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[budwzr]

I have a question. Is it possible the shirt is green instead of blue?

When I adjust the blue channel to remove the green cast along the arm, the shirt turns green too. Then when I try to adjust the overall hue so the shirt is back to blue, the other colors don't seem quite right.

[jagabo]

The arm probably has a green cast because of the yellow light in the background. The shirt is probably cyan.

[poisondeathray]

I have a question. Is it possible the shirt is green instead of blue?

When I adjust the blue channel to remove the green cast along the arm, the shirt turns green too. Then when I try to adjust the overall hue so the shirt is back to blue, the other colors don't seem quite right.

The arm has a green outline cast or "color bleeding" because the blue channel offset; the blue channel doesn't line up with green or red perfectly. View the channels separately, and you will see this is the case. There is color bleeding elsewhere as well - that's what the chroma shift discussed earlier is trying to fix.


The blue channel is also the noisiest (as usual) and most screwed up. Chroma denoising usually makes the bleeding worse, because chroma denoising filters usually work by blurring the chroma


To examine the channels in vegas, you can use show "blue as greyscale" and scrub through the footage (compare to red & green) . In avisynth , you can use converttorgb() and either showred() , showgreen() or showblue()


As mentioned earlier, you can do a channel repair to treat this - but it can be difficult to get the colors looking normal, especially without a reference picture.


It doesn't entirely make sense to me that there is yellow light illuminating from the right - because the reflection on right base of the ring stand is white. You would expect it to be some shade of yellow . It also doesn't make sense that it is yellow illuminated from the top, because the top base also has a patch of white - again you would expect it to be yellow.


Original for reference:



If we assume there is a yellow light (not white) illuminating from the right and the shirt is teal:



If we assume the light is "white", and shirt is teal:

[budwzr]

Nice work with #3 sample, it looks pretty good.

That purple tinge on the back of the neck highlights how tricky this problem is. When you get one thing tamped down, something else pops out of the woodwork, hehehe.

That "back of the neck" area is where the blue peters out and you can't access that area via blue channel, at least that's what I noticed in Vegas.

The good news is I'm learning a lot about color correction, and I've developed an appreciation of the Channel Blend plugin.

The way we're approaching this is from a "holistic" perspective, not simply as isolated splotches, and I think this is correct. My "holy grail" is to find a method that can be "set and forget", but that may be a pipe dream. I can't get this thing out of my mind until I find out.

[jagabo]

It doesn't entirely make sense to me that there is yellow light illuminating from the right - because the reflection on right base of the ring stand is white. You would expect it to be some shade of yellow . It also doesn't make sense that it is yellow illuminated from the top, because the top base also has a patch of white - again you would expect it to be yellow.

Because the camera's RGB sensors were all overloaded, all driven to full intensity, hence you get white. Whereas the yellow parts of the picture aren't at full intensity. Or maybe it's illuminated from below? Then in subsequent VHS to VHS transfers the levels and colors were further screwed up. Note the green cast on the arm even when it's horizontal -- hence it's not a left/right chroma shift. And I'm pretty sure it's not a vertical chroma shift since the rest of the image gets screwed up if you shift the chroma vertically.

This is video so shouldn't color problems occur in YUV rather than RGB? Is it possible to shift only the blue when working in YUV? Ie, is it possible for a VHS to VHS recording to shift only the blue channel? I'm not sure. In any case, I don't see a shift in the blue channel when I look at red, green, and blue in isolation.

We need to see more footage for reference before we can say anything definitive.

[budwzr]

It doesn't entirely make sense to me that there is yellow light illuminating from the right - because the reflection on right base of the ring stand is white. You would expect it to be some shade of yellow . It also doesn't make sense that it is yellow illuminated from the top, because the top base also has a patch of white - again you would expect it to be yellow.

I think that yellow cast is part of the blue channel problem too, because you corrected it and the light yellow top/shirt on the person behind the case didn't go to white.

OR that there may have been a tungsten light coming from the right, and florescent inside the case mixing with it. That would explain the funky color of the cart or table too. That "burgundy" color looks like a casket.

[poisondeathray]

It doesn't entirely make sense to me that there is yellow light illuminating from the right - because the reflection on right base of the ring stand is white. You would expect it to be some shade of yellow . It also doesn't make sense that it is yellow illuminated from the top, because the top base also has a patch of white - again you would expect it to be yellow.

