Oversaturation on TV, but no in Cam, and with more . . .

Matt Grunau

Matt Grunau

Adobe Demigod
Hi all.

I know one of the common problems people talk about with DV is the lack of saturation. I just shot an indoor theater production (AGAIN) where the use of colored lights was constant. I had my camera guys with their finger on the iris, always avoiding the zebras, but the footage we got back is so hard to bring to TV it's almost ridiculous. They usually stayed around -3 on the exposure by the way.

It's fine footage, no blown out whites, great color (and then some) but all within the acceptable ranges for the cameras. On computer it looks great, so it's not an oversaturation from the cameras.

But when I look at the footage with the Vectorscope (in Vegas), the colors are off the charts. I always like to use curves get a more "filmish" feel, but these colors are driving me nuts. I have applied the HSL filter, knocked down the saturation to 70, and decreased the Lum to .9.

Things are beginning to come around, but the colors are still too strong, and are overpowering the lights, no matter what I do, things are beginning to simply look muddy.

Using the Broadcast colors filter has almost no effect, other than to simply deaden some of the high end.

I am at a bit of a loss. I want my contrast to be ok, but I don't know how to maintain it without having almost any color at all.

The cameras were set to a default indoor setup (they would not allow me to get a white balance, and the color of the lights kept changing), so I had no problem get them CC'd.

Any help would be great.

This is what I get for filming another theater scene in which I have no control over the lighting. And to think a two camera shoot of over an hours worth of footage per cam and separately syncing in audio from a CD for a clean audio track for a whopping total of $175.00 for my troubles.

Before you do, don't ask. :evil:
 
You just uncovered the secret of DV. I have this problem all the time. Dv samples a 1/4 of the color information of some more robust formats. Yet it's output is pumped up to make up for the difference so colors are often off the charts.

I recently tested my theory by setting up a DVX against my Betacam recording the same shot. It's not only wiht DVX cameras I see this but any prosumer DV camera. In the shot we saw a convention at a large hall in NY. The carpeting was red in color. Making sure the shots were legal in terms of luminance, I took them back and dumped them on my system. Looking at the betacam footage on a vector I saw a small ploom of red totally legal and about 20% from zero. On the monitor it was rich and lifelike. Then I looked at the DV footage on the vector. It was off the charts in terms of color. On a monitor the color seemed similar to the betacam footage but a bit phony as if it was artificial. It confirmed what I deal with with a lot with DV footage, the chroma is well off the charts. You did nothing wrong. Problem is to get it back to legal, you end up loosing so much color if you have pure hues and want to bring it all down that you start to see what Dv really is like minus what now seems to me to be its color being artificially blown out of proportion to make it look good somewhere in it's output.
 
Thanks Walter.

I had thought that was the case though hoped I wouldn't continue to have to desaturate. Maybe I'll try 60%. With this help clean up some of the contrast on my highs, or are they going to be screwed up beyond bringing them back because of the initial oversaturation boost? I REALLY do not want to darken the image any more, lower my Lum, or even lower the brightness if I can avoid it.

Thanks
 
You may want to look at using multiple layers.

Duplicate the track. Get your upper image bright and colored the way you want it. Use the lower track for your darks and contrast. Lower the opacity of the upper track to taste.

Slice and dice as you see fit.
 
Of course it sucks in this scenario as your lights are rich with color and already before you've lowered levels, the talent is rather white and bland. By the time you bring your chroma to a safe level, everything else is almost black and white. The cut and paste method might be interesting if your camera is stationary.
 
Thanks guys. I desaturated to 70%, lowered the amount of my curves (which were already almost nothing, and then used levels to bring it all to NTSC safe. The result is better than I had thought, and I have already invested over 20 hours into a project that I will only make $175.00 on.

Suffice to say, I am not going to beat my head against a wall trying to fix this.


Great idea about the layers, I do that kind of thing in photoshop all the time. I should have thought of something simliar! :thumbsup:

EDIT: oh, and both cameras were moving.
 
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