Canon 7D footage - issues in post

M

matt9b

Well-known member
My video is looking fantastic on the LCD, great on my PC, fantastic on Vegas, and then when I render it all of a sudden it looks really dull, pale, blacks turn to pale grey, vid isn't sharp and generally tacky and rubbish. I have the same equipment as other film makers and am shooting on a bright sunny day at a low ISO, I don't understand how everyone else is getting such nicer crisp footage than I am. It's frustrating when you've spent on the same gear.

Tried using a few lenses, the canon 50mm 1.8, canon 17-55mm IS f2.8 .. I'm editing in Vegas in 32bit, and rendering as WMV HD with all highest settings. I've tried a multitude of different settings to no avail. I'm using Cineform Neoscene and Vegas.

Here is an example:
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I AGREE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIXrSONsdts

Perhaps I'm fussy, but the above clip looked great in the Vegas timeline, so I have no idea what went wrong during render.

I think it's in the rendering process. What is everyone else doing to render their footage? It would be great to know your workflow. Thanks in advance
 
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I have never used those editing programs so I can not help there. Have you tried not using WMV?

I really like the look, if is an error and not a "style" it could be frustrating. The muted colors goes well with the action and soundtrack. The CMOS jello was more of an issue for me.
 
Try some more tests on export. Try to export out something other than a WMV. Usually an H264 is a sweet codec. WMV's I have found to be a crappy format in general. ALso how do you know your footage looks great? Calibrate all your monitors and preview it out also on an external broadcast or HD monitor if possible. Preferably plasma. You kind of want to color check yourself on two ways.. encode and broadcast monitor out. You can have monitor calibration problems though. Can you shoot us out some still grabs?
 
cheers guys, the soundtrack is something I wrote back in the day.. figured it was better than using copyrighted music.

Here is a new sample with H.264 codec (Sony AVC), and I got rid of colour curved and just used a slight level correction to try to make blacks black instead of grey.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: No media files are hosted on these forums. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website. We can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. If the video does not play, wait a minute or try again later.
I AGREE


Is it any better? I concerned I'm not seeing the full truth and nothing but the truth. Since it looks great on my monitor, and rubbish on my friend's laptop - but I don't have her laptop on me to check it out at all times. I tried it on TV and looks fine. It worries me that it can look so washed out on another laptop though, means something is wrong with the black levels. Nothing to do with her laptop as all other vids look fine.
 
yes it does look much better on my laptop.

I did however like the look u achieved with the error :) ...but thats only good if u meant it
 
Increase the bitrate your are compressing to. Judging by the poor quality of the video I would increase it by an order of magnitude and see what that gets you.
 
Issues are not in the camera. It's your render parameters, but I can't help, I've never used Vegas for videos, only for audio.
Try making a render out of after effects or premiere. If you don't have them, you can always download a trial copy from Adobe which functions for 30 days.

Good luck.
 
Ben_B said:
Increase the bitrate your are compressing to. Judging by the poor quality of the video I would increase it by an order of magnitude and see what that gets you.
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I have tried increasing the bitrate, even to the point of 10x more, the image doesn't seem to get any better.
 
Looks like you need to convert the gamma from studio RGB to computer RGB.

Try this:

On the preview monitor hit the effects icon and add the secondary color corrector. select the preset "studio rgb to computer rgb". When you render out to the .wmv computer RGB color space things should look pretty good. Do a short test and throw some color bars on the front for reference.

Bit rate should be in the 6Mbps zone for pretty good quality. Try using the wmv. "HD 8mbps 1080 30p" preset. If you shot in 24p just change the frame rate to 23.976 from 29.976.

Hope this helps.
 
I'm sorry but your vid looks like a cool hybrid of 16mm / super 8.

Aside from that I don't use Vegas either but you shouldn't have to struggle so much and have such a large shift from your original footage on export. Now I don't know what your original footage looks like to start with so can you post a screen grab of something. We should start from there.

Also what picture style were you using on your camera? From the looks of it I would guess you started with neutral or a custom setting. I would think probably neutral but correct me if I am wrong because it looks like when you shot it dug into the shadows and blacks.

