Hi, I am working on underwater videos, taken at various depths, hence problems with colours. Can anyone help me please with filters, settings to extract the best colours for the underwater footage?
Hi and welcome to the user to user forums.
As the colour can vary from one location to another as well as depth due to atmospheric conditions and differences in seabed floors, any additional lighting etc, it is difficult to recommend any settings.
It theory the temperature of the exposure could change during one video clip so corrections may need to be either dynamic in nature or left to show changing conditions. This is where the art of colour grading comes in rather than trying to use presets.
If the video is exposed well with the correct white balance selected you shouldn't be far off what you need and simple contrast / brightness and colour correction tools should suffice with minimal amounts of tweaking needed.
An auto white balance will seldom work in those conditions so best done by eye in my opinion. Others views may vary.
Ray.
Hi
Try using the Shot match effect - I have had some success with this with underwater shots.
Note if you are using Movie Studio 2023 this appears to be bugged, as shown below
@browj2, is this on the bug list?
HTH
John EB
Forum Moderator
@johnebaker Hi, can you share those images on Google drive or...?
@Former user
Hi
They are video clips - I have uploaded the source and reference clips here.
The oddity with the 'bug' is that the Shotmatch works correctly in VPX14, but not MMS 2023
John EB
Hi John.
I have never found Shot Match or the Art Filter effect to work in MEP as well as it does in VPX on my machine in any prior version of MEP.
Ray.
@johnebaker Thanks, MS2023, I didn't get the b/w result as in your pic, but it does loose the colour in parts, I tried matching a different shot after i made this vid, I chose a frame with the green weed in but it didn't improve the resulting colour,
@Former user
Hi
. . . . but it does loose the colour in parts, . . . .
I also get this depending on which reference image frame I select - the example I posted was the worst case.
John EB
@johnebaker I'm glad you shared those, colour matching isn't something I normally need to do, so I had a play in AE with BCC Color Match, you can pick a Highlight/Mid/Shadow Source & Target colour & try to match them, & you can adjust the Hue/Saturation/Brightness & the RGB in each of those pop-ups, too many controls, one little change looks wrong on a different frame,
Though I'd have a look see how it worked, if it would work in MS2023, applied BCC Color Match to the source & it did surprisingly well, It can't see the other track image to take a sample colour or use the compare side by side mode. I just offset it like in this pic & adjusted it, but the main colour controls work,
I didn't spend much time on it so i think it's a bit bright, light, dark, contrast, highlights, blah..........you could fiddle with it for hrs 😂
PS this is the one i did in AE, bit too soft compared to the MS one that's a bit sharp, like i say you could play for hrs with them,
@Former user
Hi
BCC Colour Match looks to have done a good job in both tests. I will investigate further as previously I had some really good results using the Magix Shot match with some very green underwater shots and looked impossible, I posted an example of what could be done a few years ago - if only I could find the post.
John EB
@johnebaker Yeah finding old posts can be hard 'What did I name that post?🤔' 🤷♂️😂
I found wit those two videos that the Source showed more seabed that was reflecting the blue light & picking the right colour from a 1000 pixels wasn't easy, but using the colour wheel & the ,H, S, B & RGB numbers made it a little easier to dial in.
I got a fairly good result from MS in my earlier vid, for a one button effect it did ok, but a bit of fine control would be nice rather that just a Mix/Intensity control. I guess you could then go to the other colour & brightness/contrast effects.
Hi John EB,
I have just added it to the bug list for VPX (56). I presume that the problem is in VPX as well?
John CB
Hi John
. . . . I have just added it to the bug list for VPX (56). I presume that the problem is in VPX as well? . . . .
VPX 14 appears to be working correctly - it uses both monitors to set the reference image and the target image for matching.
John EB
@Pawel-Ulatowski @johnebaker @Former user @CubeAce
Hi All
I have found Magix "Autocolor" effect very simple and amazingly effective on underwater footage. Truly one shot although can try a couple of different timeline positions within the clip for the best compromise for the whole duration.
Second shot had 20% HDR added.
Peter
Hi Peter
That is one effect I have never used.
I tested it on some of my underwater video and is does a very good job on them, additionally it is a lot easier then trying to find the correct reference frame. 👍
Thanks
John EB