Fixing overexposed shots in FCE HD

Hi everyone...
am wondering if anyone can give me some basic tips for correcting overexposed shots in FCE HD. Shots were taken outdoors on a bright day, in HD. They just have that washed out look from overexposure, and being a wedding the bride's dress is a bit glary! Thanks...

There is not a lot you can do, but I suggest going to the Image Control section of the Video Filters.
There are three filters you could experiment with - "Brightness and Contrast", "Gamma" and "Levels".
Ian.

Similar Messages

Fixing overexposed DV footage

Ok, so I've got some important DV footage which must have been shot under the wrong camera settings because it's seriously overexposed (shot in bright sunlight).
I've been experimenting with brightness/contrast filters as well as the "gamma correction" filter. Is there a better, more general way to attack this problem? Which filter(s) should I be using?
Thanks, and thanks again.

If the entire frame is really overexposed there may not be much you can do. Brightness, contrast, gamma, color corrector may help.
You might also take a look at Patrick Sheffield's Captain's Blowout Fixer. Scroll down the page to find the plugin; there is also a how-to-use-it tutorial. The Technicolor plugins are pretty cool, too.

Getting Videos shot into FCE

So i have watched the Tutorial DVD and it didn't help, or maybe i just can't find it, but i can get my raw film into FCE from the camera. Do i need to change the setup to somthing like NTSC Firewire or what? I am using a DV in/out cable to go straight into the back of the comp.
My camera:
Film Type: Mini DV
Sony Digital Handycam
Super SteadyShot DCR-TRV17 NTSC
Message was edited by: DJSpaceMonkey

The main difference between the DV Converter setup and the Firewire Basic NTSC setup is the ability to control the camcorder from the computer for capturing, and to tell the computer to read the timecode. The computer doesn't expect timecode from a DV Converter. It is strange that you didn't get audio, but it may be that you were setup for 32Khz 4 channels and the camera recorded in 48Khz 2 channels, or vice versa. In my experience, that results in audio going out of sync.
This sounds strange to me. Please post again, if the correct "Easy Setup" doesn't fix the problem.

Help fixing overexposed buckle

I have a photo that was provided to me that has a horribly overexposed buckle against black fabric. I've tried some of the fixes found here and elsewhere but haven't had much luck. I have a feeling that nothing can be done based on what I've read and the fact that most of it is so overexposed that it's white. I just thought I'd check here first. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm working with CS4 and I do have the RAW image available.
Thanks,
Mel

Just a thought - since the details of the buckle seem to be completely clipped, one possibility might be to select the buckle, put it on a new layer and add a layer style to give it some body. You could use a curves adjustment layer to tone down just the buckle.

Upgrading to FCE 4, fixing capture bug from FCE 3

If I upgrade to FCE 4, will this take care of the horrific capture problem using QT 7.3 in FCE 3 which does not work?

Tom, you may remember my threads, my problems all came from using a DV converter only. I did not have camera, drive, or computer problems. Plus, since video captures fine in iMovie, it does isolate the capture problem to these factors: FCE 3.0, QT 7.3, and OS 10.4.11. I guess before I spend the $99 to upgrade to FCE 4, I'm trying to cover all of the bases and make sure there is not any other way or option to correct it. Thanks...

Fixing Footage Shot with wrong filter on Sony F900, color correction, underexposed film

Hello everyone...
I am new to the forums but have been with Adobe since CS3. I love Premier Pro and have fully abandones FCP 2-3 years ago for the first CS5. I was out shooting a SONY F900, which i am not used to (as I work primarily with small format and dslr workflows) and I made the TOTAL ROOKIE MISTAKE of shooting on the 1A rollable filter setting... rather than the 1B which is for indoor tungsten. I didn't have a monitor with me or available, so through the BW view finder... i had no idea it was wrong. The result is that I lost a stop and a half in an already lowlight setting... and the minus blue filter of the 1A (or daylight / 56K) setting removed color depth and turned every thing kind of washed out orange.
I am confident that i can bring it back to acceptable through color correction and i have been training on Speed grade tutorials like crazy. I am proficient in Premier and After Effects workflows but have never dealt directly with this.
Any help of steps to take in general would be appreciated and I thank you in advance for your help.
Cheers!
Dustin