Lastly can you please post a screen grab of your footage before and after your color correction and color timing. That can tell us how much you were pushing and pulling on the image.

All in all though as mentioned above your problem is on export not in camera... but keep in mind what you do to your footage in post can have effect on export too. I work in Online and sometimes when we slightly overcorrect footage we will only see it on a file export and not on the monitors. It happens with compression sometimes.
 
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Yoyodyne said:
Looks like you need to convert the gamma from studio RGB to computer RGB.

Try this:

On the preview monitor hit the effects icon and add the secondary color corrector. select the preset "studio rgb to computer rgb". When you render out to the .wmv computer RGB color space things should look pretty good. Do a short test and throw some color bars on the front for reference.

Bit rate should be in the 6Mbps zone for pretty good quality. Try using the wmv. "HD 8mbps 1080 30p" preset. If you shot in 24p just change the frame rate to 23.976 from 29.976.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks Yovodyne, I've already done this :kiss: but it didn't have much effect. I've now tried again and will attach the vid below. I am already rendering at 6Mbps and above to no effect, sometimes to 12 or even 50Mbps but to no effect.

:nads::crybaby::2vrolijk_08::violent5::violin:

Right, enough fun :laugh:, time to cut the chase and hit this nail on the head. I'm attaching different settings and RAW files, below. As I said, the RAW camera mov file looks great, but when I render in Vegas it ends up not nice.

Ignore the wide-screen crop on top and bottom of the rendered files, I just forgot to take the pan/crop settings away:

RAW CAMERA MOV:
http://vimeo.com/12047049


SONY AVC CODEC:
http://vimeo.com/12047509


SONY AVC CODEC WITH STUDIO->COMPUTER RGB:
http://vimeo.com/12047534


SONY AVC CODEC WITH CURVES AND LEVELS (SLIGHT STUDIO -> COMPUTER RBG)
http://vimeo.com/12047651


WMV CODEC WITH STUDIO -> COMPUTER RGB:
http://vimeo.com/12047562


It just seems to me to be losing loads of detail in the darker areas when I render using Studio->ComputerRGB. I've tried creating a lighter studio->computer RGB setting, but it's frustating to not be able to edit / colour correct using the vegas preview. You have to render, which takes hours for long vids, before you can then watch and tweak and the render again and repeat.
 
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Oh boy...

1. Do NOT do studio RGB to computer RGB. Vimeo does that automatically by default.

2. What are you projects settings? You should be doing your color work in 32bit mode, 1.00 gamma, not 2.22

3. Ignore what the video looks like in the preview window. How do the scopes look?

4. While we are on scopes, check yours by clicking the little arrow right next to the pulldown where you select Vectorscope, Waveform, etc. Uncheck both 7.5IRE setup, and studio RBG. This should make your scopes accurate for this work.

5. Adjust your lift/gain with the color corrector to make sure you are within the 0-100 range on the waveform. Adjust gamma and then saturation so that things look good in the waveform and vectorscope monitors.

6. Export your AVC or WMV files and it should be just fine.
 
PerroneFord said:
Oh boy...

1. Do NOT do studio RGB to computer RGB. Vimeo does that automatically by default.
Click to expand...

Thanks PerroneFord, so do you have to export 3 drastically different colour settings for Vimeo vs file playback on PC or MAC vs DVD?

PerroneFord said:
2. What are you projects settings? You should be doing your color work in 32bit mode, 1.00 gamma, not 2.22
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Yes, same.

PerroneFord said:
3. Ignore what the video looks like in the preview window.
Click to expand...

Then what is the point in the preview window? How are you supposed to do colour correction etc?

PerroneFord said:
How do the scopes look?
Click to expand...

I asked google to define your meaning of 'scopes' and it came up with: "Tennessee highschool teacher who violated a state law by teaching evolution; in a highly publicized trial in 1925 he was prosecuted by William ..." I assume this is not what you mean?
 
matt9b said:
Thanks PerroneFord, so do you have to export 3 drastically different colour settings for Vimeo vs file playback on PC or MAC vs DVD?
Click to expand...

