• VEGAS Pro

  Overexposed and Underexposed Clips

  Posted by Dilson on August 6, 2007 at 6:12 am

  Dear all,

  I have over 6-8 hrs of DV video that has been captured and there are various areas in the clip where certain areas of a given frame are overexposed and certain areas underexposed. How can i fix that so that they look reasonable. I am using Sony Vegas 7 with Magic Bullet for Editors. Any suggestions or links to tutorials that can help me resolve this will be greatly appreciated.

  Douglas Spotted eagle replied 18 years, 9 months ago 4 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Gary Kleiner

  August 6, 2007 at 7:02 am

  I have found the best tool to tweak exposure is Color Curves.
  If you really only want to change one part of the image you are going to have to add a second copy of the footage on a track above and mask it so that the rest of the frame will show through.

  Gary Kleiner

  

  Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

  http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com
• 

  Douglas Spotted eagle

  August 6, 2007 at 2:29 pm

  The *correct* way to manage exposure (prior to any color correction) is to use the Levels filter in conjunction with the Waveform monitor set to Luma vs Chroma. Essentially the steps are these:
  1-make clip black/whte
  2-open Waveform monitor. Set to Studio RGB
  3-Insert Levels filter
  4-Use levels filter to bring up highlights or bring down blacks or both. Highest point should just kiss 100 on the scale and darkest should just touch or be slightly above 7.5 on the scale. Toggle back and forth with the B/W filter that you inserted in step 1.

  Glenn Chan and I cover this extensively in the Color Correction for Vegas DVD.
  If you use the Color Curves filter as your first option, you’re likely kicking up noise where you don’t need to. You’re also shifting the saturation of the middle ranges where you likely don’t want to.

  Douglas Spotted Eagle
  VASST
  Aerial Camera
• 

  Mary Waitrovich

  August 6, 2007 at 4:29 pm

  I always use the Levels filter for exposure problems, but never knew how to use the Waveform monitor with it. This worked great on the sample I tried.

  Thanks, Spot!

  Mary Waitrovich
  UW-Madison
• 

  Dilson

  August 7, 2007 at 3:02 pm

  Thank you DSE.

  Your procedure did help me in lot of areas, but on some it did not help me. This is because the Camera was not set properly before the shoot. So, we will have to live with it or probably discard the really bad sections.

  Thank you all those that have given their feedback on this problem of mine. I appreciate every single feedback. Thank you all once again.
• 

  Douglas Spotted eagle

  August 7, 2007 at 8:14 pm

  Dilson, why not post a frame grab and let folks here attempt to help you out?

  Douglas Spotted Eagle
  VASST
  Aerial Camera

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