Yeah... I feel like a tool for it. I have been shooting for a decade and a started on full broadcast shoulder mounts. I just have drifted sooo farrr over the past five years that I forgot about it. No excuse on my end. I have "colorista" for after effects. Part of the red giant suite right? Or am i mistaken?... Would you share the best simple approach to the settings for that plugin. Thanks in advance,
D

New to color correction - need help on too bright shot

Need help to fix this shot! I've been messing around with color corrector 3 way and nothing seems to help. I'm new to color correction and would greatly appreciate any advice.
Thanks,
Jenny

When you see white pixels in an overexposed shot, it means that there's often no pixel data to work with.
While the best option is a reshoot (this time with proper monitoring), you may want to try the "Captain's Blowout Fixer" filter available here: http://pistolerapost.com/pluginz/index.html
It let's you looks to see which color channel has the most remaining pixel data (if any) and work with it to overcome production screw-ups like this. Make sure you watch the tutorial on how to properly use the filter.
-DH

FCE v FCP, Again

I know some of my issues have been addressed before, but please bear with with me, because I am still confused about a few things.
I have shot over 20 hours of DV footage on my Panasonic DVX100 camera that I'd like to edit for a documentary. Most of it was shot in the 24p mode (I had intended to shoot all of it in this mode, but some of it was mistakenly shot in DV mode). I just got the new iMac and I loaded it up with RAM, in the hope that I could edit it myself at home. I'm not an experienced editor (in fact the whole movie making stuff I'm learning bit by bit as I go), and I was hoping to teach myself how to do it (using books as a guide, or a class). I bought FCE HD because I knew it was really powerful, a handful to learn if you are a beginner, and a heck of a lot cheaper than FCP. If it matters for the sake of this discussion, I would like to show this film at a festival one day.
FIRST PROBLEM: I get that FCE message when I'm trying to import (capture?) my footage to my external hard drive, its is "unable to locate following external devices, Apple Firewire NTSC (720x480)" I followed some of the suggestions on how to fix that, except for the reinstall of Quick Time part. I don't know how to do that.
SECOND PROBLEM: I read in this and other forums (2-POP), as well as some articles on the web, that FCE can't handle the 24p format.
This is the backstory, now the questions:
Should I bother with trying to fix these problems with FCE? Is it definitely true that it won't handle 24p?
I really want this DV to look like film as much as possible. I know that learning FCE can take me a long way toward FCP, and I'd rather not pay for FCP if it isn't vital to my ultimate goal (a completed film out of all this 24p footage I've shot, that I can show to an audience at a fest, or also that could be purchased for educational use by a school or museum, for example).
Thanks for your help.

If you want a film out I presume you shot in 24p advanced. In which case FCE cannot edit it properly.

Somehow I've created 6 color corection tabs for one shot and it's playing havoc - any suggestions? Thx!

Somehow I've created 6 color corection tabs for one shot in FCE, can't seem to delete tham and it's playing havoc - they seem to be overlaying one another giving a dreadful colour balance - any suggestions? Thx!

Either:
Right click on clp in TL and select reove attributes>Filter
or
Open clip in Viewer, Click on Filter tab. In Nemeric view, far left for each filter, select and hit delete.
Good luck.
Russ

