New ColorMatch plug-in

[Theo Van laar]

Hi Frederic,

Thanks for developing a new color matching plug-in.

I have a question about the example you show on your website. You show two original clips: a reference clip and a clip that needs correction so that it looks like the reference clip.

After applying the color match plug-in, you show that the test clip now matches the reference clip. However, the reference clip doesn’t match the original reference clip anymore. It looks now much more pale like it has lost some saturation. In addition, the hue has changed to? Is this the way your plug-in works? Or this this just an artifact from your website?

Theo

[Nigel O’neill]

Theo

I provided the reference clips Frederic used and can comment. There has been a slight loss in saturation, but nothing a bit of Sony’s saturation adjust in Color Corrector cannot overcome. You do need to do a tiny bit of tweaking afterwards, but the two clips on the bottom now more closely match, compared to the two on top. The two on top were the best I could do to match them. If I got the dresses right, the sky turned a bit green, or the skin tones went right off.

The footage came from an EX1 and a Z1P. Both cameras were white balanced identically, but ended up looking quite different, as per the top two clips. I had a very experienced Edius editor have a go at matching the two clips (it was his EX1) using Edius, but we could never match the sky AND satin dresses AND skin tone. He mumbled something about gamma not matching, had a go at correcting it then failed, and then said that was the best he could do, and we left it at that. Frederic’s plugin offers the best compromise IMHO. It may mean matching track A to track B, but also track B to track A, if that makes any sense.

I am using it for an ice skating shoot where I had 3 different cameras (FX1 (3CCD Super HAD), Z1P (3CCD Super HAD) and NX5 (EXMOR 3CMOS)). By using his color match plugin, I am able to quickly match the footage from all 3. The emphasis is on quickly and simply.

[Erik Davis]

Sorry to report bad news but I just tried the Color Match my SonyXDCAM HD multicam shoot and the results were not good at all. I have a speaker wearing a black shirt standing in front of a stone and rock wall. What matters to me in this scene are the flesh tones, the speaker’s black shirt, and the color of the rock stone wall behind him. None of these things are “highly saturated” which is maybe the reason why this plugin didn’t help me. I can do a much better job manually using the color corrector myself.

Erik

[Nigel O’neill]

This plug-in is not a silver bullet by any means, and you need to be selective when choosing your reference colors. You also need to white balance your clips as closely as possible before you start. There is a bit of trial and error involved at times, just like there is with Sony’s color corrector or white balance plug-in when it does not look ‘quite right’.

I have had good results using color match, and I stand by my comments.

If Frederic were to use other color correcting plug-ins to complete the correction process such as color curves or adding brightness, he would be falsely advertising his product.

Given that it is version 1 of his color match plug-in, I would suggest you send Frederic some footage or screen grabs and see what he can do, like I did. He may even be able to share the settings with you, or take you through what he did in particular.

[Frederic Baumann]

Hi all,

Sorry for coming back lately to this discussion – time lag + not at my desk until now…

@Theo: not sure to understand your remark. You say “the reference clip doesn’t match the original reference clip anymore”. Did you mean “the modified clip doesn’t match…”?

Anyway, the 2 pictures on the left, titled “reference clip”, are the same picture. They are even the same JPG file on my web server. So if they look different, I don’t know how to explain it… Maybe angle of vision to your screen? (and by the way on my screen, if I look at the picture with some angle it does look a bit desaturated).

If what you mean is that the picture on the right/bottom is less saturated than the reference clip (on the left/bottom or left/top), then this comes from the plug-in. And it’s all about which colour you pick when using the plug-in. A color picked in the event to which the FX is applied, is guaranteed to be transformed to the color you select as a “to become:” from the FX user interface.

Once you have picked these colours, you may still adjust them with the sliders, and for instance, locally increase/decrease the saturation around the picked point.

@Nigel: thank you very much, again and again, for the stills, and for your nice comments. Much appreciated.

@Erik: I am sorry that you had this bad experience. As suggested by Nigel, please send me some stills at contact_at_fbmn-software.com, I would like to investigate what you say.

Also, you might have a look at the FAQ on the web site. It gives some hints on how to best use the plug-in, which I think are useful because the quality of the result depends on the way you feed it with matching pairs of colors.

Hope this helps – please let me know any comment.
Best regards,
Frederic

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Under- or over-exposed clips? try out FBmn Exposure
Looking for a white balance plug-in? Visit http://www.fbmn-software.com.

Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my video tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/baumann_frederic/Sony-Vegas_event-pan-crop-tool/1
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French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999