Uploading to youtube/vimeo

[Blake Gibson]

You’re Welcome Stephen. It is indeed a beautiful series of short vignettes. Did you check out Kendy’s stuff too?

Wondering if anyone can help out with a colour grading question I have in Vegas? (figured I’d add to this thread instead of start a new one)

You know the whole “you can’t colour grade DSLR footage very much (4:2:0 8bit low bitrate h.264)”, and it falling apart etc etc?

I’m wondering what too much actually is? I’m doing my “grading” in vegas and wondering if:

1) Vegas is more “destructive” to my footage than other programs? Should I get various plug-ins that might be better instead of using the sony vegas native one?

2) When I drag an effect onto the movie/clip, or click the FX icon on the clip and add the effect that way, does it matter how many of those I drag on, or is it what really matters is the ammount of grading I’m doing? EG: Say I drag an “event” for levels to bring highlights down, then another “event” for colour corrector secondary to desaturate, then another “event” for colour corrector to add some orange to the mids, would that damage the footage more than doing THE SAME ammount of grading, but only using one “event” for colour curves to to all of the above (bring down highlights, desaturate, ad orange to mids)?

I’m still experimenting with it, but in the below clip I did all of the above that I mentioned using separate “events”:

– Levels to bring highlights down and overall dark image (I think in gama)
– Colour corrector secondary to bring saturation down

– colour corrector to add orange to the mids

– Also added sharpen to 7, and added some grain overlay (Visioncolor) and a 2.35 aspect ratio template

Exported as dnxhd 36mbps RGB, It looks pretty solid when watching it on PC but looks pretty bad after uploading:

PW: cowtest

https://vimeo.com/86414071

[John Rofrano]

You really need to use the Vegas terminology because it’s hard to understand you. An “event” is the clip on the timeline. What you add to change the look are Filters or FX. You can add these filters to true Media, Event, Track, or Video Bus depending on how much of the project you want to affect. You can add as many as you want in a chain. Obviously the more you add the longer it will take to render so it’s best to do as much as you can in one filter but you can add as many as you want until you achieve the desired effect.

~jr

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

[Blake Gibson]

Sorry about that John, I have no idea what they are called! Circled here in red:

https://i62.tinypic.com/20tj9xy.jpg

The little FX box with the tick. The more of those I add does it degrade the quality more than adding, say, ONLY curves and doing the same amount of grading as, say, 10 FX tickboxes? EG:

Levels (evening levels)
Colour corrector secondary (for saturation)
Colour corrector (adding orange to highlights)
Brightness and contrast (more contrast)

would the above damage my footage and degrade it more than doing ALL OF THAT, achieving the exact same result, but doing it ALL in curves, EG:

Curves (evening levels, saturation, adding orange to highlights, more contrast)

Sorry if I’m being confusing!

[John Rofrano]

There is no “damage” to your footage by adding FX. The output of one feeds the input of the next so obviously the next FX in the chain will only have the output of the previous to work with (e.g., if the first FX desaturates to black and white, the second FX will never see any color information) but other than that, stacking multiple FX is very common.

My favorite chain for color grading is Levels -> Color Correction -> Color Curves, in that order. I use Levels to adjust by camera footage to be broadcast safe, Color Correction to adjust saturation and correct color balance, and Color Curves to add a more film-like gamma ‘S’ curve to gently crush the blacks and whites a bit. All of this is done while watching the Video Scopes to remain compliant.

~jr

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

[Rich Kutnick]

In your opinion, John, is the Pro version good enough or would you recommend the Elite? Most of us need something easy to set up and simple to use, and I am not sure that the bulk of us out there are familiar with gamma curves and such. Please advise for us middle-of-the-roaders.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[John Rofrano]

[Rich Kutnick] “In your opinion, John, is the Pro version good enough or would you recommend the Elite?”

You can probably get by with the Pro version. Pro and Elite both have dual monitor support. The Express version does not. Elite also has more color temps and gamma curves but you probably don’t need all that and the Pro verson will do just fine.

Here is a video from DataColor that explains what each version has:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW1UmA0NL8c

~jr

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

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[Rich Kutnick]

Here’s a link to the great deal I just got at Adorama:

https://www.adorama.com/ICVS4EL100.html?emailprice=t&utm_term=Other&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Other&utm_source=cj_2752555

Datacolor Spyder4Elite Colorimeter with Desktop Cradle – Software CD: $194.95 SHIPPED

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[John Rofrano]

That is a good deal! Great find.

~jr

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

[Rich Kutnick]

I calibrated all of my monitors and HDTVs this past weekend–WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[John Rofrano]

[Rich Kutnick] “I calibrated all of my monitors and HDTVs this past weekend–WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!”

lol… yea, it’s one of those things that you don’t know that you need until you have it. Then you don’t know how you ever lived without it.

~jr

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