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  1. I don't know if this is the best place to ask this but I thought I'd give it a try.

    I recorded a video that had numerous problems, such as poor lighting and white balance that was grossly off. And there was some sort of electrical interference that caused horizontal lines in the video.

    I'm not very good at video editing but I've tried to get this video to display properly on the screens I have, but whenever I correct an apparent problem that shows up on one display, another display then shows some issue with the video. So, in essence, I can't get this right. And I don't have a good eye for this sort of thing.

    I'm mostly interested in the skin tones. I can't get the skin tones anywhere near the skin tone line on a vectorscope without it looking terrible.

    I'm just interested to know what apparent video quality problems show up on other peoples' displays with this video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zwbvfo8grs

    Let me know. Thanks.
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  2. Can you reshoot it ? That's the "best" alternative
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  3. Originally Posted by poisondeathray View Post
    Can you reshoot it ? That's the "best" alternative
    It can't be redone.

    How does it look though? I just want it to look as good as possible.

    My eye for this isn't very good. I'm just wondering if there are obvious casts or skin tone issues. Am I grossly off with this or is this quality reasonable?

    I'm not filming a movie or anything but it is an important presentation.

    Thanks
    Last edited by DavidS; 27th Jan 2023 at 16:03.
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  4. Originally Posted by DavidS View Post
    I don't know if this is the best place to ask this but I thought I'd give it a try.

    I recorded a video that had numerous problems, such as poor lighting and white balance that was grossly off. And there was some sort of electrical interference that caused horizontal lines in the video....I can't get the skin tones anywhere near the skin tone line on a vectorscope without it looking terrible.


    Let me know. Thanks.
    Don't over-worry about the skintone line on the vectorscope. If you balance the tone to the white shutters behind the speaker you'll get pretty close. His skin tone will rotate slightly clockwise, but it still looks perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, correcting the color does make the bad lighting a little more obvious.

    The "electrical interference" is caused by the light source (florescent?) strobing out of sync with the camera's shutter. Camera shutter speed should always be a factor of the lighting. If you're in the US that means 1/30th, 1/60th of a second. Shutter speed is independent of frame rate. In your case it is subtle enough that it isn't very noticeable in real time playback.
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  5. Originally Posted by smrpix View Post

    Don't over-worry about the skintone line on the vectorscope. If you balance the tone to the white shutters behind the speaker you'll get pretty close. His skin tone will rotate slightly clockwise, but it still looks perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, correcting the color does make the bad lighting a little more obvious.
    This is my best attempt at balancing the skin tones, but I'm not that good at judging these things. I'm interested in someone giving a critique on the skin tones and any possible casts they see on their display.

    Is this video passable for an important presentation?
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  6. [QUOTE=DavidS;2679404]
    Originally Posted by smrpix View Post
    Is this video passable for an important presentation?
    Personally, I would go a touch greener and try to shadow off some of the endless expanse of wall (see rough example below) but you can probably get away with the barely noticeable strobing.
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  7. [QUOTE=smrpix;2679405]
    Originally Posted by DavidS View Post
    Originally Posted by smrpix View Post
    Is this video passable for an important presentation?
    Personally, I would go a touch greener and try to shadow off some of the endless expanse of wall (see rough example below) but you can probably get away with the barely noticeable strobing.
    What did you use to add that green color? When I just go into a video editor and boost the green, I'm not able to achieve the same effect. The skin turns green. The way you did it preserves the skin tone.

    Let me know.

    Thanks
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  8. Rough approximation of smrpix's colors with AviSynth: RGBAdjust(r=227.0/232.0, b=227.0/231.0, gb=-3, rg=0.9, bg=0.9)

    Image
    [Attachment 68918 - Click to enlarge]
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  9. Here is what happened when I tried to boost the green in the highlights using Sony Vegas.