LIghtroom Auto Tone Too Dark and Loses Detail

Hi,
I'm new to Lightroom so excuse my ignorance if I use the wrong terminology or ask a question that has a relatively easy answer I somehow overlooked inside of Lightroom.
I take photos at my son's soccer games and frequently walk away with over 200 photos to adjust, crop, etc. after removing the poor composition, out of focus and other shots. One of the features that prompted me to purchase Lightroom to replace my existing tool (Capture One LE) was the way Lightroom handled colors in the Auto Tone preset. Photos auto adjusted in Lightroom with the Auto Tone feature exhibit a much more rich/vibrant color than the ones that would come out of Capture One LE for me.
However, I've noticed that Auto Tone also darkens areas of the photo to the point where a significant amount of detail is lost. For example, a shot of a player head on with a shadow across his face and front of his jersey loses facial detail around the eyes, nose, mouth and folds in the front of the jersey because the coloring is darkened to the point where the highlights are lost.
I've tried several adjustments to regain the highlights and associated detail, but am unsure if there's a better way to recover the detail (or gain the tone enhancements without losing the detail). So far, the adjustments I've tried to regain the detail have caused the colors to wash out somewhat and reduce the benefit gained with the color enhancements of Auto Tone.
Is there a better way of regaining the detail after using Auto Tone? And on a related note, is there a way to "undo" just the Auto Tone adjustment in a photo if it's not the last adjustment made, or does one need to step backward through the adjusments undoing each adjustment in order to get to the Auto Tone adjustment in order to remove it?
Thanks in advance for any direction or suggestions anyone can provide. FYI, my photos were all in RAW format (noticed a lot of other posts referring to LR Auto Tone washing out JPGs, but this isn't my issue), with a Canon 20D.
Dale

