Highlight (dodge) dark area without blue haze

[Stephen Mann]

I am not picturing the effect you’re describing. Can you post a screenshot?

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

[John Rofrano]

Yea, I’m not familiar with that either. I’ve never seen dodge create a blue haze.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Howard Lang]

Thanks for replying. My time has been divided lately. This is an issue I started noticing a few years back when my wife started doing video, or maybe before that. I’m more of an audio guy than video, but I enjoy watching her growth, and occasionally help with technical (computer and camera) things. I also do a small amount of music scoring, but have more experience with live theatre.

For years, we’ve been renting DVDs of all sorts. Mostly feature films, but also documentaries and television series, and it’s hard sometimes not to be carried away (the filmmaker did a good job) and to miss a few things. But now and again, one of us will say “did you see that – let’s go back” and we do. Or, more often “that was GOOD, can we go back and see where the cut was?”

We don’t have cable, but enjoy watching HBO serialized dramas offered on rental DVD. The production values are usually very high, including sound design, Foley, and music score, to my ears’ delight.

Recently, during our viewing of the True Blood first season discs, and only on certain episodes, and then only for the female lead, I’ve seen what I believe is the post-production attempt to fix a shot where the woman’s “upscreen” (from the theatre term upstage, correct me if the term is wrong) eye was a bit too much in shadow, by dodging the area. Her upscreen eye was brought “up” a little with what in still photography would be called dodging.

As the scene progresses, in the cutaway, both eyes and surrounding skin are well matched, but back to the CU or ECU, and the shadowed eye often has more noise, less distinct focus, is a bit greyed-out. On our monitor, the “noisy fog” overlay actually has a blue cast to it.

Tonight, when we watch, if I see it again, I’ll stop and mess with the monitor settings. Steve had suggested posting a screen shot, but I’m not sure I have enough posts yet to be allowed to do that. Thanks for your time and your responses.

Howard

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9.

[Howard Lang]

Correction to my above post, 4th paragraph:
“…eye was a bit too much in shadow, by dodging the area. Her upscreen eye was brought “up” a little with what in still photography would be called dodging.”
Should read:
“…eye was a bit too much in shadow. Her upscreen eye was brought “up” a little with what in still photography would be called dodging” – deleting “by dodging the area.”

And in the following paragraph:
“As the scene progresses, in the cutaway, both eyes and surrounding skin are well matched, but back to…”
The sentence should say:
“As the scene progresses, in the cutaway, both eyes and surrounding skin are well matched right and left, but back to…” – adding “right and left”

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9.

[John Rofrano]

If I were to correct an area that was in the shadows I would simply mask it and use Color Curves to bring it up a bit. I’m not sure anyone will be able to answer your specific question except the person who color graded the video you are watching. There should be no blue artifacts but digital noise is often the result of lightening an area that doesn’t have enough color information in it to begin with.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Howard Lang]

John,

You are correct of course. While watching the movie, I paused when I got to the artifact, so I could change the monitor settings. I was able to “tune it out”, but that also tuned out all other blue hues. The cropped image below is an example of what I am talking about:

The above is a minimal example. When the editor does it in longer shots, the dodging blue effect covers the entire orbital socket area. Sometimes, I need to move my eyes from one of the subject’s eyes to the other and back again to see it.

Although I help my wife sometimes with SVP-8, much of my knowledge of that program comes from Creative Cow. In order to bring some subjects up out of a shot with poor lighting, she has applied a brightening filter to the entire clip, which I think is a compromise.

I’d like to show her how to mask and bring up a selected region in a clip, but I haven’t done enough study yet to know how to do that. When I do, I don’t want to be trading one problem for another. That, and curiosity, is the reason for this post thread.

If you could suggest where I should look in SVP-8 for masking and dodging, or could direct me to where I could read up on it, I would be appreciative.

Howard

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9. My background is mostly in audio, electronics, music, home recording and live theatre. I also do a small amount of video scoring, but have more experience with live theatre sound design.

[John Rofrano]

[Howard Lang] “If you could suggest where I should look in SVP-8 for masking and dodging, or could direct me to where I could read up on it, I would be appreciative.”

It’s easy in Vegas Pro 12.0 because it supports masking FX. For Vegas Pro 8.0 you have to duplicate the track and add the FX to one event on one track and the Cookie Cutter to the same event on the other track. This approach limits the shape of your mask to only those shapes that the Cookie Cutter comes with. I realize this is not enough information for you to actually figure it out but I don’t have a tutorial on hand to point you to. It’s a lot easier to just buy Vegas Pro 12.0. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Howard Lang]

Yep John, I think that’s it – just something that can’t easily be done in 8. What’s funny is I was doing some Googling on the terms – sony vegas pro 8 – and the term – dodging – and the top search result was this thread.

I’ll make note of what you said about SVP12 for when and if we upgrade. For now, all the better reason to get it right in the camera in the first place.

This may sound familiar or like a gripe, but sometimes people (knowing I know a little (very little) about computers and such) ask me “what do I click on to [get rid of some problem automatically]”.

They’ve been watching too much CSI on television where the tech lab gets an absolutely unreadable license plate to materialize out of the background, other stuff like that.

As a professional photographer once told me – if it isn’t there, it just isn’t there – best to go back and shoot it over again if you can.

Thanks again John.

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9. My background is mostly in audio, electronics, music, home recording and live theatre. I also do a small amount of video scoring, but have more experience with live theatre sound design.