Footage looks too dark. Any way to color correct it?

[jagabo]

Hue and saturation can be safely adjusted with the proc amp. Usually the colors will look way over saturated long before you blow out (exceed the 16 to 240 range) the U and V values .

With AviSynth you can view the UV planes with Histogram(mode="color") or Histogram(mode="color2"):


[Attachment 70827 - Click to enlarge]

In VirtualDub you can use the Color Tools filter:


[Attachment 70828 - Click to enlarge]

Note that Color Tools shows the UV plane flipped vertically.

[Leanoric]

Thanks jagabo.

[Sharc]

I was hesitant to open this bracket, but once we are at it: One needs not necessarily to be TOO ambitious to fully exploit the 16..... 235 luma (Y) range, because particularly low luma and high luma restrict the U,V (chroma) for RGB gamut compliance considerably.
Even when one processes everything in the YUV color space, there will be at least one last conversion YUV->RGB when watching the video on a monitor or TV, AFAIK. Legal YUV which may create out-of-gamut (in practice usually clipped) RGB means slight color distortion and loss of color details (fine structures and gradients in that area).

I excavated an old demo from Gavino which shows legal U,V for a given Y when stepping through the attached clip. One can see the restricted U,V range in the square on the left (black=illegal), most prominent for low and high luma (Y).

It's usually not a huge problem in practice, so "adjust the proc-amp to keep the luma (Y) reasonably close within 16....235 range" for capturing is still a very valid recommendation.

Bracket closed.

[lollo]

One needs not necessarily to be TOO ambitious to fully exploit the 16..... 235 luma (Y) range, because particularly low luma and high luma restrict the U,V (chroma) for RGB gamut compliance considerably.

Yes, there is also the famous RGB-YUV graph. I would say capture range of the card instead 16....235 range, but it does not matter that much in this contest.



However, what is important is that people do not try to expand the luma unnecessarly with the goal to have a better look while capturing. (I have the impression somebody may think that reading the whole thread). Doing that is not effective as in post-processing, and may introduce out of RGB values otherwise legal.

[Sunk]

I forgot to mention it earlier, but Matrox MXO2 LE doesn't seem to have any native procamp, or so I think at least. Here are all the Matrox tools that I have and none of them appear to be procamp-related:
Matrox Playback Settings





Matrox Capture Settings




A/V Settings


I've also checked the manual (attached), but it only covers color correction in an NLE like Adobe. Does this mean I'm stuck with digital procamp and would not be able to adjust it prior to capturing?

[jagabo]

The proc amp doesn't have to be analog to be useful. Capture devices sometimes capture higher horizontal resolution and higher bit depth internally, then reduce the frame to 720 pixels wide and 8 bits for output.

That said, from what you've posted it looks like a proc amp isn't available. But check anyway. Use GraphEdit to load the crossbar filter and capture filter. See if they provide a proc amp.

[Sunk]

The proc amp doesn't have to be analog to be useful. Capture devices sometimes capture higher horizontal resolution and higher bit depth internally, then reduce the frame to 720 pixels wide and 8 bits for output.

That said, from what you've posted it looks like a proc amp isn't available. But check anyway. Use GraphEdit to load the crossbar filter and capture filter. See if they provide a proc amp.

I believe you're right, it doesn't have a proc amp on its own. I tried using GraphEdit, but it has nothing that'd look like something I want either. It does, however, present me with these additional options not found in the native A/V settings:

[Sharc]

In GraphEdit did you:
Graph->Insert Filter ....
Scroll down to "Video Capture Sources"
Doble-clicking on your device will insert the filter
Right click on it -> Properties -> Tab Proc-amp

[Sunk]

In GraphEdit did you:
Graph->Insert Filter ....
Scroll down to "Video Capture Sources"
Doble-clicking on your device will insert the filter
Right click on it -> Properties -> Tab Proc-amp

There's no "Proc-amp" tab or anything of the sort. I've shown every single tab I get in the post prior to yours.

[Sharc]

In GraphEdit did you:
Graph->Insert Filter ....
Scroll down to "Video Capture Sources"
Doble-clicking on your device will insert the filter
Right click on it -> Properties -> Tab Proc-amp

There's no "Proc-amp" tab or anything of the sort. I've shown every single tab I get in the post prior to yours.

If you really don't find any proc-amp settings for your capture setup you will have to process the capture in post. A bit of a futile exercise though for this poor capture quality. Did all your captures come out like this? Something odd with the VCR?

[Sunk]

In GraphEdit did you:
Graph->Insert Filter ....
Scroll down to "Video Capture Sources"
Doble-clicking on your device will insert the filter
Right click on it -> Properties -> Tab Proc-amp

There's no "Proc-amp" tab or anything of the sort. I've shown every single tab I get in the post prior to yours.

If you really don't find any proc-amp settings for your capture setup you will have to process the capture in post. A bit of a futile exercise though for this poor capture quality. Did all your captures come out like this? Something odd with the VCR?

Just this capture, my other ones don't exhibit such issues.

[Leanoric]

Just wondering what you guys think of this clip.

I adjusted the proc amp settings before capturing 3 hours worth of tv recordings off of a tape. It all looks fine, except for this one advert.

The black clothing is too dark and the skin isnt right.

Im guessing this advert was meant to look like this at the time because its literally the only part of the tape that is off?

[dellsam34]

You can lower the chroma level a little bit.

[Sharc]

The black level is actually too high. Also I would reduce the saturation and increase the contrast. If you feel that the black clothing is too dark (?) you may want to increase the gamma.
No idea how the colors should actually be ....

AVISource("Guinness.avi")
converttoYV16(interlaced=true)
AssumeTFF()
QTGMC(preset="fast")
SmoothTweak(hue1=0, hue2=0, brightness=0,contrast=1.3,saturation=0.5,HQ=true,TVrange=True, Limiter=False)
SmoothLevels(input_low=32,gamma=1.5,input_high=235,output_low=8,output_high=235,HQ=true,TVrange=True,Limiter=0)
converttoYV12()

[jagabo]

Shouldn't that video look more like this?


[Attachment 72448 - Click to enlarge]

[Leanoric]

OK thanks guys, it seems that its mainly a saturation issue as turning it down has made it look so much better.

Strange that the rest of the tape looks fine, its literally just that Guinness advert that needs the saturation turning down.

[dellsam34]

Don't be surprised, A lot of marketing companies did this back in the day boosting the colors and make the video look different than the rest of the TV programs to catch the attention of the viewers, and worked quite well back then, Imagine you're watching a boring soap opera with washed out colors and all of a sudden an energetic and full of colors commercial video pops out, wouldn't you want to watch it?