Yes, you do. Because the first and second share color space, but not bit-rate capability, and the third requires a different color space, codec, and bitrate.

matt9b said:
Then what is the point in the preview window? How are you supposed to do colour correction etc?
Click to expand...

The preview window is for cutting. Not color correction. Is your monitor color calibrated? Like with a Sypder calibration device or something similar? If not, then if you want to do accurate color grading, you need to be using a color accurate external monitor. Your computer monitor is only slightly more reliable than an etch-a-sketch for this work. I don't even look at my preview monitors when I grade.

matt9b said:
I asked google to define your meaning of 'scopes' and it came up with: "Tennessee highschool teacher who violated a state law by teaching evolution; in a highly publicized trial in 1925 he was prosecuted by William ..." I assume this is not what you mean?
Click to expand...

Google Vectorscope, Waveform Monitor, RGB Parade, histogram. Those are the scopes that accurately tell you what your video is doing.
 
PerroneFord said:
Yes, you do. Because the first and second share color space, but not bit-rate capability, and the third requires a different color space, codec, and bitrate.
Click to expand...

Perrone, read the rest of this thread. You've misunderstood. The colours in Vimeo are different to the colours when playing back files on the PC or MAC (any player). I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying they look completely different, to the extreme. A file that looks good on vimeo is unwatchable as a file playback in terms of COLOURS. The blacks are all light grey during file playback. Black bars at top and bottom are truly black, but blacks in the image come out as light grey, as one example. Forget about bitrate. We're talking about colours here.
 
matt9b said:
Perrone, read the rest of this thread. You've misunderstood. The colours in Vimeo are different to the colours when playing back files on the PC or MAC (any player). I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying they look completely different, to the extreme. A file that looks good on vimeo is unwatchable as a file playback in terms of COLOURS. The blacks are all light grey during file playback. Black bars at top and bottom are truly black, but blacks in the image come out as light grey, as one example. Forget about bitrate. We're talking about colours here.
Click to expand...


Ok fine.

Take me through your workflow step by step. We'll spot the problem, and fix it. You can PM me, email me, or call me on the phone, and we'll sort it.
 
though this thread has apparently died, I wanted to renew it as I found some interesting info regarding this from the Neoscene web site.
It may have been that Matt9b simply had technical issues with the footage unrelated to this, here's something worth noting. Original info found at: http://techblog.cineform.com/?cat=121

Why do colors in Sony Vegas look “washed out”?

Posted by David Newman on May 20th, 2010
If I had a dollar… Vegas is a tad bizarre, it is the only editing tool that I’m aware of that defaults to Studio RGB 8-bit colorspace. Studio RGB is generally a good thing as it preserves the full dynamic range of a YUV source (nearly all camera sources.)
Tech stuff: The brightness range of YUV source goes from 0 to 255, yet the black level is at 16 and the white level at 235. This allows for some under and over-shoot, but the legal broadcast values are between 16-235 (all that is displayed.) When a YUV image is converted to RGB (the regular computer type you are used to), Y level of 16 is black on your computer monitor (RGB 0,0,0) and Y level 235 is white (RGB 255,255,255). This is what happens when playing something in Windows Media Player — that is normal and looks correct.
Sony Vegas choose to map YUV sources differently such that black is displayed at RGB level 16,16,16 rather than 0,0,0. While Studio RGB is a legitimate colorspace with some advantages even, it should not be displayed on a computer monitor to be used for visual color correction. If you do visually color correct within the Vegas preview area, the resulting files will be more contrasty when displayed elsewhere (DVD, BluRay etc). To properly color correct in Vegas you need to either use an external HDSDI/HDMI card to a YUV display (TV, pro video monitor) or add the color correction filter “Studio RGB to Computer RGB”. You can add this filter to your preview window within Vegas, and all the resulting images will be displayed correctly (without losing any of the processing advantages for Studio RGB.) Remember to remove the filter before exporting or Vegas will get it wrong.
Click to expand...
Would anyone have a counter to this thought? Seems like great advice. It seems that Matt may have not turned off the filter before rendering...
 
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