white balance video vs photo

[backwheelbates]

Hi,

Im just curious if anyone knows why its so easy to white balance a photo in camera raw, or lightroom(presets, eyedropper, etc), but when it comes to video there aren't as nice tools. I'm using premiere to colour correct some video and its terrible(using the simple color correct plugin, not fun). It would be great if there was some kind of camera raw video plugin for correcting white balance the way digital photographers do.

Thanks for any ideas.

Cheers

[saaby]

I see this is your first post, welcome to DVX user!

You are right that the colour correction tools for video are quite a bit different than for photos. I don't know how much you've worked with video before, but the more you work with it, the more you'll see that although the principles of video are the same as photography, they're completely different beasts.

When you're working with pictures in RAW, you've dumped the data straight from the sensor to the memory card. No compression has been applied to the data yet. When you import to your computer, the computer merely adjusts the math (Linear algebra...in case you wondered...shudder) that it applies to the image. There's much more "data" there than meets the eye.

When you are working with video, however, you apply the processing to the image in the camera. Then you throw a bunch of data away. That's why it's possible to take an hour of footage on a 8 GB card.

The problem is when you throw data away...you don't have nearly as much room for error and adjustment in post processing.

It's the same reason you have a lot more adjustment over RAW images than JPEG images.

There are cameras that allow you to shoot video in RAW -- the RED, for example -- but they are much more costly, and the footage takes up a lot more space. I haven't personally worked with the RED, but when I work with the HVX200, which uses more compression than the RED, but less than the GH1, the video footage is about a gig per minute.

[AndrewGentle]

(Linear algebra...in case you wondered...shudder)

Hey! What's wrong with linear algebra!? :embarasse

[Ozpeter]

Im just curious if anyone knows why its so easy to white balance a photo in camera raw, or lightroom(presets, eyedropper, etc), but when it comes to video there aren't as nice tools.I can think of a couple of PC video editing apps (bottom end ones) which offer an eyedropper tool for white balance - Magix, and Cyberlink PowerDirector. (I'm trialling the latter's new version 8 and its performance with AVCHD is the best I've ever seen - you can forget about needing to transcode to mpeg2 first on even a basic quadcore).

[saaby]

Hey! What's wrong with linear algebra!? :embarasse

That I'm getting ready for my second trip through that course and I'm still bitter about it :shocked:.

When you're young and neive you think everything is geometry and basic algebra. Then you learn a little more and think everything is calculus. Then you have your life destroyed when you learn that everything is actually linear algebra and differential equations. Part of me kind of wants to go back to when everything was algebra and geometry :Drogar-Happy(DBG):

Sorry...this wasn't supposed to be a math thread...I'll just go back to my corner now.

[Cassius]

I've always wondered why tools that allows you to choose what to make white aren't more common, it really would help with some corrections. Even with a harsh codec like this which doesn't leave a lot of leeway, tinting for color correction isn't a problem. But the answer above is correct as to why you don't have a white balance specific option; tinting in post isn't exactly the same, which is all you can get away with after data has been thrown out.

[backwheelbates]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

saaby, I thought about what you said in regards to the limitations of compressed formats. I don't know if I entirely agree.

As a test I exported some frames of the video I'm colour correcting as 8 bit jpgs, much less colour information than in a raw file. I opened these in camera raw, adjusted the white balance, and voilà. Perfect white balance!

I do agree that, for the best results, camera raw is king. But I think the problem might be that the photography world has figured it out, where as in video (or at least premiere) the colour correction tools are the same as 2003's premiere pro 1.

As for camera raw, it looks as though the white balance is using a combination of "tint" and "temperature" to control the white balance (also lots of other colour corrections options available). Premiere's version of tint is totally different, and there doesn't seem to be a version of temperature adjust either.

Now if only the camera raw tools could be used with video!

[Martti Ekstrand]

Find the Three-Way Colour Corrector in Premiere. With it you control white balance separately in low, mid and high tones.

[backwheelbates]

Thanks Martti. That one works much better than the simple color correct:)