Color correcting?

[Bill Porter]

With Adobe you can import Premiere projects into After Effects and color correct one clip, a series of clips, or a whole project. So, if I edit in Vegas, how can I accomplish the same thing?

I have one solution but it's clunky.

Thanks!

[Glenn Chan]

Options:
A- Do it all in Vegas. Vegas is definitely very capable at CC if you know how to use the tools, which may not be that obvious (like "s" for split edit... you'd only figure it out from reading the manual or having someone tell you).

I would stay with Vegas because you won't gain much from going to AE.

B- There's some software that converts Vegas projects to an AE project.
http://www.forgedimages.com/vegasimportorder.html

[Don Bloom]

You can also render a Vegas clip to AVI bring into AE do your thing in AE and render back to AVI to bring into Vegas. If you learn the right way to color correct in Vegas you'll have no reason to go into AE to do that.
Don

[Bill Porter]

Glen,

When you say "I would stay with Vegas," I should clarify: I have Vegas 6.0, Adobe Premiere 1.5 (and After Effects), Avid Xpress Pro 5.0, and Pinnacle Studio 9.0, at my disposal. I am trying to figure out which one to really learn and stick with for a while.

I have very little interest in text animation or effects; I will have to do some fancy titles here and there but not any graphics work. Occasionally I'll have to do some special effects like motion tracking, where I'll replace the contents of a TV screen or a window, in a shot. But other than that I just need a powerful, reliable (not freeze- or lockup-prone) program to edit, color correct, and composite in.

I realize I'm in a Vegas forum but has anyone dabbled in any of the others and can make a recommendation?

Meanwhile I've been editing in a horribly entry-level program and it's killing me. I did start playing with Vegas and Premiere a couple nights ago and Vegas seems very easy to learn while being just about as powerful as Premiere. Haven't played with Avid Xpress Pro yet. Pinnacle I am feeling is a bit too watered down for me, not sure though.

P.S. I shoot almost exclusively in 24P with a DVX100A, and I've heard Vegas does a better job than Premiere at this...

Thanks in advance!

[Christopher Lefchik]

I would stay with Vegas because you won't gain much from going to AE.

Well, that depends. If he has the Pro version of AE 6.5 then he has Color Finesse at his disposal, which is a very powerful color correction tool which has, among other features, a six channel secondary color corrector.

Granted that may be beyond what he needs at this point, but it shouldn't be overlooked. Vegas is very capable at color correction, but with Color Finesse AE 6.5 Pro is even more capable, should he need it.

[Matt Brabender]

Vegas is excellent for basic to intermediate colour correction, is very simple to learn and use and I have never had a freeze or lockup ... ever. Even when I have 10 tracks doing all kinds of track motion and effects and all having magic bullet filters etc.... it has not once locked up on me.

I work in Vegas for about 6 - 20 hours a day (depending on the project and deadline) so that is a very important issue for me.

Advanced colour correction is something that is best left to a program more suited for the job such as a good compositor with good plug-ins - AE being one, my choice is combustion 4 (I don't gel with the adobe workflow).

If it were me, I'd stick with Vegas as you want stability and you work with 24P footage, and the colour correction tools are excellent for a NLE.
I'd then get a frameserver like debugmode which plugs into vegas (and it's free) and run AE or combustion or which ever compositor you prefer for the motion tracking and more advanced colouring and effects.

Other opinions will probably differ, but it works for me :)

[Guy Bruner]

Also, you might like Carl Adahl's 6CC color corrector for Vegas.
http://www.moosehill.se/

[Patrick King]

Originally Posted by Guy Bruner

Also, you might like Carl Adahl's 6CC color corrector for Vegas.
http://www.moosehill.se/

Just another reason I need to stay tuned into this forum. Thanks for the link. But how many hours of playing...uh, I mean testing this new tool will you link cost me. ;)

I've not seen this link elsewhere Guy. How did you come across it?

[Bill Porter]

Just Google "Vegas filters". Third or fourth hit. :)
Looks like a real nice package; haven't played with it yet but this thread has prompted me to.

[Guy Bruner]

When Carl first started development of his 6CC, we helped him work out the bugs over on another board. You can do the same thing with the secondary color corrector, but 6CC is convenient and more fun.

[Glenn Chan]

I've played around with AE + Color Finesse and I like Vegas' secondary color corrector better.

