Cleaning Up Back Lighting Effect

carrspaints wrote on 1/31/2005, 1:05 AM
Hi everyone. I've just completed videoing and editing a business conference that came out much better than I had hoped for. However, the one problem I am having is with the on-stage awards section. Unfortunately, part of their layout included flourecent lighting positioned behind the speakers. I tried adjusting my Canon XM2 to reduce the back light effect but the video still suffers from the effects of this. The guest speakers and award winners are very dark!! I have tried increasing the fade bar and this works to an extent. But the subjects are still quite dark. Is there anyway simplish way that I can increase the lighting of the subjects and decrease the flourecent lighting effect? Thanks in advance.

Comments

PeterWright wrote on 1/31/2005, 1:36 AM
If the subjects were recorded really dark, it'll be hard to get back information that isn't there, but some improvement should be possible.

The problem is that if you just increase settings for the dark subjects, the back-lit background will blow right out, so you need to apply differential settings for the dark and light parts of the frame.

Solution - Bezier mask ( in Pan Crop), applied to duplicate copies of the video event (in adjacent tracks) means you can darken the background whilst brightening the subjects, but don't expect miracles.

Also - if the camera and subject were static, it's a much easier job - otherwise lots of keyframes are necessary to follow movement.


FuTz wrote on 1/31/2005, 7:23 AM
Maybe use Color Curves with a few points to break the curve and try to "grab" what you want and re-balance it without affecting too much of what's already "correct" ?
That's what I'd try in this situation but it may not be THE solution, though, since this kind of problem is difficult to deal with in general...and like PeteWright suggested, bezier mask could be your only solution.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 1/31/2005, 7:50 AM
Spot has provided a great tutorial on using cookie cutters and color curves on additional tracks to help correct underexposed footage. I used it extensively this weekend working with subjects indoors that were in front of a window.

This may help - http://www.vasst.com/login.htm After login (free registration) look for an article called Are You Exposed? It saved my butt on my current project.

- David
RichMacDonald wrote on 1/31/2005, 8:22 AM
I recently found a tutorial at contrast masking that may be useful for this. The tutorial is for photoshop but you can duplicate the steps in Vegas. I haven't got around to trying it myself.