Can I add color to black and white?

dangerboots wrote on 11/21/2011, 9:56 AM

Hello there,

I saw on youtube that some people have added color to black and white films, I was wondering if this is possible with my program movie edit pro 15? Also I am wondering what is the best format to import my movies at to get HD quality? Also can I get into dobly digital 5.1?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks!

Claire

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 11/21/2011, 4:35 PM

Colourizing video is a very difficult task which can involve a lot of work, a very powerful computer and is not something that MEP 15 can do easily or quickly.

Adding single colour tint to a video is within the capabilities of MEP; colourising a full B+W moving scene, eg a park shot with sky, grass, trees and people etc is not.

If you want HD the the motto 'You only get as good as you put in' applies - in other words you need HD clips and higher resolution stills to get HD quality out. Upscaling standard DVD video to HD results in grainy movie which is lacking in qualityunsatisfactory.

I cannot remeber if MEP15 does 5.1 sound - if it does it is on the DVD Burn dialog, Encoder settings, Advanced button, select the Audio Settings tab and change the audio type to AC3 and the mode to 5.1 Surround as shown in this image (this is from MX)

John

dangerboots wrote on 11/21/2011, 5:07 PM

Hi John,

Thanks for your response, I usually use my HD web cam, it is just when I upload to youtube straight from my web cam file it comes up as HD but when I edit it in movie edit pro 15 the HD option is no longer there, I export my projects as Mpeg, I am not sure if I should be using another format to retain the HD?

Also do you know what tool I would use to selec let's say the sky in a picture, what tool would I use to select a specific object to add color? I really appreciate the help. I know how to use saturation etc to change the color of the whole picture but I do not know how to select a specific object, that would be great.

Claire

Scenestealer wrote on 11/22/2011, 6:21 PM

Hi DB

I am not sure if MEP15 had the feature but 16 and later have a video effect called "Colour Correction" which allows Secondary Colour Correction. It allows you to isolate a certain colour/shade using a pipette tool and either change it's Hue and Saturation or Desaturate it to B&W. This is probably the effect you have seen and it works better starting with a coloured picture and removing the colour. If the photo is B&W it is more limited because it can only select according to the shade.

If you have the "Plus" version of MEP15 then you can create DD5.1 sound tracks. See the Help or PDF Manual for how to.

Find out what HD resolution and file type (eg MPEG2 HD) your Webcam is capturing to and make sure your project settings and export file settings are the same. MEP should prompt you about retaining the same project settings as the import when you drag the clip to the timeline in a new project.