Because the camera's RGB sensors were all overloaded, all driven to full intensity, hence you get white. Whereas the yellow parts of the picture aren't at full intensity. Or maybe it's illuminated from below? Then in subsequent VHS to VHS transfers the levels and colors were further screwed up. Note the green cast on the arm even when it's horizontal -- hence it's not a left/right chroma shift. And I'm pretty sure it's not a vertical chroma shift since the rest of the image gets screwed up if you shift the chroma vertically.

Perhaps the top white patch could be overloaded, I don't know. But that doesn't make sense for the white reflection on the side of the red base - that would be pretty bright for a reflection off red plastic...

This is video so shouldn't color problems occur in YUV rather than RGB? Is it possible to shift only the blue when working in YUV? Ie, is it possible for a VHS to VHS recording to shift only the blue channel? I'm not sure. In any case, I don't see a shift in the blue channel when I look at red, green, and blue in isolation.

We need to see more footage for reference before we can say anything definitive.

I think the sensor works in RGB, but the recording format is YUV. Maybe a "shift" is not the best description, but notice the blue channel is splotchy right where that green blob is above his forearm. If the blue channel was more in line with the other channels, it wouldn't result in yellow/green over his arm. You see this in other parts of the footage too - whereever there isn't a good overlap between R/G/B, there is relative discoloration . It does seem "shifted" right, and perhaps that contributes to the blue left border

[budwzr]

I would like to get longer footage too, even if it's compressed. Just to see what happens in "normal" frames.

[budwzr]

This is where I'm at now. The colors seem to be right.

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

Sure would like to get a longer clip.

[jagabo]

That's way too yellow/green. Here's what I get with

AviSource("sample.avi")
AssumeTFF()
ColorYUV(off_y=-12, gain_y=12)
ColorYUV(cont_u=-90, cont_v=50)
ChromaShift(U=-6, V=-2)
VideoScope("both", true, "Y", "UV")

[budwzr]

I don't buy the purple table.

Mine looks yellow because it's next to the original, but it's typical of indoor room lighting. Notice however, that the back of the neck matches now, so do the other anomalies, like the yellow cast on the case. And the ring table color looks more believable.

My thinking is that whatever adjustment deals with ALL the anomalies should leave us with what the camera really captured, and that would give us a first-pass result. Then, once the offending pixels are re-rendered, color adjustments to taste can be applied just like any other video.

That's why I'd like to get a longer clip to see if whatever we do will help or hurt the rest of the footage.


[Attachment 6105 - Click to enlarge]

[magillagorilla]

Hey all,
Sorry, I've been busy but I'm back on task now. How do I up a bigger sample? I think the max is like 6MB. The sample I posted was as long as I could get in HUFFYUV. I could grab a different portion of the footage.

[jagabo]

You can upload up to 30 MB here. If you want to supply a larger sample you can use any of the file transfer sites like mediafire.com, rapidshare.com, sendspace.com, etc.

[budwzr]

An AVI would be fine for me. The more footage the better.

[budwzr]

As a side note, I've been using my GoPro to study animal behavior using time lapse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhnW5zC-R-4

[magillagorilla]

huhuhuhuh! poop

[budwzr]

huhuhuhuh! poop

Hahaha, I used a suction mount on a picture frame. Our dogs are trained to use white towels. I was trying to make a joke by juxtaposing those NatGeo wildlife documentary's with "Urban Wildlife", hahaha.

That's the best we can do here in LA, except maybe film a possum on the block wall, hahaha.

[magillagorilla]

I hope I did this rapidshare thing correctly. Here is a 54s clip. Thanks again all, I'm looking forward to more input. I know the color is shot on this and most of my VHS footage. If I have to do any "eyeballing" on the adjustments I usually shoot for good skin tones and let other color go a bit. But If I can have my cake and eat it too.....

downloadlink
http://rapidshare.com/files/454251719/LONGER_SAMPLE1.00.avi

[jagabo]

Looks like you did it right. I'm downloading it now.

[budwzr]

I'm getting it too.

[magillagorilla]

Here's what I have so far. Just to let you know I'm not sitting with my thumb in my bumb. I forgot to render the Audio in this sample, But it's not the topic anyway. This footage looks 1000% better than it did before this thread. I pushed blue in the high and mids then the blacks got blue so I punched the lows towards green for a nice black. Unfortunately I think I caused a green cast in the midtones. Poisondeathray, your third sample on your previous post looks great. What did you do?

http://rapidshare.com/files/454269566/SAMPLE_PROCESS_01.mp4

[budwzr]

This is what I get if I apply the same settings across the longer footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NHhgKDZOzY

There are now new anomalies as a result.