There are several ways to go, here, as always with Lightroom in this situation. I suppose one thing you can do is use Auto Tone as you've been doing, and then back down another slider or two, particularly Contrast and Brightness, that moves too far for your taste when you hit Auto Tone.
I don't use Auto Tone. It's considered a machete where deftly-wielded surgical knives get much better results. I tested Auto Tone out on a virtual copy of one of my photos of people for you to see what happens. It bumps Contrast way up, drops Brightness a bit, reduces Fill Light, and increases Blacks slightly. Yeah, that would pretty much get the results you're complaining about! Might work okay in some landscape shots in some very subdued lighting situations, but it will make family shots too harsh.
Let me suggest another approach. First, no one checklist approach like I'm about to suggest works for every photo. But when you learn how to use the sliders yourself, and not rely on the automatic and strongest ones, like Auto Tone and Contrast, your photos will look better than you even realized. Seriously! I know what you're saying:
I take 200 photos at a time, and I don't have time to play with sliders for each photo. Hear me out, though, because you do. Once you get the hang of it, you'll learn to do all this so fast, well less than one minute per keeper shot, and you'll see that it's worth the small amount of time it takes.
First look at all your Imported shots and quickly weed out most of them. Don't try to save the ones where your main subject is out-of-focus or turned away at the last second, or badly overexposed shots, or for whatever reason, aren't worth editing time because you know you have better ones... and you should weed out MOST shots (maybe at least 150) if you took 200! Be a tough editor! Hit the X key as you look at ones to cull, then click Filter by black flag until all the Rejected photos Only are isolated, check them one more time to be sure you didn't X some you want by mistake, ctrl-A them to highlight all the Rejected ones ONLY, and hit Delete to blow them all away, From Disk. Congratulate yourself, because you just saved a lot of editing time.
Assuming the Exposure was in the right ballpark, fix Color Temp first. For your first keeper shot, move that Temp slider near upper right of Develop, almost certainly to the right for Canon Raw shots, to warm the faces a bit. You probably don't want the kids' faces ruddy red, but a little warming so that white jerseys just begin to go slightly to the red side of white, makes your outdoor people photos glow. It wouldn't be surprising to see family soccer photos in the 6000-6500 range look best. If you want cold journalistic realism, leave white jerseys pure white and Temp down in the 4000-5000 range on a cloudy day or 5000-6000 range on a sunny one. Now, if one shot's right, and
if your light didn't change during the shoot (sun going in and out of clouds, sun setting, field lights turning on halfway through the game), you can fix Temp for all your remaining shots with just a couple of clicks! Leave the first shot you fixed Temp for highlighted, and ctrl-A the whole filmstrip (or, alternatively, you can just ctrl-click the ones taken in the same light). Now click the Sync button that appears near the lower right corner of Develop. A window pops. Make sure White Balance is checked, and click Synchronize. (Every field checked here gets applied the same as on the first highlighted shot to all your subsequently highlighted shots when you do this. Since you haven't changed anything else yet, you don't have to uncheck the other boxes-- it won't matter. But later, after you've made other adjustments to other shots, you might only want to leave the boxes checked for fields you do want applied the same to all highlighted photos.) When you click Synchronize, watch all the highlighted photos in the filmstrip at the bottom get a warmer color balance. You can always later make more refined adjustments to individual shots or groups of shots that go too red or not warm enough.
The next thing to fix is the Exposure. Get in the habit of constantly consulting that Histogram graph at the top of the right column. Ideally, though this isn't always possible or ideal, but generally, you'd like to see neither triangle in the upper right and left corners
lit. (When it's right, you'll still see the outline of the triangle, but it won't be illuminated.) Even better, for an average outdoor shot with a variety of light and dark tones, you want to see a nice balanced line across most of the graph, curving up from the left and down on the right. Not always possible or the best exposure for every shot, mind you, just average ones. (A silhouette shot on a beach with the setting sun in the photo is an example of a shot where the best Histogram will look the opposite of that!) Try moving Exposure slowly to the left and right and watch how the Histogram moves. Try to get the best average placement you can, and see if the photo still looks right.
Or watch your grass with soccer shots while you move Exposure back and forth. Grass should look middle green, not too bright, and not dull-muddy-dark. Or watch faces. If you still have a triangle on the upper right of Histogram, which means highlight detail is blowing out, try sliding Recovery to the right just until the upper right triangle disappears, if possible. (It isn't always possible, even with Recovery at 100.) If you still have a triangle on the upper left of Histogram (that one means shadows are muddy with no detail), try sliding Blacks down from 5 towards 0, just until the triangle goes away. Sometimes it's easier to make a triangle go away by moving Exposure a bit. If there's no triangle on the upper left, try increasing Black slowly just until one appears in the upper left, then back off a bit until it just goes away again. If there are harsh shadows, increase Fill Light to brighten shadows a bit until it looks right. Losing the triangles is a general goal but not as important as having photos look right to you. It's a juggling act. Sometimes when you remove the triangles, the grass is muddy brownish, faces look wrong, or highlights are too dull. Maybe you move Exposure, Highlights or Blacks to put one or both triangles back but leave the overall photo better.
Now just do two more things, especially as you're learning this: first, increase Clarity. Probably a bunch. If faces go too harsh on you with Clarity at a highsetting, and they can in closeup, you may want about a 20-45 on Clarity. Many photos look best with even higher Clarity settings, even 100 for landscapes. Now bump Vibrance up, probably to the left of the Clarity slider, though. Too high a setting on Vibrance makes colors looks cartoonish and fake. Are faces too ruddy or foliage too over-the-top? Back off on Vibrance.
Look at the Histogram one more time and touch up Recovery and Blacks again if needed to get rid of barely reappearing triangles.
I recommend you do not move the following sliders, generally, for 99% of your photos, anyway: Tint (just usually not needed if the camera is doing color balance correctly), and Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation, all of which are ham-handed ways of doing what you do more precisely with the other sliders. About the only time you need Saturation is to move it left with a rare shot that for some reason has too much color especially red even with Vibrance set to 0. (Maybe your camera is set to Vivid.)
Doing these things will make most of your photos look WAY better than hitting Auto Tone. And once you get the hang of it, as I said, you can do each photo in well less than one minute, and you only do this on your keepers, so it doesn't take much time.

Bad buzz recorded when on AC power! HELP!

