Correcting White Balance

Norm Sanders

Norm Sanders

Script Wrangler
I'll be out of town this weekend, and having someone else shoot some footage with the DVX. I've given them a crash course on using it, white balance, etc., but I'm sure they'll forget to adjust here & there.

Assuming that I'll have some shots where it should have been set for outdoor light, but wasn't (BLUE tint throughout everything), or should have been set for indoor lighting but wasn't (too much RED in the shot) ....

Does anyone have any quick & dirty suggestions for helping correct the white balance without messing with the other colors? I've tried it before, but have made the colors a little too oversaturated, looking fake, etc.

I love post, but prefer to get it right the first time in camera ... however, I'm preparing for the worst with this weekend's shoot.
 
Have you tried Color Corrector and Secondary Color Corrector? It is quite easy to add (or remove) a color cast using these. I shot a cheerleading event lit with low quality fluorescents (containing a huge green component) and was able to remove it quite successfully using these tools, along with tweaking saturation, gamma, etc.
 
Unless you have a program which works in high bit depth (like Color Finess) you will want to be careful about what sort of changes you make. Make too large a change and you will get artifacts galore - and the image will "look fake" as you said. One thing you can do though is figure out what the color cast is, create an overlay of the *opposite* color and then adjust its opacity. No artifacts and no fake colors :).
 
Shaw, I'm not quite sure I understood the process you were talking about.

Thanks guys on the other suggestions ... I know it would be taken care of in Color Corrector, but I was wondering if there's a certain direction that's commonly followed depending on the white balance issue (i.e. if it's too cool with lots of blue, then adjust your mid & high reds, etc. .... that kind of advice.).

I know there's no ONE SIZE FITS ALL for anything, but was looking for a good general rule.
 
Yeah, it definitely takes work :(. But once you are near you can always add the color corrector to the overlay and nudge it. Not much of a change would be needed I should think. Never tried it before though.

Envision: When your footage has a color cast that means it has too much of a specific color and not enough of the others. You can balance this out by creating an overlay that is a solid color and which is the opposite of the color you wish to remove. By combining the overlay and the original footage it should remove the color problem - the benefit being no artifacting.
 
I did sort of a "seat of the pants" adjustment in color corrector to get rid of the green cast from the fluorescents. That is, I just moved the center in the opposite direction from green (for the low, mid, and highs) until it "looked right". I must say that the video is 1000% more viewable after the correction, and it doesn't have a "fake" look as far as I can tell, nor does it look like I forgot to do a white balance.
 
Definitely try the color corrector first like Kmcgrath suggests. My suggestion is only really use when you need to make major changes to the footage (which you may or may not).
 
Thanks much ... it all at least gives me some ideas of what to look forward to, should the footage come back looking off due to white balance, etc.
 
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