/en/gpu.html). So, yes, the GPU acceleration is not used there.

In your case, I believe that you would have better to try our ColorMatch plug-in rather than WhiteBalance, because as far as I understand, you want to match colors between different clips. If you have a yellow stripe filmed by different cameras, the plug-in lets you clic on the yellow of 2 clips in order to match them (have a look at the video demo on the web site). I have made some tests on a hockey on ice match, and the results were appreciated by the customer, so I guess it should be fine for you as well, because the lighting should be similar. You might want to get the free eval on http://www.fbmn-software.com/en/color-match.html .

Even though Vegas has some bugs (especially when a new release is out), I am bit sad to read that you plan to move to FCPX, as I think, however, that Vegas is a great product. Several pros have asked me to port my plug-ins to FCPX as well, which makes me think that the grass will not be greener for you in the FCPX field (a French expression, hope it makes sense in English...). I have no link with Sony though :-)

Best regards, and hope this helps,
Frederic - FBmn Software
ChipGallo wrote on 1/3/2012, 3:25 PM
Thanks for the comments, Frederic. I want to redo the first Act of the ice show in question so I will give your ColorMatch plug a try. We have a challenging situation here due to the changing light, temperature variety of light sources and back light (white ice behind and underneath people) playing hob with exposure. I could swear that zoomed shots on the XHA1 change the color as well.

It might be useful for me to post before and after clips.

Last, the FCPX move does not mean I am giving up Vegas. I will still have Windows and a legacy of nearly 10 years of Vegas projects. Sony seems to have different priorities for new development of the Vegas product than I see as important. I also have a license of Adobe CS 5.5 to explore.