White Balance and Color Correction Questions

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I have been using White Balance=Auto and color=GoPro on my Hero 3+ and more recently Hero 4 Black cameras. I have never done any color correction in post, but I think my time has come. When filming a golf course, particularly in early or late light, if I fly a slow circular sweep, there is a fairly pronounced difference in the turf color as the camera adjusts to various lighting conditions. At some orientations the turf is fairly yellowish, at times a gorgeous emerald green, and at other times a bluish green. My ideal would be to lock white balance and/or color to settings that are emerald green no matter the craft orientation. I can run some field tests on 3000/5500/6500/native settings for white balance, combined with color=GoPro and color=flat. Curious what others experience has been on this front. My goal is more consistent color scheme within a clip, and consistency from flight to flight (knowing there will be natural differences due to lighting, etc.) My goal is NOT to spend a ton of time in post, perfecting the color of all such footage where the dynamic adjustments of the camera are obvious to the viewer.

Second question, somewhat specific to Corel VideoStudio Pro X6, a low-end tool I use for editing, is what the process is in post for fixing / flattening dynamic white balance from the camera, and otherwise tuning color. In other words, I can see that the editor allows me to adjust hue, saturation, brightness, contrast and gamma, and also pick a color temperature in the 2,000 to 13,000 range, and also use the eye-dropper to pick white from the footage. I can play with all that, but I am curious if this editor or other similar NLE video editors allow you to "feather" in color correction, or whether it's all or none for a select segment of the footage. As I yaw around the golf course, I want varying degrees of color correction if it was filmed in White Balance = Auto. Perhaps I just need to toss the auto white balance footage, shoot all over with a fixed Kelvin setting (or Native), and adjust in post.

Sorry, I know this question isn't terribly Phantom specific, but I am sure there are some savvy video professionals on this forum, intimately familiar with GoPro, whose two minutes of typing might save me hours of experimentation.

Thanks,
Kelly
 
Hi Kelly,

One of the first things noticed using the 3+ (my first GoPro) was that auto white balance is a bad idea for any serious effort. Really no different than any other camera with that "capability". Auto iris is bad enough.

When flying outdoors in daylight (in what other conditions do we usually fly?), set Kelvin to 5500 and forget about it. No drift. That being said, if flying at night, a setting closer to 3200 would be best.

Speaking of drift, I know Premiere Pro and After Effects allow for feathering and most any editor that uses key-frames should do the trick.

HTH
 
I would also suggest using "flat" for color instead of GoPro. Agree with not using AWB, especially in a dynamic environment where the WB is changing.
 

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