[magillagorilla]

Looks good. Your correction is a bit pale but otherwise looks natural. I also like how you almost completely eliminated the bad color bar down the left side. Nice even tone throughout the clip. What was your process?

[jagabo]

I did a little experiment with the chroma channels. I took the chroma channels from frame 24 (I think it was that frame) on the assumption that it should have been mostly shades of gray. I then inverted and blurred the chroma channels to remove most of the smaller details and used that to correct the colors with a 50/50 merge with the original chroma channels, followed by doubling the chroma contrast (ie, saturation). This corrected most of colored bar at the left edge and the overall shift from greenish shades at the left to reddish shades at the right:

frame 88 before:


frame88 after:


Note this isn't just a saturation reduction, the orange shirt at the top of the frame has retained a lot of its color.

Unfortunately, the colored bar at the left changes depending on the picture content so the effectiveness of its removal with this technique is limited. But the general color shift from greens on the right to reds on the left is largely constant through the video and the technique evens those out.

[budwzr]

Looks good. Your correction is a bit pale but otherwise looks natural. I also like how you almost completely eliminated the bad color bar down the left side. Nice even tone throughout the clip. What was your process?

I'm using the "Channel Blend" plug-in to get the greens and blues. Here's the settings for what I have so far. I'm trying to find a single set of adjustments that can simply smooth out the wrinkles, render that, then adjust the overall HSL to taste.

I'm trying to mute the blue channel, and mix a "new blue" from green and red.

[budwzr]

This Before/After brings out the result better than the YT video. The bottom line is the hue has to get tweaked. I don't see any other way to address this, but then again, PDR has a great looking sample #3, and I'm wondering what his recipe is and how he's approaching it.



[Attachment 6182 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 6181 - Click to enlarge]

[magillagorilla]

PDR what did you do? Your color looks really good.

[poisondeathray]

PDR what did you do? Your color looks really good.

Actually it doesn't . Looking at the longer clip, I think the lighting is supposed to be yellow

Anyways for that one I did a channel swap with the blue channel for aggregate luminance and did some other things like curves , selective range hue adjustments , and the feathered overlay for the left blue border

It's not going to help you , because it doesn't look "right" on some of the other scenes. You will probably have to color correct differently each scene .

The only things that are semi-consistent (with respect to color) are the blue left border and L-shaped green discoloration. But they aren't consistent enough to fix "easily" with an overlay - there are slight differences enought that adjustments need to be made by scene. This is going to be tedious if you want to get it looking right

[budwzr]

Not knowing what ALL the footage contains, I would proceed as follows.

First, do some research on the concept of color channel blending. This is a standard technique used by compositors, not something I cooked up myself. There is some math involved, but you can do it visually too. The concept is similar to a paint program where you make a mask selection based on "degree of separation" of pixels. In other words, color difference range. If you have a green/blue anomaly, you make the blue greener and the green bluer, and thereby morph both to an intermediate color.

I would divide the footage into "scenes" like "at the mall", "football game", "potato sack race", "smoking my first joint", etc., and edit down to subclips the material that has a reasonable chance of repair.

Each scene may need a tweak or two using the Channel Blend settings above as a starting point, but try to stay within the same general range of colors. As you progress, try to find a Channel Blend setting that can do the most good, and the least harm, across ALL the footage.

You may have to do up to three passes, on each scene, one for each channel, rendering out between each. Some scenes might only need one pass depending on the anomaly, and again, you should use the template above as a base.

After you do this, you will have a very detailed idea of what you have to work with. Then, try to come up with an artistic or creative way of presenting the material. Subtitling and voice over narration come to mind. This will add panache, and a documentary style and feel. Viewers will intuitively know that the material is archive footage, and nostalgic, and appreciate it more.

Lastly, I would do all the work in an HD project setting because this will upsample everything and give you a finer degree of control because the number of editable pixels will be higher.

[budwzr]

When I do rotoscoping, I set my first frame, then I set my last frame, then I go to the middle of the sequence and set that frame, then I go halfway between those two frames, etc. I call this "half splitting", and it's the fastest and best way to get the job done rather than a linear approach because the mask will come together with the least effort and maximize productivity.

In this same way, you've got to examine your worst/best case material and look for a happy medium that can work across the board. Some hard decisions might have to be made.