Editing to match tapes from mulitple cameras of the same event

[SCDVD]

I have a couple of videographer friends who do event videography, primarily weddings. They generally use two or three cameras and then edit them together to generate a final video using multiple camera angles for a more professional final result.

However there are two types of editing. One is compositional editing where transitions, cutting, joining etc are done. The other is technical corrections and filtering where parameters such as white balance, brightness, contrast, gamma etc are made. While they are very skillful with the compositional aspect of what they do, their correction editing skill is very limited. So no matter how great a job they do with the compositional editing, the lack of matching video from different cameras greatly detracts from the professional appearance of the final result.

Their problem is that very often the white balance, brightness, contrast etc do not match between the cameras. So the problem is more than just optimizing the video from one camera. Is there an easier way to correction edit these parameters in a more automated way so that the video from different cameras match more closely? Right now they do a visual "eyeball" tweak of filters in their editor but this isn't consistent because it is really just eyeball hacking. It is also time consuming.

[guns1inger]

What editor do they use ? Vegas, for example, has a full videoscope tool to let you see levels and colour spread. It can be very handy for getting a more objective view of the video.

[SCDVD]

They use Edius for editing and DVD Workshop for authoring. I suppose they might consider using a different editor if they felt there was a tangible benefit. I think their issue isn't the expense of a new editor but the learning curve with something new. They know Edius like the back of their hand.

[dun4cheap]

Liquid, you can match the historgrams which usually or you can do color correction. I find it best to use the same cameras as well.

[SCDVD]

I find it best to use the same cameras as well.

Very true but in their case, they don't have this luxury. Usually the second or third camera is a hired free lance videographer's camera. A larger scale operation can control things like this better but the smaller operations are limited in the equipment they can specify.

[stantheman1976]

It also helps to set the cameras up in one spot pointed at the same thing and set the white balance then. I use this method with 3 cameras and it works well.

Vegas is great for multi cam shoots and post editing. Vegas 8 Pro has a new multi camera mode that allows switches between angles with the click of a mouse. It saves a ton of time for events like that.