Color matching videos

[ShaneJensen]

Anyway, I'm working on editing a video of a skit night at a church retreat from a few weeks ago. I had three cameras set up so that I could edit together three different camera angles. Here's the thing, two of the cameras are Sony Handycam MiniDV cameras and the other is a Sony Handycam Hi8 camera. The colors of the two DV cameras match up great, however, the Hi8 camera is a much darker and more yellow looking color.

Last night I captured all of the footage into my computer and tried tweaking the color on the Hi8 footage in Sony Vegas. I just can't seem to match the color, this is not easy.

Are there any software out there that could match color for you? That would really help instead of sitting for hours just tweaking color, it's a waste of time and I need to get this video edited and done with ASAP so that I can move onto other projects, but I don't want it rushed and botched up either.

I know I should be using three DV cameras for this, but this is all I have right now. Next year I hope to have another DV camera so that I do not have to have this problem.

P.S., I'm really sorry to double post this, I posted this already in the Editing, Cutting, & Joining board, but there is little to no activity in that board and I need answers. Moderators, could you please close the thread in the other board as there is no activity in that board at all. https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=257417
I should have posted it here in the first place.

[anubis13]

I assume you have Vegas 5? It should come with a pdf file of the instructions. Use Acrobat to open it and go to the bookmark tab. Expand the
Previewing and Analyzing Video folder. Expand the Monitoring video with scopes folder.
This section will tell you how to analyze your DV footage and your Hi8 footage. you can then correct the video with the appropriate plug-ins without any guesswork.

[edDV]

To practice getting color correction into the ballpark, record the Vegas 5 color bar and stairstep patterns to the Hi8 camcorder and recapture them the same way you normally do. Then play with the filter tools to restore the blacks, whites and stairsteps, and then color using the waveform monitor and vectorscope.

The color bar will get you 80%+ the way there then split screen against one of the DV cameras, match luminance first, then color.

If you ever do the multicam thing again, take along a piece of white posterboard and place it in the center of action under the light you will be using. Zoom in and white balance all cams off that card and record some white. This will help matching the cameras later using the waveform monitor.

Another poor man's multicam trick is to flash a still camera periodically and later use the flash field to sync the camera's timecode.

[ShaneJensen]

I'm sorry, I forgot to mention what software I'm using, I was going to but forgot. However, it is listed in my details. I'm using Vegas 4, not Vegas 5. I got V4 just before they released Vegas 5, figures. I'm hoping it has the same thing as V5? I opened up the graph in my version of Vegas but couldn't make heads or tales with it. I'm sure with enough playing around I can figure it out. I tried looking for instructions in the help file but didn't find anything helpful as of yet.

[ShaneJensen]

Another poor man's multicam trick is to flash a still camera periodically and later use the flash field to sync the camera's timecode.

Actually I use the WAVE tracks for each shot to sync them all up, that's the most mathematical way I've done this. I mute the other two wave tracks and only use one track obviously. The main camera I had audio directly fed into the camera from the sound board from four microphones up where all the action was, the audio is superb.

[edDV]

You can get it close with audio but not as close.

Since the cams are all free running, they may run at slightly different speeds. This can build up ove an hour. The flash fields give you a reference to sync rates as well as start point.

[ShaneJensen]

Over an hour? If I wasn't cutting my footage into segments I would still be okay since my DV tapes are only an hour at most. I usually end a tape at 55 to 57 minutes to ensure I can still use highest quality compression ratio when DVD authoring.

What I do is line up the three angles, then cut each one when I want to switch to each angle, I then line up each cut separately each time. So, each time it's switching to another camera angle it's re-synced each time. I've done this about a dozen times without ever getting out of sync. I don't know about the flash thing, maybe that works for you, but for me the audio works the best.

[ShaneJensen]

Are there any color matching plug-ins that I could use with Vegas 4.0? I'm going crazy trying to match this Hi8 footage with my DV footage and I'm wasting so much time and hours just doing this. I really wish I can find an easy way so I can just get this done and start with the editing.

[Richard_G]

Shane, it sounds like I do the same sort of work as you and now don't have a problem as I use 3 DV cams. All are Sony and two are the same model so the colour is the same on all three. A couple of years ago though, I was using 2 DV and a Hi-8. Admittedly, it was a Sony Hi-8 Pro cam that, in it's day, had been the mutts nuts but the footage from that was noticably poorer than that from the DV cams. I ended up doing the editing first and then spending time adjusting the colour on the first Hi-8 clip to get it as right as I could. I then applied the same setting video filter to each Hi-8 clip, rather than to the whole footage, before saving the final project output.

edDV, I would argue that you can get the streams in sync using the audio, just as well as, if not better than, using a flash. I pick two streams and fade one fully left and the other fully right. I then play back a short clip while listening on headphones. Even if the sync is one frame out it is very noticable. Firing a flash may not work at all. Depending on the amount of light and the shutter speed that the cams are running at, it would easily be possible to fire a flash between exposures so it wouldn't appear on the video at all. Your method would be fine in a studio setting, but running onto the stage part way through a production to fire a flashgun into the audience wouldn't go down too well.

[schematic2]

Shane
Vegas 4 has the vectorscope that edDV mentions for Vegas5. Use it as suggested. It is the best feature in vegas and will help you to balance your color perfectly!!!

[edDV]

Well as always, it all depends,

The flash works best in a closed space true, but it does get you to the closest field for phase and rate sync. The Hi8 cameras will drift in speed more than DV cams but over an hour all the cams go out of sync. Audio works if you have the same track on all cams but this doesn't always work for a long shot unless you feed audio up on a wireless link.

White balancing all the cams to the same card is an important first step. With outdoor shoots the the white balance drifts over time and causes major color drift. Pick a white element in the set and have all camera operators periodically auto white balance at the same time during a break in the action. This makes it easier to color correct in post later.

With amatuer gear, try to calibrate your equipment first with color bars. This solves 80-90% of the problem and gets you a default filter setting for each source. Then load the tapes and color correct the tape differences as a second pass.

[ShaneJensen]

Shane
Vegas 4 has the vectorscope that edDV mentions for Vegas5. Use it as suggested. It is the best feature in vegas and will help you to balance your color perfectly!!!

Yeah, I have the scope and tried using it but still couldn't get the colors to match up. I'm looking for a more automated way to match up the colors rather than wasting all this time tweaking it by hand.

Are there any plug-ins compatible with Vegas 4 that will match up one clip to another in an automated step? I tried looking around on the website for Vegas but came up with too many other search results that were not what I was looking for.

This is really stressful and frustrating.