newbie question on vegas editing abilities at DVinfo.net

William Boehm · March 9th, 2010, 10:11 AM

i have shot ten years of footage, and am now just beginning to edit. transfered hdv tapes to cineform neoscene setting on high. four major editing needed.
1. removal of water spots on footage in the sky...is that possible..(like cloning them out with a still foto inphotoshop?)
2. removing shake from pan shots of sea otters and whale cooperative feeding (taken from a kayak or zodiac). better from virtual dub deshaker?
3. color saturation and darkening video to saturate the scene. many of my videos are overexposed by a stop.

the removal of the lens filter cover that slight detract fromthe image is my greatest concern. i have vegas 9 now, but am ordering a computer to be able to install and edit with it. thanks in advance. bill

Randy Stewart · March 13th, 2010, 05:51 AM

William,
Here are some ideas:

Water spots: depending upon how many and how long the clips are, you can create a cookie cutter style mask and keyframe the cut out to move with the spot. Just put the same clip on two timelines, one over the other, then work on the upper clip using cookie cutter to cut out just that spot and blur it or maybe use another FX to mask it. Keyframe the movement of the cookie cutter effect to move with the spot. This will get real tedious if there are many spots on the lens (multiple tracks required, one for each spot). You may want to create a mask for the clip to let the main element show through and keyframe that. A challenging edit either way.

Shake - yes, use some form of deshaker. Or, you could try using the pan/crop tool to zoom in a bit so the shake is less evident (depends upon how much shake) and shorten the clip to remove the worst of it.

Color Saturation and light - this is the area you will have the most succes I think. First, while in the clip you want to work on, go to the FX called levels, add it to your clip, and adjust your light level using the waveform view. A pop-up levels window will come up with several slider bars and a view of your clip in scopes or maybe wave form so change the view if not in waveform. Try to make the top levels for the waveforms touch but not exceed 100 on the scale and the bottom level touch but not go below 0. Do this by using the slider bars of the pop-up (you have to play with them a little) to make the waveform move up or down while watching your output on an external monitor that is similar to what you will be displaying your final product on (external monitor is important). Once you have the clip looking better relative to brightness, then go to the color correction FX, add that to your FX chain for the clip, and boost your saturation a little. You may want to correct white balance also within this FX. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube from VASST on this so I won't go into that here (a whole lesson in itself). Just seach VASST Training on YouTube and scroll down to the ones on color correction. You should see some pretty significant results using the levels and color correction tools in Vegas.

The above tips are really just getting you headed in a direction for fixing your clips. There's lots of other methods to get it done and hopefully some of the Pro's on this forum will chime in. Check out the free tutorials on VASST.com and other sources in their resources tab.

Hope this helps a little.

Randy

March 9th, 2010, 10:11 AM	#1
William Boehm Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Bothell, Washington Posts: 195	Removing dust and water spots on lens cover question on vegas editing abilities i have shot ten years of footage, and am now just beginning to edit. transfered hdv tapes to cineform neoscene setting on high. four major editing needed. 1. removal of water spots on footage in the sky...is that possible..(like cloning them out with a still foto inphotoshop?) 2. removing shake from pan shots of sea otters and whale cooperative feeding (taken from a kayak or zodiac). better from virtual dub deshaker? 3. color saturation and darkening video to saturate the scene. many of my videos are overexposed by a stop. the removal of the lens filter cover that slight detract fromthe image is my greatest concern. i have vegas 9 now, but am ordering a computer to be able to install and edit with it. thanks in advance. bill Last edited by William Boehm; March 9th, 2010 at 01:27 PM. Reason: question not clear

March 13th, 2010, 05:51 AM	#2
Randy Stewart Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Hooper, UT Posts: 177	William, Here are some ideas: Water spots: depending upon how many and how long the clips are, you can create a cookie cutter style mask and keyframe the cut out to move with the spot. Just put the same clip on two timelines, one over the other, then work on the upper clip using cookie cutter to cut out just that spot and blur it or maybe use another FX to mask it. Keyframe the movement of the cookie cutter effect to move with the spot. This will get real tedious if there are many spots on the lens (multiple tracks required, one for each spot). You may want to create a mask for the clip to let the main element show through and keyframe that. A challenging edit either way. Shake - yes, use some form of deshaker. Or, you could try using the pan/crop tool to zoom in a bit so the shake is less evident (depends upon how much shake) and shorten the clip to remove the worst of it. Color Saturation and light - this is the area you will have the most succes I think. First, while in the clip you want to work on, go to the FX called levels, add it to your clip, and adjust your light level using the waveform view. A pop-up levels window will come up with several slider bars and a view of your clip in scopes or maybe wave form so change the view if not in waveform. Try to make the top levels for the waveforms touch but not exceed 100 on the scale and the bottom level touch but not go below 0. Do this by using the slider bars of the pop-up (you have to play with them a little) to make the waveform move up or down while watching your output on an external monitor that is similar to what you will be displaying your final product on (external monitor is important). Once you have the clip looking better relative to brightness, then go to the color correction FX, add that to your FX chain for the clip, and boost your saturation a little. You may want to correct white balance also within this FX. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube from VASST on this so I won't go into that here (a whole lesson in itself). Just seach VASST Training on YouTube and scroll down to the ones on color correction. You should see some pretty significant results using the levels and color correction tools in Vegas. The above tips are really just getting you headed in a direction for fixing your clips. There's lots of other methods to get it done and hopefully some of the Pro's on this forum will chime in. Check out the free tutorials on VASST.com and other sources in their resources tab. Hope this helps a little. Randy