Translating Color Correction Books for Vegas

J

Jason K

Active member
The purpose of this topic is for anyone reading color correction books to ask for help in translating examples from one software example (say Apple's Color) to Sony Vegas' plug-ins. My first question will be an example:

I'm reading Steve Hullfish's The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction. In the section discussing Setting the Black Level of Chapter 1, Hullfish asks us to find "a tool in your application that controls the setup, shadow, or black level." [pg. 20]. He tackles this correction in Apple's Color.

I've done some Vegas Help searching, some Google searching and even consulted the index of Douglas Spotted Eagle's Vegas Pro 8 Editing Workshop (which I haven't had the luxury of time to read yet). Sadly, I have been unable to find anything in Vegas that uses those 3 terms.

So if anyone can help me that'd be swell. And if you've got a question about a color correction book's terminology correspondance to Sony Vegas, this is the topic for you. Hope this topic is helpful to many.
 
There are several tools which do this -- the one I use most often is the Offset slider in the Color Corrector. I also use the Color Curves quite often.

You can also use Levels, Brightness & Contrast, Black Restore, and a few others, but they all act slightly differently.
 
I've converted most of the techniques in that book to Vegas.

I don't have Vegas in front of me so can't look to see how I set black, but it wasn't too hard to figure out (I know it was in the CC plugin -- the two sliders at the bottom right). I posted here about it previously.
 
Another question: in the book's examples of a sample clip which came with the book on a DVD, the author's RGB Parade shows the waveform peaking at 100. Mine peak at 255. Can someone explain why that is, what it matters and how I should go about fixing it, if necessary?
 
On the Vegas CC plugin, "gain" and "offset" set your levels. I usually go through and match all of the footage with these controls before doing any other corrections (such as curves) so that there's a baseline before serious sweetening.

255 is the value, instead of a percentage. The Vegas waveform monitor shows a percentage.
 
This is a slightly different question, but I'm really enjoying The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction. Is Color Correction for Digital Video a worthwhile follow-up, or would it be mostly redundant to read that next?

And on that same note, are there any other color correction books that would complement The Art...? Especially any that a Vegas user would find beneficial.
 
Does anyone know if there is a Vegas plug-in similar to Apple Color's Primary In Room's advanced tab option of letting you change the offset, gamma, and gain for each separate color channel?
 
I just got AAV Colorlab thinking it would offer that, but it only seems to affect hue, saturation and lightness of the individual colors. Anyone know of any Sony or third party plug-ins that simulate In Room's ability to change the offset, gamma and gain of each seperate color channel?
 
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