View Full Version : Correcting white balance....


Randall Allen
March 31st, 2007, 11:05 AM
I have some shooters who occasionally forget to white balance the cameras. The few times it has happened I have loaded up the clips, applied the Color Balance filter on the bad clip, opened the vectorscope and used the RGB values displayed for a point in the good clip and fiddled with the color balance settings until the good clip had the same values.

That process is just not working for me this time. Can anyone point me in the direction of a tutorial for correcting white balance in post? I do not understand the process to use the White Balance filter in Edius so I used the Color Balance filter before with limited success.

Attached are stills of the shots in question. I have tried to match up (using the above process) the green leaves of the plant in the foreground,the shirt, the tan color of the basket in the forground and the white on the dog......all with lousy results.

Reshoot is not really an option as this was the reshoot for an earlier nightmare.

Any advice?

Randy

Peter Jefferson
March 31st, 2007, 08:37 PM
if your shooters aren't shooting right, then either retrain them, or restrict their payments until they get it right.... the only way theyre going to learn is when you are adamant that their work is unaceptable

moving on...

tell you shooters to NOT try to correct the WB midway through a shot/scene this way even if it may be off, you can correct the shot/scene uniformally so as to fit with each other.

Edius has white balance filter and a pretty nifty CC filter. frm memory i think its also got a colour match filter

Randall Allen
April 1st, 2007, 10:53 AM
if your shooters aren't shooting right, then either retrain them, or restrict their payments until they get it right.... the only way theyre going to learn is when you are adamant that their work is unaceptable

They are my boss so that does not really work for me. I work at a library doing PEG channel programming. The shooters are the library's director and her right hand man.

moving on...

tell you shooters to NOT try to correct the WB midway through a shot/scene this way even if it may be off, you can correct the shot/scene uniformally so as to fit with each other.

Thankfully they don't.


Edius has white balance filter and a pretty nifty CC filter. frm memory i think its also got a colour match filter

As posted in the original post, I don't understand the use and controls of the WB filter, and have used the CC filter with limited success. I have not yet seen a color match filter but will look again.

Thanks for your comments.

Randy

P.S. I am using Edius 3.6

Mike Downey
April 3rd, 2007, 12:07 PM
I have some shooters who occasionally forget to white balance the cameras. The few times it has happened I have loaded up the clips, applied the Color Balance filter on the bad clip, opened the vectorscope and used the RGB values displayed for a point in the good clip and fiddled with the color balance settings until the good clip had the same values.

That process is just not working for me this time. Can anyone point me in the direction of a tutorial for correcting white balance in post? I do not understand the process to use the White Balance filter in Edius so I used the Color Balance filter before with limited success.

Attached are stills of the shots in question. I have tried to match up (using the above process) the green leaves of the plant in the foreground,the shirt, the tan color of the basket in the forground and the white on the dog......all with lousy results.

Reshoot is not really an option as this was the reshoot for an earlier nightmare.

Any advice?

Randy


Go to http://ediustraining.grassvalley.com/ and then watch the White Balance filter video... it might help you out :)


Mike Downey
Grass Valley

Randall Allen
April 4th, 2007, 08:19 AM
Thank you a thousand times.....that is a great resource. When was that added? I never found it in my first search about a year ago.

Randy

Paul Wags
April 4th, 2007, 08:43 AM
Randy

We just finished a big training DVD project mixing DV 4.3, DV 16.9 and HDV material all in real time in a DV 16.9 timeline. Colour correcting all the the underwater shots from the different cameras/days was very easy using EDIUS.

Grabbing a frame from another scene to help CC the clip you are adjusting is very good.

http://ediustraining.grassvalley.com/ site has been up for a few months now.

Mike Downey
April 4th, 2007, 12:32 PM
Thank you a thousand times.....that is a great resource. When was that added? I never found it in my first search about a year ago.

Randy

You are more than welcome! It has been up for a while now and we will be adding more tutorials when the newest version comes out. :)

Mike Downey
April 4th, 2007, 12:33 PM
Your video footage I saw looks great!

Randall Allen
April 5th, 2007, 07:22 AM
Paul:

I saw your other thread about mixing formats and it just confirms my thoughts that Edius is the best editing suite for me.

A little about myself....if anyone had told me 5 years ago that I would be doing video production I would have laughed them out of my computer lab. Our public library has had a TV station for several years thanks to a huge grant back in the 80s for equipment. When they started having equipment failures and looked a replacement in 2000 and 2001 the decided to scrap the old analog systems with new digital computer based equipment the operator of that system could not/would not make the transition to digital and quit. Since I understood the computer based editing and playback devices....guess who got nominated to fill the void.

I have since transitioned into this full time and have had no regrets other than the lack of real professional people to work with.

Thanks for your help and insights.

Randy

Paul Wags
April 7th, 2007, 06:09 AM
Yes gone are the days where you need special add on cards to give you real time edtiting and having to wait a day for the computer to render it all. With the age of the internet and forums like this you can learn anything.

It is funny how EDIUS just cuts up near on anything on what ever timeline and in realtime. We spent a few years with Premiere & Premiere Pro but will never go back now.

What library is that you work at?
I'll look it up on Google Earth.

I think some of our underwater stuff will be playing at the Grass Valley/Canopus booth at NAB this year. Pretty cool since we live in very outback remote tiny West Australian town. They flew a guy all the way from Melbourne to check us out....funny...

Randall Allen
April 7th, 2007, 11:42 AM
I'm at the Sarah Hightower Regional Library in Rome Georgia. I think it is great that they want your footage. From what I saw it will be a great example.

The Edius software has really impressed me, but I have never really delved very far into any other software. We had Rex Edit when I started back here and then purchased Edius with the NX card. What a pity I don't have enough computer to really run the card the way it should be run. Such is the life of a public library. I am hoping they will buy me a new computer and the Edius 4 upgrade this summer but I never can tell.

Hey Mike.....don't you want to make a contribution and support a public library.<g>

Randy

www.romelibrary.org

Cole McDonald
April 7th, 2007, 07:56 PM
Add a little orange to it, if you can't find or figure out the color corrector, put a layer of orange over it and multiply the layer and lower the opacity to get it to scrub out the blue just slightly.

Randall Allen
April 7th, 2007, 09:19 PM
Nice tip! I keep forgeting I can build things up instead of just working on what already exists. I did finally get the white balance controls to work. Once you know how to grab another frame for a reference its almost childs play.

Randy

Cole McDonald
April 8th, 2007, 12:41 PM
I started using photoshop before layers, so I still think that way! Can't help it...I never think plugins, I always think in chops (CHannel OPerations) and more recently in layers to add. I think these are essential to being able to conceptualize what's involved in getting the picture in your head to come to reality. Of course, I know how to use a slide rule to do calculations too ;)