Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 5/26/2011, 10:10 AM
Although you've succeeded in in making the scenes look uniform in color, they are all too blue for me.

Stage lighting traditionally begins at 3200K, and gels are added to convey different settings and moods -- nightime, daylight, indoors, firelight, etc.

By norming everything to bluish whites, you have circumvented the lighting designer's vision by "correcting" everything to a consistent "white" point that you chose. For instance, the one scene that to me represents the most "normal" balance for stage work, the closeup of the guy with the blunderbuss, you chose to norm to the very cold fullstage shot, rather than the other way around.

Although I realize that this was not possible in your case, one approach that has served me well, is to WB all cameras on one bright daylight scene (whatever represents "full up" in the lighting script), and leave the rest alone. The warm scenes were meant to be that way, and in like sense, the dark scenes should remain dark, etc.

You should also be working with a freshly-calibrated monitor. I suspect your results don't look very blue at all to you, but they will to many here I predict.

In shooting stage productions, less is more. Sorry to sound blunt, but to the eyes of this producer, you are trying to do too much.
musicvid10 wrote on 5/26/2011, 11:43 AM
I would apply a single correction to the footage from this camera, as you see here, then norm the other cameras to it, leaving the rest alone.

I bet this looks too yellow on your monitor, right ;?)
Here's a free HD grayscale you can use to give a quick check of your monitor balance:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20519276/dualgray1.png

essami wrote on 5/26/2011, 2:15 PM
I don't know what the play is about but looks to me that the (quite amazing) dresses and sets hint that they've gone for old Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz type mood.

If so especially the Frame 02 lower right image color corrected version makes the people look grey/white and almost zombie like. Also the sets look slightly ordinary with this kind of CC compared to the Pre CC screen shot that has vibrant, lush technicolor vibe.

http://ramascreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Wizard-of-Oz.jpg
fp615 wrote on 5/26/2011, 2:57 PM

Thanks essami and musicvid for your answers, but I probably missed a line in the description: I only did CC on the lower-left camera, to match the un-CC lower-right one (both HD).
The other two "upper" cameras (both SD) have no CC applied, they quite match by themselves.

So - I know that colors are not "the right ones", but my first step was to have colors "not completely different". Now I understand that there is too blue in it

This is an opera, "L'elisir d'amore" by Doninzetti, adapted for school children (my daughter is on the stage on frame02). I set up my camera (gh-1, the Lower-Right one) with a tungsten WB in order to not have the auto WB to change the white point... I had no control on the other cameras. The gh-1 had the 14-140 f4-5.6 lens, a bit too dark, and I just had time to set the camera to manual mode, 1/50 and full open iris. The meter consistently reported an underexposed situation.... film mode was wrongly left set to "nostalgic" and it is probably the reason of that cast on the blacks. gh-13 firmware with - if I remember well - less than 30mbit bitrate.
As I said I didn't have control on other cameras and I don't know which lens was on the D3100.

Tomorrow at office I will check the monitor used for the CC with the picture musicvid linked and I will try to look for any color casts presents.

I now remember that there was a moment where they changed colors on the stage lighting (red, green, yellow and then "blu-night with little stars") in less than 30 seconds... I may try to extract that loop...

Thanks
Francesco
fp615 wrote on 5/27/2011, 1:16 AM

@musicvid: yes, it seems to me that there is a bit too yellow in the picture on my monitor.

I opened the grayscale chart in windows picture viewer. Looking the monitor "frontally", like you would normally watch at a pc monitor, I can see the scale from 255 down to about 16, and from 16 to 0 all black. If I move my head and look at the monitor laterally I can see alsho shades in the black part.

In NVideo control panel I can:
- see all the shades from 0 to 255 lowering contrast to 0, luminosity to +50%
- see all the shades from 16 to 235 and clipping both ends (0-16, 235-255) luminosity +67%, contrast +65%
How should the monitor be setup ?

