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Color correcting “roving white balance”
I’m editing video that someone else shot. It’s a wedding ceremony, about 1.5 hours straight, no cuts. He shot it on a Sony EX1R. Here’s the problem… apparently he had it on auto white balance. It’s shot in a church and behind the speaker are several stain glassed windows. As the footage plays, the white balance changes throughout. Sometimes it’s fine, then it will change to an orange-ish hue. What I’ve been doing is cutting the video track with the razor tool and attempting to use Color Correct 3-way on each tiny clip. Frustrating to say the least. Is there ANY other way to accomplish this?
Thanks
James Downie
Blufish Media
Charlotte, NC -
4 Replies
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You could key frame the wb change with the 3 way.
-Set your WB, Apply a keyframe at the frame before the color temp starts to change
-progress as many frames as it takes for the color temp to change fully. apply a key frame and set the white balance
Give it a try and see if it is convincing.
-Dane Henry
DeepRootsMedia.com -
If that becomes too difficult, you might want to duplicate the clips and layer them… Color correct each layer differently and keyframe the opacity between them as needed.
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What you’re doing is probably how I would approach it. Although what I would do is set the various versions of the video on multiple video tracks so you can easily drag and drop the filters to the various versions.
Say you’ve got a whole bunch of these little clips that went yellow. Put them all on Video Track 2. Grade the first one. Then drag that filter to all the rest of them.
You’ve got a bunch of similar blue clips, put them all on Video Track 3. Repeat the process from above.
And so on……
At the very end, put them all onto a single video, highlight them all and place a 1 second dissolve on all the cuts to smooth the transitions.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
[James Downie] “As the footage plays, the white balance changes throughout. Sometimes it’s fine, then it will change to an orange-ish hue. What I’ve been doing is cutting the video track with the razor tool and attempting to use Color Correct 3-way on each tiny clip. Frustrating to say the least. Is there ANY other way to accomplish this?”
I’m not sure if there are any FCP equivalents, but if you’re familiar with After Effects, you might try Auto Levels [link], which remaps all values in each color channel according to the brightest and darkest spots in the image. Another option is Color Stabilizer [link], which allows you to define a reference frame and sample points in your image. It will adjust every other frame so the sample points match the reference. If your shot is locked down, or if you have trackable black, white, and gray points in the shot, it may get you in the ballpark without too much effort.
As with anything like this, you’ll be giving up a lot of control, and an automatic process can go off the rails pretty quickly. Sometimes it’s actually faster to do it manually.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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