I shot my first short film the other weekend. The first day I used AC power with my Panny GS400 and Rode VideoMic. This is 1/8" miniplug not XLR. I didn't realize that using AC would give a terrible buzz over all my audio. I never put the headphones on. Rookie mistakes.
I've been trying to clean this up with Audacity, SoundSoap 2 and Final Cut Express. I' not having much luck. It seems like it should be a 60hz hum from what I've read online, but it seems to be broadband noise. If I train Audacity it does an ok job with the noise removal but the dialog gets hit a bit.
I can't seem to get FCE's filters to do anything at all. I like to fix the audio in FCE if possible to make for an easy workflow. I've tried many filters and they don't seem to do anything. I drag the filter, tweak and then render.
I'm a total beginner so any help is apprieciated. I have a small 80k sample file that I can send if anyone wants to try to clean it up for me.

Brian
I think you have already covered it using your third party apps. It is difficult to weed out sounds and not loose things you need.
This turorial based on FCP may help you with understanding FCEs limits:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/basic_audio_filtertutoria.html
Al

HVX-200 and P2 rant

It's really becoming a pain for me to work with Premiere and After Effects CS4 so I gotta vent a little.
I'm doing Post FX and Color Correction in After Effects. I edited the movie in Premiere CS4 (started a bit in CS3 but movied over).
Ok I shoot 24pa (with is basically 24 progressive frames captured though 60i). In CS 2,3 Premiere and After Effects both removed the extra frames automatically.
Now since Late last year, I have to remember 'interpret footage' and check the box in Premiere. OK so I can lasso a bunch of files at once and do it in one shot. But all the time I bring in new clips and sometime I forget to 'check the box'
Or worse, MEDIA BROWSER makes searching through P2 clips a breeze. Hell I can even pick in and out's with dragging the clip in. Except, I have to remember to 'Interpret footage' for each one I pull in.
Ok I'm whining..but it gets worse!!!
There's that great 'replace with After Effects' feature. Being able to fix a shot in AE makes editing so much easier for me.
Except you have to do the 'INTERPRET FOOTAGE' DANCE AGAIN!!!!!!! Even if you did it in Premiere already. And this time it's not so easy, more clicks. But I'm, only doing one or two shots at a time in Premiere so it's not that annoying.
So the cut's done (locked), let's finish the color correction in AE where I have much more powerful tools available and 32 bit float.
Before I knew what I'm about to tell you I had 45 shots in a 10 minute reel as separate AE files.
WTF When I 'import Premiere pro project' in AE. Every single AE file in the project is MISSING. I have to manually tell it where each file is located.
That was 8 months ago. I still use AE to finish almost everything I do but I'm disappointed in Premiere. I'm actually thick enough to hope 4.1 gets something right, I'm afraid there to worried about RED.
Rant's over for now.

First and foremost, watch this tutorial:
P2 Workflow Tutorial
1. They stay the same size. All that happens is that a quicktime wrapper is wrapped around them, and audio and video are combined. No loss is quality occurs.
2. A SATA RAID will do you fine, but honestly I have been editing this and Varicam footage using 2 G-Raid firewire 800 drives. You need at least a firewire 800 drive, but I'd recommend a SATA Raid. Sonnet, Weibetech, Firmtek and Burly boxes...all work well.
3. Copy the P2 cards to field drives. Bring them in and transfer to firewire drives. These drives are your TAPE MASTERS. Do not erase these, do not lose these. Store these as your would field masters. I myself use internal SATA drives in a single firewire case that I swap out the drives. Cheaper than multiple enclosed drives. From there you import to your Media drives...your SATA Raid.
4. No need to offline. DVCPRO HD really doesn't take up that much space...roughly twice what DV takes. Oh...you are going 1080 24p. That takes 42.12 GB/hour DV takes about 13GB/hour.
5. Editing at full resolution is fine and easy. But you will not be able to get away with firewire 400 drives. As I said, FW800 or greater. 1080i might require more, thus the need for the SATA Raid.
I believe that you need at least a Dua 1Ghz machine for DVCPRO HD, and you have that...and you have enough RAM...so you are good. The only choking point you will have is render times. Especially when compressing for DVD. 90 min show took me 14 hours...oof.
And read my Blog about working with the HVX...click on Underdog to get there.
Shane

