HELP!! dark footage needs fixing!!

D

dust'n the callipygous

Well-known member
i'm trying to put together a video i just finished filming. it's a black man standing inside of a football stadium. it was early in the day and the location where we shot was covered with a shadow. i just figured i could fix it in post, but now i realize i don't know how. the background looks great. the colors are saturated well and everything, but the man in the video is way too dark. he almost looks like a silhouette. i need some way to brighten just him so that he'll blend with the background a little better. i'm using FCP 5. any suggestions?
 
You want the sacrifice the background a bit you can remove the contrast by -60 or so that might bring him out a little more.
 
thanks a lot. i had just been messing with the brightness, but i turned the contrast way down and he actually stands out. the image looks like a 1980s public broadcast video, but i'll take that over the previous image any day.
 
If it looks really grey you might want to play with your gamma a bit and crush the black a tad, just have a little bit more control over it.
 
dust'n the callipygous said:
i'm trying to put together a video i just finished filming. it's a black man standing inside of a football stadium. it was early in the day and the location where we shot was covered with a shadow. i just figured i could fix it in post, but now i realize i don't know how. the background looks great. the colors are saturated well and everything, but the man in the video is way too dark. he almost looks like a silhouette. i need some way to brighten just him so that he'll blend with the background a little better. i'm using FCP 5. any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Use the color correction tools. Basically follow the instructions in the manual. What you'll do first is set the auto contrast. Then you'll set the white point, and black if need be, grey point only if you actually used a reference. You probably don't actually want to raise the highs, because all you'll get is blown out crap, and chances are what you're looking to raise doesn't live there anyway. Actually the luminance level you want to raise is likely somewhere in the lower mids (or probably better, lowering the other values instead). Knowing your luminance values is the key here. Here's kind of a breakdown....

0-40 Black and Near Black
40-80 Low Mids - Dark Grey Blue or Red shaded shadows, darker purer colors, darker browns
80-180 Mids (Nearly everything that appears "lit", not including light sources, also includes lighter shadows)
180-240 High Mids & Brights (Lighter than mids, but not white)
240-255 White and Near White*

*many times things that appear "white" are actually shades of red, blue, or green with a high mid luminance value. Examples of white and nearwhite that would actually have that highest of luminance values are light sources, clouds, reflections in eyes, whites of eyes, blown out windows, etc. Generally the highest lum value, or maybe doesn't even exist in the frame if you exposed as such.

Here is a RGB color list that a scientist compiled that lists nearly every "painter's" color (ex. Mars Black, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Sienna, etc.), to be used for graphic designers and such. I find it incredibly useful in indentifying the exact luminance value of a given color in a frame as you can always convert RBG values to LHS values for reference.

http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/colour/colourspace/

FCP breaks these down slightly different, and works in percentages (0-100) as opposed to straight luminance values, but the same theory applies. It's just like sound frequencies. A human voice only resides in a certain frequency range, just as a shadow only exists in a certain luminance range. The color correction tools can get you there.

A last resort for underexposed footage would be to layer it with a copy of itself, using likely an Add Scaled, Multiply, or Soft Overlay method. Your mileage may vary. The trick is to keep the blacks and whites at their optimal places, and futz with the mids. Lowering the Gamma may also give you a little more light, although also a last resort if you can't do it with CC.
 
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Holy Crap, DTF!!!

Nice post.

Hey Dustin...

Any chance you can post a tiff grab? Maybe we could work it and give you our xmls.

CaptM
 
Why don't you use a mask, color correct the football player, and then leave the background the way it is. Then you have the best of both worlds.
 
CaptainMench said:
Holy Crap, DTF!!!

Nice post.

Hey Dustin...

Any chance you can post a tiff grab? Maybe we could work it and give you our xmls.

CaptM
Click to expand...


My thought is this. The better everyone else is, the better it makes me. There's no use in having information if it can't be shared amongst others in the industry. The more the new(er) kid on the block knows, the less likely he will be to undercut those with more experience, as the new kid pricing their services too low does depreciate the industry as a whole. Armed with confidence of proper technique, one would be less likely to charge $5/hour for edit work, which does eventually eat into my bottom line. There are selfish reasons for being unselfish, you know.
 
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Duct Tape Films has an excellent explanation.
I'd like to translate it into 'layman' language as simple as possible:
-Select your clip, add 'Color Corrector 3 Way 'Filter (Under Video Filters-->Color Correction)
-OPen your clip in the Viewer. Click on the CC3 way filter...
-Click on the 'Numeric" button on the top left...
-You'll see Black, Midrange, Highlight Controls..See the level values are '0', '100', '255'
- Start with Midrange Control level, click on the box and type '110' Check your footage, is it brighten enough? If not increase it more(115-120 maximum)
You can also pump up the 'blacks' level to 10... It will make a huge difference without spoiling your footage too much...
NOTE: This is the filter to adjust your LUMA RANGE values as well, lets say your whites are too hot for broadcast. Just lower the 'Highlight Controls' Levels around 230, and surprise! All overexposed parts are muted to safe levels without darkening the rest of the footage...
NOTE:VALUES I am suggesting are fictitious... It all depends on your footage, really...
 
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