Increasing gain without increasing artifacts/grain on DV footage.

Hopefully someone can help with a dilemma I?m having.

I?ve got some DV footage that I?ve shot that is a little too dark. I?m trying to increase the gain somewhat (not much, but a little), and currently using Magic Bullet for Editors to do it. (I like its results better then the standard FCP color corrector).

The problem that I keep running into is that the moment I try to increase the grain, I also drastically increase the artifacts/grain of the footage. I realize that DV has a very small range in which it can be adjusted, but I?m wondering if there is a way to raise the gain somewhat without introducing (more or less revealing) the compression artifacts?

Does anyone have any experience/solutions to raising the gain and keeping the artifacts to a minimum?

I?ve thought about using a different sequence, (with a better compression codec), to do the color correction on? but I don?t think that will help as I?m still dealing with DV material as the source.


Thanks for any thoughts/help.

Chris,

Some of the tricks:
Duplicate your dark video track to V2, set composite mode to Screen or Add, adjust opacity of V2 to taste. This can lighten footage without increasing grain. A touch of Gaussian blur can reduce grain visibility. Also try Nattress's DVNR (digital video noise reduction) filter at nattress.com (it's part of Set 1). Of course, the definitive solution is judicious use of the reshoot filter.

Scott

Also, using the Levels filters in set one can help, especially the curves adjustment which can keep the shadow depth while the rest gets lightened.

I also like the idea of the layering technique with the screen blending mode. That's a powerful technique and blending modes in FCP seem to render at a higher quality compared to many other things, so tend to look very good.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

> I also like the idea of the layering technique with the screen blending mode.
> That's a powerful technique and blending modes in FCP seem to render at a
> higher quality compared to many other things, so tend to look very good.

Oh ho! That's a great thing to know. What's the reasoning behind that? Is it because there's more of an element of the original footage (using what's there rather than creating something new)? Or is it just one of those inexplicable FCP quirks?

>>What's the reasoning behind that?>>

It adds the light areas together and leaves the dark levels basically the same, so you get a relative brightness increase. Using the blur on the upper clip with the opacity adjusted takes out a lot of the artifacting.

It's similar, mathematically, to a gamma like curve, but I also think that FCP does such effects slightly more accurately than look up tables to apply a gamma curve.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X