Movies no longer play in iTunes or ATV

I installed the software update for iTunes 11.1.5.5 and now movies (m4v from Handbrake) stored on my PC no longer play in iTunes or Apple TV. These have been playing fine for years, so I'm guessing that 11.1.5.5 has something in it that suddenly doesn't like this format anymore. I can still see my whole library in ATV, covers and all, but when I hit play, I just get the spinning icon. In iTunes, it's just a black screen with the timer staying at zero. Music still plays fine on both devices. I'm frustrated at myself to no end for installing the update. As well, I cannot fine a single complaint of this same issue. I'm hoping that might be because there's a simple fix (long shot I know). Anyone else having issues? Any ideas? Please remember that this file format has been playing without issue for years, so please don't suggest that I change the format unless you know for sure that is a new concern with playback. Thank you.

Well, in case anyone is reading this and willing to offer ideas, I did uninstall iTunes 11.1.5.5 and re-installed the last full version I had saved 11.1.1.11 (not really sure of the last version I was on before everything stopped working). Nothing was lost during the re-install (all libraries, playlists and such are still as they were....I was expecting this not to be the case). However, this process didn't change the video playback problem. I'm at a loss of what this could be. I went through the audio issues mentioned on another thread and did the recommendations, with no change. I did manage to find a few videos that still do play. The only difference I could see is that they are listed as "low complexity" and in stereo. I suppose it probably is an audio thing, though I have no idea why it's an issue now, when it never has been in the past. Please help. Thank you.

How do I properly use the HDR function in Photoshop CS4?

It appears that I must be doing something wrong when attempting to use the HDR capability in Photoshop CS4. I follow the tutorials. I go to File>Automate>Merge to HDR. Then I select the bracketed photos to merge. I have used RAW file combinations of "normal" with +1 and -1 exposures, and "normal" with +2 and -2 exposures. Inevitably the result comes out looking like the most overexposed shot...or even more washed out. Since CS4 normally works for me as intended, I feel that I must be doing something wrong with the HDR function. Can anyone offer any helpful suggestions? Thanks!

Don't feel bad. While I haven't seen just what you're describing, the Merge to HDR function seems, in my opinion, kind of a bust. I can't say I've seen any "magic" at all in the way it combines the exposures.
I've tried to use it several times and I just don't see results that make me feel it's worth using. I have in every case been able to make better images out of a single well-exposed raw file than with the Merge to HDR function and several bracketed exposures (even with CS5's Merge to HDR Pro).
If people offer suggestions here, I'll be trying them too.
-Noel

Batch conversion to replace the anamorphic flag in DV Stream

I have a bunch of .dv files form my video camera but, unfortunately, when migrating them from iMovie '06 to iMovie '08 (and switching to a brand new iMac in between) some of them have lost the anamorphic flag. This means that when I try and import them to iMovie, they appear as anamorphically squashed 4:3 instead of 16:9.
I can open them in Final Cut Express and set the anamorphic flag there, but this only applies to FCE, the files themselves are unmodified. I want to be able to publish my movies to .Mac Gallery, so FCE is pretty much useless for this purpose.
I found that FCE will let me convert the file to a DV Stream with aspect ratio 16:9, which effectively fixes the files, but FCE won't let me select more than one DV file at a time in the browser for this. Going through all 500 DV files this way will be extremely tedious.
So: is there another way I batch convert files in Quicktime, or with any other (ideally free) program?
I already tried "Quicktime Quick Batch", but this just throws dozens of Applescript errors under Leopard.

So: is there another way I batch convert files in Quicktime, or with any other (ideally free) program?
QT pro does not have a sequential "batch" option per se. It will, however, allow you to convert several files in parallel if you want. I.e., as soon as one conversion begins, you can start another, and another, etc. Another alternative would be to use the MPEG Streamclip (free) application. It will also re-set your anamorphic using the "Export to DV" option. It has a built-in batch list window which will allow you to add a number of files for sequential processing while you are occupied in other activities.

Fixing overexposed shots in FCE HD

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