Fixing Constantly Changing White Balance

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Hi Chris,

Thank you for posting this fix. I have some old footage that a client gave me that has wildly fluctuating white balance. I tried using this fix, but it didn’t seem to work for me. The render still has the same issues.

I think I probably didn’t use it correctly. I didn’t really understand the part about the hidden text. I found the hidden text, but when I slid the Gamma Clamp slider, it didn’t effect the number 50 in the hidden text at all. It never moved off of 50 so I just hit render to see what would happen.

What did I miss?

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Also, there was a black solid that I had to move out of the screen. Wasn’t sure what that was for so I just moved it aside.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

And I wasn’t sure what the 8mm ships.mov 2 layer was for either but I just left it.

[Chris Wright]

see if the expressions in the comps are accidentally turned off. the comp ‘exposure repair’ reads an average color. if your footage is mostly dark or isolated, you can even customize that comp with a mask and average exactly what you need(although by default, it averages the whole image to calculate a dominate color to subtract, like a DSLR’s white balance but it does it per frame by frame.
The master comp master sliders can offset the adjustments in the whole project.

The hidden effect ‘Rebel Cc’ uses levels to re-calculate the white point. It does not need shadow or hidden text layer to fix white balance. That is only for flicker and shadows.

[Chris Wright]

ah, ok, I know what you haven’t done. you have to right click replace the .jpg in the project. that will replace all the layers with your footage.
it’s not a plugin. you need to edit the template.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Thanks for the response!

I replaced the video.avi in the project tab with my .mov footage, but I’m not seeing any .jpg under the project tab.

[Chris Wright]

urm yea, i guess this version did indeed get drafted with an avi. sorry, its been like 6 years since I made it as some versions have slight variations. right click replace avi should do the trick. the black square is a temporary matte to easily see the text for flicker. you turn it off before render. I guess I never really made proper documentation for this. It was a pet project never realized professionally, but I figured it was good enough to share.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

The expression target = comp under the footage within the exposure repair comp was enabled.

The expression comp(“Final_OUTPUT”) under the empty text layer was also enabled.

Those are the only two expressions I see. I do not see the ‘Rebel Cc’ effect, or understand what it’s for, or how to use it.

What are you referring to when you say “master comp master sliders?” I’m not seeing any “master comp.” Do you mean the master control slider layer?

If so, I adjust the Gamma, and it does not affect the number 50 in the hidden text at all. As though the hidden text is not connected to the Gamma slider in any way. No matter where I place the slider, the number in the hidden text always reads 50.

Also, I’m not sure what this means:

“you want the gamma clamp slider to make that number ~25 so that it averages 25 every 30 seconds or so. ”

Does that mean you want the gamma clamp slider to be at negative 25? i’m not understanding the “~” symbol.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

No, that’s quite all right. Just wanted to make sure I understood what you were referring to.

Okay, that makes sense with the matte.

If you have an updated version, I’d be interested in seeing it.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Here are some screenshots that show no matter where I put the Gamma slider, the number in the text remains at 50.