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Recovering highlights in Sony Vegas 12
Hi all,
Been using Vegas (Pro 12) for a while but I’ve just purchased a Atomos Ninja Assassin and I’m not sure if Vegas is allowing me to get the best out of it.
I recorded to both my Sony A99 and the Atomos but I’ve found the ProRes LT Atomos footage is blown out (the stuff off the Sony card seems to be ok). Try as I might, I can’t find a way of recovering these highlights in Vegas (I’ve tried the brightness/contrast, levels and curves FX but each seems to just bring the brightness down without pulling out extra detail which I know is in the highlights).Atomos raw video in Vegas:
A99 raw video in Vegas:
Atomos levels adjusted in Vegas
I can fix it easily in Premiere (quick color correct -> adjust output levels to 16-235)… Am I missing something in Vegas?
Atomos raw video in Premiere
Atomos output levels adjusted in Premiere
It’s possibly a little hard to see in these images, but there’s details in the boat which are visible in both the Premiere output-adjusted version (ProRes) and the video right off the A99.
I really the workflow in Vegas but if this is a limitation I’m seriously going to have to consider switching 🙁
Hoping someone can help! 🙂
Thanks,
Tim -
4 Replies
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When you used Levels in Vegas Pro what setting did you use? You should have used the Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset. That should perform the same 16-235 adjustment that you made in Premiere. If not, it could be that Vegas Pro uses Windows QuickTime support to process MOV files while Adobe has their own QuickTime decoder which may be better at processing the file.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks for the quick reply John, I did try the presets and the computer-studio one gave me the best results but still didn’t achieve anything like the highlight recovery I could get from Premiere.
I’ll keep playing – I’d prefer to use Vegas – it might just be something I have to be aware of in my scopes when I’m shooting.
Keen to hear if anyone else has had similar issues.
Tim -
Did you try the same test with Atomos recorded DNxHD?
My guess its a QuickTime issue, however the subject of the post is most of the problem. I wonder if the Atomos recorded in Sony HDCAM or XAVC if we would see the same thing.
There certainly looks to be an issue with Prores in Vegas straight up.
Could you see if you have the same issue with Cataylst Browse? Maybe try 1:1 conversion to XAVC or HDCAM-SR or SR-Lite? Then see if Vegas has the same issue?
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Yep, I’m going to do some more experimentation tonight (including DNxHD from the Atomos)… interestingly I just tried re-rendering a short (ungraded) sample off the Vegas timeline to ProRes LT again (I’m using the Miraizon codec), imported it into Premiere and it seems I can still recover the highlights there – so they are clearly not ‘lost’ by Vegas, just not viewable… ?
I’ll have a try with Catalyst as well, but worst-case, it seems like I can just cut it in Vegas then grade somewhere else.
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