[Scott Simpson]

Good to know. I’ll give it a try! My memory must be fuzzy — I thought when I’d used that slider before, it would slide back to normal once you let go. Good to know I can lock it while going through.

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

FWIW, I tried the effects chain you suggested… still couldn’t get a handle on the white balance being so off. Brought it into the GoPro app instead and made my changes there. The ‘Temp’ slider took me right to where I needed to go, and I was able to adjust contrast, exposure, sharpness, etc., as needed. I’ve then exported that to the high-bitrate Cineform AVI for cutting in Vegas.

This may sacrifice some flexibility for the next step in Vegas, but it takes me 98% of the way toward where I needed to get, and I won’t have the overhead of the Vegas filters weighing on me as I edit.

Thanks a ton for your help. I hope this thread may be useful for someone with a similar question in the future.

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

Really depends on the destination. Some broadcasters will want it peaking pretty low — I’ve seen -24. For Youtube, I haven’t seen anything to say you can’t peak right at 0db.

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

If I were to do it again, which I might in the future, I’d just choose a basic setting. If my goal had been to create a spectacular first-person video of a breathtaking moment, I’d want maximum flexibility for fine-tuning the image. In this case, I just wanted another angle to cut in with the other shots…..protune camraw 2k might have been a little bit of overkill for what I was after. You live, you learn.

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

Thanks for laying out a roadmap, Norman. I’ll give those elements a try.

After posting here, I did further digging, and some of that also made me suspect the Color Curves would hold part of the solution — much like using the Technicolor Cinestyle requires the s-curve in Curves to bring the clips back to normal.

I’ll try your recommendations.

I may also give the GoPro studio software another look — I went straight from import to convert, but there’s an optional step in the editing section to tweak the white balance and other options before converting. I might save myself some later work if I can bake the desired changes into the file before the mp4 -> avi expansion.

Thanks!

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

Curious about a few things before offering an opinion…

… rendered to mpeg2 at what resolution? Interlaced or not? And played back at what resolution?
… what format are the pictures? jpg? png?

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

Each text event you create will have an opacity setting that you can drag up or down — the line will be at the top of the event on the timeline.

Or, you could set the text color to a semi-transparent one.

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

I’ll probably not change all the events like that — I want to preserve the flexibility of rendering a good stereo version later for DVD, Blu-Ray or even YouTube later.

If it comes down to needing it, I can always render the soundtrack out to wav and have a go at it in Reaper or Audition with Ozone or other tools for compression and RMS smashing, and use the tools in the DAW to flatten it out to dual mono.

Thanks a bunch, John!

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

Is Vegas 12 not exciting enough to promote?

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.

[Scott Simpson]

Thanks for the advice, John.

Yeah, I asked the master control guy who sent me the spec sheets if he really meant that there’s only, what, 10dB of dynamic range, and he said yes. He also said they want dual mono, which according to his explanation, was a mono track duplicated to L/R. I’m sure I can figure out how to do that in Vegas. If not, I might render the soundtrack out separately, crush and mono-ize it in a more fully-featured audio app, and lay it back in afterward with Vegas.

The video tips are much appreciated. It’s been 20 years since I learned scopes and what I learned then was never applied in practice…and it was all analog. So I’m re-learning. Going from “looks just great on my screen” to “will broadcast without fault” is a bigger leap than I’d anticipated.

I’ve got two of the six requested hour-long episodes cut, with delivery in early 2014, so I still have some time to tweak and learn before the final renders go out the door. Before it’s time to put the whole thing to bed, I’ll probably ask their tech folks for one more “Are you SURE you want it in mono with no dynamic range?”

Thanks again. Loving the learning.

Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.