"Both channels are clipped. This may be intentional or not ..."

It may even have been desirable...or not.

The R,G & B channels will be clipped IF something white in the frame is clipped.
Or as it seems in this case the white balance is off and only two of the three channels clipped when all three should have.

In my view the first 'scope to be looking at is the waveform monitor, that shows you your luma levels then start looking at Vectorscopes and parades. Each instrument has its place, for example the waveform monitor will not tell you if you're clipping a channel which can be a real trap in some scenes. Conversely the RGB histograms can also mislead because they show weighting.

All of these are in general diagnostic / alignment tools. The most critical tool is a calibrated monitor and eyeballs.

Bob.

Or as it seems in this case the white balance is off and only two of the three channels clipped when all three should have.

Bob, look at the pic again: ALL channels are clipped, yes red is less.

For the white balance I don't know if there is what should be pure white or neutral grey in the original footage so I can't tell the WB is a little bit off on the reddish side even if the dash density suggests this is the case.

You might find the Sony Webinar and Training Sections (explore theheaders at top of this page) of interest, especially at:-

Webinar: Exploring color correction tools and techniques in Vegas Pro 10

Sony Creative Software - Training - Vegas Pro.

They provide an excellent introiduction to the use of the various scoipes and the way to try to deal with some of the problems.

Richard

"Or as it seems in this case the white balance is off and only two of the three channels clipped when all three should have."

IMHO, without the scene itself, not much can be said basing on the RGB parade. For instance, when there is no red in the frame (e.g. just green trees and blue sky), the Red channel will be very low. And rightly so :)

Piotr

"For the white balance I don't know"

I don't either and that was my point.
It's all maybe...maybe not i.e. speculation.

Bob.

The quickest way to correct it is use sony levels. The output end will bring down the clipping on the high side

1) if it's true 016-235 video footage, its out-of-range and clipped
2) if it's RGB media (000-255), it's just clipped.

you could add a Computer-to-Studio filter to bring your media back within range
(i'm assuming the original footage is 016-235).

i'd probably add a second filter to adjust the shadows (maybe offset the reds slightly), but without an image who knows... highlights are gone unless the footage was clipped in post.


note: contrast/brightness filters increase noise (any app, not just vegas).

Seems a bit counterintuitive to try to try to evaluate a set of waveforms when we can't even see the frame grab. We don't know if the scene is high key, low key, if the clipping is really glare, or even how his scopes are set.

If you'll start by uploading a frame grab at Best / Full with no levels or effects applied, we'll go from there. Scoping is as much art as science, but right now we don't know if we're dealing with apples or oranges.

Here's a screen grab (sorry didn't do that initially)

"Here's a screen grab"

That sure helps.
So the white T shirt is is what pushed the G, B channels to the limit and the WB is a bit off as can be seen by the blue cast on the shirt. There isn't any real clipping though so it should be easily possible to fix the shirt with color correction.

I'd also use the colour curves to roll off the highlight (shirt) and get them below 100. I'd put the curves before the colour correction in the FX chain.

Bob.

There still appears to be some kind of levels or fx in the output. That "may" be causing the slight clipping. Can you give us a raw grab at best/full?

I would probably do something like this with it:



V10 project here

My standard curve for getting highlights legal:



Unlike Nick's it will only adjust luma, no WB adjustment.

Bob.

Here's my take on it.

After using the Remedial: FB WB and Levels I then slapped on a Style: Soft Contrast. All in all, I think I've delivered a "layered-look" supporting the eyeball-to-eyeball between the 2 women going on. The Soft Contrast has provided some much needed background contrast of that almost skin-tone background AND actual skintones of the women.

So, before:



And now after treatment:



Cheers

Grazie

Much better composition, red ball on the right preventing your eye going out the frame.

“what should the RGB parade look like”

Principle applies in Sony Vegas.

Nice tute Rory.

Recently ( in the last year!), I've got my head around Channel Blend to balance the RGB. I don't know IF I'm doing it correctly, but I'm very exited within the results.

G

On the warm side with fake lighting giving some cosiness touch:



WB adjust with double reverse gamma

Nice LoTN, like what you did to re-light the wall and added warmth, looks good to me. Its outside of legal limits as +7 and -7 however, is that by choice because this is a photo for the web, or is this yet another crazy result from the Vegas video levels weirdness at play...

Paul.

Oh well, this is out of bounds because my usual workflow is using PC RGB mode and I just did a quick and dirty test with dibbkd picture.

If I was to deliver I would compress luminance and check chrominance bounds according to target media specs.

About the Vegas levels mess, it is a real PITA to deal with, especially when editing in 32bit mode. There are many unsuspected side effets...

yes, its easy done - i usually have to check everything three times before rendering! Agreed, Vegas workflow is just designed to trip us up for illegal levels rather than trying to help prevent it. Anyway, i like what you did mate, good result.

Paul.

Thank you Paul :)

This has become an educational thread for me. I look at the original shot, try to understand the intent and then compare that with the various efforts at fixing it.

As impressive as those efforts are they're even further from the original, quite commendable, intent of how it was shot. For the most part the outcome is the exact opposite, it's gone from Zombie Play School to CSI or Dungeons and Dragons.

The question I'm left with is how to get rid of the zombies without destroying the play school theme?

Bob.