How do i save burnt highlights?

[Kristofer]

I'm leaving for Spain soon to shoot some doc. stuff. I'll be using the F5-scene (PAL) and have done some tests. The only problem is the lack of highlight compression. I've read that you can do this in post, is there some filters that can achieve highlight compression in FCP?

//Kris

 

[Stas_Tagios]

Re: How do i save burnt highlights?

Unfortunately, with DV, any part of your image blown out to white is essentially unsalvagable. The DVX-100's cinegamma has no knee to roll off the highlights, so anything over 100-110 IRE will blow out to nuclear white, which may or may not be a problem depending on the look you're going for.

The DVX-100A offers two additional cine-gamma curves, cinegamma-v and cinegamma-d, both of which feature a knee that rolls off the highlights to keep them within legal NTSC range.

If using the DVX-100, your best bet regarding highlights is to play it safe when shooting, keep your zebras on, and make sure you're not blowing out any part of the image in which you want to retain detail.

You could also use one of the alternate gamma settings by changing it in the F5 scene file; high, normal, and low gamma all have a knee to keep your highlights legal. Read more about the DVX's various gamma curves at:
http://www.adamwilt.com/24p/index.html#GammaSettings

http://www.dancoplan.com/articles/dvx_gamma.html

http://www.dancoplan.com/articles/exposing_video.html

For blown out highlights, FCP's "Broadcast safe" filter will compress your video signal into legal NTSC range, though it won't return any detail to the blown out areas, since no detail was recorded there to begin with.

 

[taubkin]

Re: How do i save burnt highlights?

And if you see halos around your blown area, you can always try a white diffusion effect. (Duplicate the clip, luma key so only your kighlights are availiable, apply gaussian blur and change the transfer mode to something like "screen".