    Image
    [Attachment 68919 - Click to enlarge]


    The skin turned greenish. I think I largely matched what you did on the walls but I was not able to spare the skin tones from the green. The way you did it preserved the skin tones. I do know how to apply a vignetting effect and I did tinker with this early on but eventually decided against it. But I like the way you did it, and I might give it another try.

    But I'm mostly interested in how you applied the green while not affecting the skin much. Can this be readily done on video too or is it just something that can be readily done on still images?

    I've been tinkering with this video for quite a while now and your edit is actually the one that peaks my interest the most. Any help would be appreciated.

    Thanks
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  10. Originally Posted by DavidS View Post
    Here is what happened when I tried to boost the green in the highlights using Sony Vegas.
    First, the skin tones are not in the highlight range, the wall is. You need to drop deeper -- into the midtones.

    But what I did was simply chose the slats on the window shutters to set the white balance. (I used After Effects, but Vegas has similar functions.) If the first selection doesn't look right, there are various light purples on the shutters to choose from -- try another. This results in a curved rather than linear correction.

    I also boosted the contrast slightly using all channels of the RGB curve.

    It works fine on video. Another thing you can do on video is to create a rough, soft-edge mask around the speaker and replace the background with a still frame which eliminates the rolling light flicker. (But again, it's so subtle at real speed that it's not likely to be noticed.) I was a little sloppy with the mask towards the end of the clip and his double hair shows through. That's easily fixable by making the mask slightly wider.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4HOPhTGfeA
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  11. Originally Posted by smrpix View Post
    Originally Posted by DavidS View Post
    Here is what happened when I tried to boost the green in the highlights using Sony Vegas.
    First, the skin tones are not in the highlight range, the wall is. You need to drop deeper -- into the midtones.

    But what I did was simply chose the slats on the window shutters to set the white balance. (I used After Effects, but Vegas has similar functions.) If the first selection doesn't look right, there are various light purples on the shutters to choose from -- try another. This results in a curved rather than linear correction.

    I also boosted the contrast slightly using all channels of the RGB curve.

    It works fine on video. Another thing you can do on video is to create a rough, soft-edge mask around the speaker and replace the background with a still frame which eliminates the rolling light flicker. (But again, it's so subtle at real speed that it's not likely to be noticed.) I was a little sloppy with the mask towards the end of the clip and his double hair shows through. That's easily fixable by making the mask slightly wider.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4HOPhTGfeA
    The result you produced looks good, but I find that I'm having trouble matching this precisely.

    I could try some more, but I'd also be interested to hear from others about which they prefer, my original or yours. The colors on my blinds are skewed to the purple, but I did this intentionally because I thought the overall look was better with the way I was editing it. I think it just looks like some light purple lighting. However I never achieved a result as good as yours with the blinds set to perfectly white, so it's worth considering.

    I don't think that when most people watch my video, they see the light purple shading, but I could be wrong. I think the brain just naturally white balances this and the blinds look more or less white to most people. But this is why I wanted to ask around to see if people see any type of cast on their display or any skin tone issues. You noticed the light purple but I asked on another video forum and this wasn't really mentioned and they said nothing bad about the skin tones.

    I did try vignetting and boosting the contrast early on but I abandoned it because I thought the lighting was too harsh on the subject. However it's still something worth considering if it's done right.

    Another thing is that on some displays, even though yours may be better white balanced, the colors tend to look on the greenish side. Whereas my light purple shading seems more natural on these displays.

    This video is very important to me so I need to err on the side of caution with this. I would like some feedback as to which people prefer.

    I appreciate your work and giving me another viable alternative. I'm going to work more on it and see what I can produce.

    Thank you.
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  12. Yep. At the end of the day, much of it comes down to preference and context. Best of luck with your presentation.
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  13. try lowering the red channel
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  14. I did a white balance of it here using the blinds as a white reference, as smrpix suggested, but I did this manually using color adjustments and also used my different displays as a guide for what looked visually best.

    I didn't do any vignette or contrast change.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIon4Jinjsg

    Let me know what you think.
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