Correcting video shot without ND filter

[Steve Rhoden]

FBmn Software Exposure is an effective plugin for things like that.
And if you cant get that, you can simply use Vegas Color Curves.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
1-876-832-4956

[Stephen Mann]

If the whites are completely blown out, then there is no video data there to recover.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Frederic Baumann]

Many thanks Steve for the reference to FBmn Software!

Mark, the web site is https://www.fbmn-software.com/en/exposure.html. If you are reluctant to download and install the plug-in, instead you may post a still of your movie here, I will be pleased to apply the effect on it and post the result back in this thread.

Best regards,
Frederic – FBmn Software

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FBmn Software: Professional GPU-powered plug-ins to fix White Balance and Exposure issues in a few clics.
Color-matching made easy with the ColorMatch plug-in.

Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my tutorial.
Or about Keyframes? Watch this one. French version here.

[Nigel O’neill]

Colour curves and fbmn software exposure will correct lightly blown out details, but not excessive blow outs. I do a lot of theatre work with spot lights and we sometimes have to expose the highlights at expense of the surrounding detail. ND filters are a must outdoors.

You could try and mask the camera operator’s mistake by applying a Vegas soft contrast filter with a vignette and heavy tint (it is one of the standard presets) with a colour curve adjsutment, and make it appear to be an intentional effect.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Mike Kujbida]

Here’s a technique to try, courtesy of user “malowz” on the Sony Vegas forum.

Put 3 filters, “Invert” (at 100%), “Color Corrector”, “Invert” (at 100%).
Lift up the gamma of the color corrector in the middle.
This darkens highlights first, in the logarithmic fashion, more like a “iris closing” way.

[Mark Krueger]

OK Here is a frame shot:

Looking forward to seeing what you can do! Mark

[Frederic Baumann]

Thanks for the still. As illustrated with the histogram shown below, the initial data are actually quite burned and a good part of them stick to the maximum of 255, for which nothing but magic can be done 🙂

So below is the original vs. what I get.

Frederic

Original:

FBmn Software Exposure GPU 3.0:

Histogram of the original picture:

Settings for FBmn Exposure GPU (needs to be version 3.0, the earlier ones do not have the Saturation control):

—

FBmn Software: Professional GPU-powered plug-ins to fix White Balance and Exposure issues in a few clics.
Color-matching made easy with the ColorMatch plug-in.

Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my tutorial.
Or about Keyframes? Watch this one. French version here.