Any help for blown-out areas?

A

adaml

Well-known member
I just finished a doc shoot and everything went really well for the most part. HVX footage looks really great. Only major issue is that on the first day, before I realized how bad it would look, I let an area of the frame blow out. I was shooting in a barn, and every time I panned toward the opening, following the subject, the exterior blows out. The overexposed area is about 10-25 percent of the frame area, but it's usually behind part of the subject's head and looks like crap. BTW, I shot cine-gamma D. I'd like to salvage the footage if there's anything I can do to improve the look of those overexposed areas. Any advice?
Thanks,
Adam
 
First off, take it into a good CC program and see how it looks when you bring it down. There may be detail still there. DVCPro does a better job of retaining detail in blow outs than DV or HDV does because of its milder color compression.

If there is still some detail there, you have one of two options:

1. Darken the whole image using curves. I often overexpose a bit then darken in post to reduce noise (works great). You may however lose some of the detail in the shadow areas if you are already pushing the lattitude a lot.

2. Take it into a good CC/compositing program like After Effects or Combustion. Make two layers of the same image and put one on top of the other. Your bottom one should be the origional image which you will leave alone to preserve detail in the shadows. On the top one, either run a luma key or just create a mask so you only deal with the over exposed portions and mask out the rest of the image. Go ahead and bring the over exposed segments down as much as you can while retaining a smooth image quality. Then combine the two layers and you'll be good.

In general, if you are going to blow out, it's better to use Cine V since, while having less lattitude, handles blowouts a bit better.
 
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