On Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:15:43 -0500, "dbdes" <dbdes@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>I have made some images of a song show with two cameras, one Canon XL1S and

>one Sony DCR-TRV25. I know that these two don't deliver the same quality

>but I had to do it that way because of a low budget.

I mix cameras for some jobs - see a 6-camera Premiere

edit at: www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/multi-camera2.htm.

It is necessary to adjust color balance, color saturation,

overall brightness, mid-tone brightness, and sometimes sharpness to get the various cameras to match fairly well

(4 different cameras were used for this shoot, in low

light). I do this in Premiere, though instead of using

the "levels" filter for mid-range adjustment, I use a DPS

Power Surge two-point "tone-adjust" plug-in...

>The problem:

>

>-I have to match the color and the white parts of the clips because they are

>not at the same levels.

>-The Canon was configured with a too high aperture resulting in a low

>ligthed scene for the first part of the show (1 hour).

>-The Sony went fine but washed out the face of the singer in some wide angle

>takes. Zoomed ones were very nice.

>

>Tried solutions:

>

>I am doing the edit with Adobe Premiere 6 and have the plug-in software

>Video Finesse from Synthetic Aperture. I didn't take time to read all the

>manual and tried to adjust the problem myself but have difficulty to adjust

>it without having grain appearing in the corrected images. I find it

>difficult to attain a good result.

If you are brightening a considerable amount, you will

get grain (it looks like grain from high gain used in the

camera instead). If the clips used with grain are short, it

may not be noticeable in the finished edit - and a VHS copy

may conceal the grain... As for highlight burn-out, this is

a one-CCD characteristic. Careful manual exposure (or auto,

in "spotlight" mode) may minimize the problem (but nothing

can be done to save overexposed video afterwards, alas...).

>Video Finesse has color correction that go way beyond Premiere 6 filters.

>It has a Vector scope, Wave form monitor and a Curve window. The possible

>adjustments are : B,R,G, RGB, Chroma, Luma, Saturation, Hue.

Premiere has these, too, plus "levels"...

>B,R,G, RGB,

>Chroma and Luma have seperate correction sliders as: Pedestal, Stretch,

>Gamma, Gain, Knee Level and Knee Slope.

These are not in Premiere, and can be useful if you have

the necessary skills (from experience...).

>As I'm not use to work with these seperate adjustments and trying them all

>is tedious task. I need to finish this job next week and am not very proud

>of the result up to now.

>

>Could someone guide me in using the vectorscope readings and color

>correction adjustments please? I can send images if needed.

Good color/tone-correction takes some experience. I would

stay with the simpler controls of Premiere and do the best

you can to match the cameras. Once you have the filtration,

you can copy/paste these in the appropriate clips quickly,

making fine adjustments as needed afterwards...