Jim Arco
2
After Effects Coins
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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From the image that was posted, I see exposure, contrast and some grain differences in the area where the lighting problem exists. it looks like most of the grain is in the blue channel.
You can probably get useable results by creating a mask that “matches” the flare, then correcting the brightness and noise. Assuming a fixed camera and assuming the lens-flare doesn’t change over the scene, my thinking would be to create a soft-edged mask, plus something like the exposure filter in AE. Then reduce the grain using the Remove Grain filter, at least on the blue channel.
When all else fails I sometimes go with “if you can’t correct it, feature it” thinking. You could ADD a little visible lens flare to this scene and maybe other scenes shot in this location. Or perhaps darken the whole scene, if it fits the storyline.
Jim
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I find that blurs can take a LOT of render time, as can any dynamic link between CS applications.
To help isolate the problem, you could turn off different effects to see which has the most impact on render time. One suggestion would be to use a very short version of your project (maybe 15-30 frames) and turn off HALF of the effects and see if it changes the time significantly. If so, you know that one/several of those effects may be the problem. If render time doesn’t change significantly, you know that the other half of the effects might be causing the problem.
Continue turning off half/quarter/etc of the effects until you determine those that are the most render intensive. Once you isolate the cause, you can decide if there are other solutions. Also some 3rd party effects do not use all available processors in your i7 – I’ve seen a few that only use one of the cores, meaning that everything is waiting for that one plug-in to process.
Something else to consider: a hundred 48megapixel PSD layers might be more than even your 12gb memory can handle, particularly if you have other things running at the same time.
Jim
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In case anyone else bumps into a similar problem….
After an hour or so of experimenting, I discovered a partial solution: the “make new title” button creates a duplicate of the existing title using the current sequence’s definition
AND
it adjusts the font sizes to (sorta) match the new screen size.So:
bring SD titles into HD timeline
open each title (one at a time)
make new title using existingI still have to adjust each HD title to the length of the old one, then copy/paste attributes from old to new.
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You might try changing the extension on the .VOB file to .MPG I know that usually works with Premiere.
Jim
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“Is it possible to combine different exposures of 1 take of raw video and get the same results as several takes at different exposures?”
NOT really HDR, but we’ve occasionally converted video to an image sequence in Photoshop, then opened two different RAW versions (overexposed and underexposed) in After Effects. Then we put the two versions into a comp with some motion masking or blend modes. Our goal is usually to rescue footage with too much backlighting (think of someone standing in a doorway with too much sunlight behind her.)
Seems like the same concept would work if you are starting with RAW image sequence. (There’s a tutorial here on the Cow about opening an image sequence in AE as RAW.) It’s not a workflow you’d want to use routinely, but accomplishes some of what you’re trying to do. It can be used with existing footage and a LOT cheaper than two RED cameras and beamsplitters.
I haven’t tried it, but there might be a way to get Photoshop to take two image-sequence files and Merge to HDR.
Jim
ColorBurst Video -
Whenever I need to do extreme color corrections, I convert to L-a-b color space and work in the ‘a’ and ‘b’ channels. In this case, the color of interest is red, so you would be using some extreme curves in the ‘a’ channel.
Since AE doesn’t provide an option for L-a-b color, you’d have to open the footage in Photoshop, convert to smart object, then switch to L-a-b color space and work on the ‘a’ channel there.
…..admittedly a long-shot, but might be worth a try.
Jim
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I use Color Finesse with After Effects. I find it to be a comprehensive color-correction tool when used in the full interface mode.
It has a full set of scopes, primary and secondary correction, color wheels, RGB sliders for master, hilights, mids, and shadows, vibrance controls, and the ability to use control-surfaces. You can perform corrections in HSL, RGB, CMY, and YCbCr color spaces. I think the current version even includes a highlight recovery tool.
It is included with After Effects (and not very well publicized.) Pretty sure there is also a version available for PPro.
Jim
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I usually bill on an hourly basis and give clients several choices of how much work they want done. If this is for a reunion special on a major network, it might require more effort than someone who just wants to be able to watch their old videos. In a case like this, you might be able to have a one-size-fits-all technique that can be applied to the whole thing, or you might need to do scene-by-scene correction.
If it needs frame-by-frame roto-ing or reconstruction, then the hours/dollars can get pretty high.
You’ll need to determine what your market will bear, but be sure to figure in the costs of your high-end workstation with all software. It sometimes still surprizes me when I see folks low-balling it at $20/hour for their skills and $5000 worth of obsolete-next-week computer/monitors/graphics cards/software.
Jim
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OOPs. I attached the wrong image. The neck and earring are a bit easier to see in this one.
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Mike,
After taking another look, you might also consider some shadow and highlight manipulation. The histogram of image 1 looks like “two mountains and a valley” meaning that both highlights and shadows are clipped – there is not much detail in either. Of course, we would expect that from a brightly lit beach scene.
I think you’ll start to bump into noise problems very quickly as you try to get any detail from the shadows. It’s a little hard to see from a single screen grab, but I’ve done a quick look in the attached image showing her neck area. Even this image shows some ‘junk’ near her neck – it almost looks like part of her earring.
Jim