Thanks
musicvid10 wrote on 5/27/2011, 8:35 AM
On a properly set up monitor, you should be able to see differentiation between 255 and the adjacent step, and "ideally" between 0 and the adjacent step, but in the real world these two black steps may become one.

In a room with diffuse daylight (not a dark room) the grayscale should be gray, not brown or blue with the monitor at its native Kelvin temperature. There should be no color shift from dark to mid to light, as there is on a cheap tv.

There is a freeware called Calibrize (that is like Adobe Gamma) that will help you get the gamma right.

I don't know what Windows picture viewer is doing, but lowering contrast to zero does not sound right. I use Photoshop or Irfanview because they map true RGB.

If you've got money invested in a really good monitor you may want to get a Spyder.
Frederic Baumann wrote on 5/28/2011, 12:10 AM
Hi,

I am currently developing a new lighting correction plugin (to change the overall exposure, save burned areas, and boost dark ones), so if you are interested, please send me some pics or clips, I will process them using the plugin, and I will send the result back to you (or publish to this forum as you prefer). It would also help me challenge the algorithms against real-life pictures.

Also, you might try my other plugin, devoted to white balance, available at www.FBmn-software.com. It lets you pick a color as the white reference, and changes the color of the clip to adjust the white balance.

Best regards,
Frédéric - FBmn Software
Frederic Baumann wrote on 5/28/2011, 12:14 AM
After reading the web page you have posted, I would like to add that:

On my website you will also find a "user case" of the white balance plugin, showing how a user WB-synced 2 cameras with it.

Might be of some help for you? You could adapt this method to your clips by identifying, for instance, a white dress appearing on the various clips shot by the different cameras, chose a given point on it, and use this point as the white reference for all clips, by selecting it with the plugin color-picker.

Hope I am clear enough :-)

Best regards,
Frédéric - FBmn Software
fp615 wrote on 5/28/2011, 2:24 AM
Hi Frederic,
thank you for your message.

Vegas is rendering now, as soon as it finish I will take some snapshots, put in a zip file and adding a link to the thread.

Thanks
fp615 wrote on 5/28/2011, 4:15 PM

I uploaded some screenshots at:
http://www.bruxx.it/frank/campioni_video.zip

Frederic Baumann wrote on 5/29/2011, 1:06 PM
Thanks for the files, I will let you know asap what I can get in terms of white balance and lighting.

Best regards,
Frédéric
Frederic Baumann wrote on 6/3/2011, 10:28 AM
Hi,

I did some tests to match the colors of the various scenes you provided:

download results here

As your concern was only color matching, I only used the FBmn Software White Balance plugin, by picking the color of white shirts as a reference.

The ZIP file contains a resulting MP4 video, and the VEG project file.



Hope this helps,
Frédéric - FBmn Software
VidMus wrote on 6/30/2011, 4:18 AM
To: Frederic Baumann

You picked a severely BAD web page (URL) address! Using Google to search your site from the installed software name (FBmn Software) one can ONLY get FBM software.

Not knowing to put the hyphen in makes your site un-findable!

I had to go here to find the correct address to get to your site to make a payment.

Do yourself a GIGANTIC favor and change your site URL and do not use a hyphen!!!!!

Sincerely,

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com

P.S.

Your software solved a difficult balance issue I had.

Still the Sony CC will do a better job on some videos. It’s a matter of picking the tool that works best.
craftech wrote on 6/30/2011, 4:56 AM
I don't see how web video stills will match how the DVD will look. Mine never do. That is why posting screenshots on the web for something intended for DVD seems like a waste of time.

You said:

I'm doing the usual editing of my daughter "recital" with videos from other parents... and it is a mess as usual.

I would guess that jerky video would be a bigger problem than worrying about color correcting. I am assuming that you are trying to achieve a multi-camera look - right? I would suggest you eliminate the worst camera footage and the footage with the most dis-similar color or resolution and make a video from the best footage. CC will be a lot easier and the results will look better.

John