In Vegas:
You can do chroma smoothing if necessary to remove noise (and to upsample/uprez DV's 4:1:1 color space). horizontal = 3 and vertical = 1 works well. You can also use Mike Crash's dynamic noise reduction filter for temporal-based noise reduction. You can also try his smart smoother for spatial noise reduction, and it'll be alright.
Unfortunately those plug-ins are slow (dynamic is ok, but it may screw up if your preview is not full fps).
Spatial noise reduction: Works within a frame. Downside is loss of sharpness. *A good example is Noise Ninja Photoshop plug-in.
Temporal noise reduction: Works by comparing frames. Downside is artifacts on motion.

Not sure what noise reduction options are available in AE.


As far as the interface goes, I like Vegas' secondary CC a lot better. You can drag-select areas to define that area as what you want to CC. The secondary/limit qualifiers/controls are very easy to move around and adjust, and you can toggle them to see which is limiting you. Hold Crtl to move things in smaller increments with the mouse.

Color Finesse only samples one point, not an area. It also has limited control over the qualifiers.
I believe in Color Finesse you can't scrub through footage to check noise.

Vegas' secondary CC has an alpha/transparency control, which can be useful for doing trickier color effects. For example, you can blur skin tone to smooth out wrinkles and liver spots. You can also setup masking in Vegas to get even better results.

Combustion+Color Finesse:
Combustion has luminance and RGB curves, which I like.
Combustion can do motion tracking... it would be useful if I could figure out how to attach masks to the motion tracker so the color correction follows objects around. A workaround is to use Combustion to generate a motion-tracked matte to import into Vegas (and in Vegas, you use compositing/masks). I haven't played around with Combustion that much.
Match color in Combustion (or Color Finesse) is nice. In Vegas you have to eyeball everything, which takes longer.


Anyways, I find that Vegas can generally do more than what Combustion and AE does. The one big exception is motion tracking... although I think you can motion track mattes in Combustion/AE and bring them into Vegas. The other exception is that Vegas doesn't have luminance curves like Combustion. RGB curves are pretty comparable though, although there are differences in the way the final result looks.
AE/Combustion/Color Finesse all can render in 32-bit float, which is nice. In Vegas you can get banding if you're not careful (because Vegas renders in 8-bit). Some filters in Vegas cause banding, so you may want to avoid them (gradient map; secondary CC is an alternative).

As far as speed goes, Vegas has the advantage in that you don't have to conform your project. There's also some useful things like applying filters at the media, event, track, or video preview (global) levels.

Some things in AE/Combustion would be faster than in Vegas (match color).

It may be that I'm not too familiar with AE and Combustion to get a good sense of how to color correct things in that program (for example, I have no idea how to attach masks to motion trackers). Because I use Vegas so much I find it a lot better.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Glenn,

That's a good comparison of Vegas and Color Finesse's abilities. I had thought that Color Finesse was more powerful than Vegas’s color correction tools, but it looks like that is not the case. You've obviously used both Vegas and Color Finesse more than I have (I don't even have Vegas; I've only played a very little bit with the demo), so take my comments with that in mind.

Color Finesse only samples one point, not an area.

I haven't used Color Finesse's secondary color correction yet; however, according to Synthetic Aperture’s website, “Each of the six channels defines a color range based on up to four color samples with settable luma and chroma tolerance, and a range softness control, allowing you to easily isolate colors without harsh edges.”

Not sure what noise reduction options are available in AE.

AE 6.5 added a Reduce Grain effect, which can be used to reduce grain or other visual noise (the manual lists as examples film grain, analog video noise, halftone patterns from scanned prints, CCD noise, JPEG compression artifacts, and digital video noise.)

I believe in Color Finesse you can't scrub through footage to check noise.

No, however, the noise reduction filter would be applied in AE and not Color Finesse.

[Glenn Chan]

Hey Christopher,

You're right about CF having 4 samples for each secondary CC.

[Declan Smith]

Originally Posted by Glenn Chan

In Vegas:
You can do chroma smoothing if necessary to remove noise (and to upsample/uprez DV's 4:1:1 color space). horizontal = 3 and vertical = 1 works well.

I'm Fairly new to vegas. I am aware of the chroma blur, but how do you upsample to 4:1:1 or even 4:2:2 color space in Vegas ?

Obviously I am trying to clean up DV greenscreen footage prior to keying. I use the DV PAL Capsule in Combustion at present, but I think that just achieves chroma blur (as per vegas plugin).

Thanks
Declan