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Participating Frequently
January 18, 2017
Question

Can I fix my auto white balance that's adjusting during my video clip using Premiere pro?

  • January 18, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 21444 views

I left my auto white balance on white I shot one long video clip =/ During the clip, the white balance adjusts itself and the video drastically changes from cold blue to warm red temperature. I know how to adjust white balance on one of those frames using premiere. But if I fix the cold frames, then it makes the warm frames even warmer and vice versa. Is there an auto white balance function in premier that will adjust as the video clip plays? Thanks so much for your help!

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3 replies

Known Participant
November 12, 2020

I have exactly the same problem, but using key frames is simply not an option. I need a funciton in Premier that allows me to choose a reference frame then have premier automatically adjust white blalance to match across a 4 hour video.

Ann Bens
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 12, 2020

Try Comparison View its under Color Wheels and Match in Lumetri.

Known Participant
November 13, 2020

What grenadier is talking about is the HSL Secondaries tab of the Lumetri panel.

 

It's a two-part workflow in that tab.

 

The upper half is where you set a "key", the area that will be selected and affected by the controls down below in that tab. And the lower part are the controls to change the pixels selected by the key.

 

You can start a selection by eye-dropper which is a good way to start, and then improve the accuracy for your needs with the three sliders for Hue, Saturation, and Luma. But to see what your key is selecting, you need to set the mask ... I typically click it on, and set to color/gray. Then where my key is going to be selecting pixels to change, I will see the color. Everything else of the image is simply gray.

 

Now you can slide any of the key sliders sideways to change the center of the area chosen, modify the width of the three sliders to expand or shrink the area that slider chooses, and modify the feather, the width of the area that will be semi-selected.

 

Once you have the area selected you want to work on, you can use either a single color wheel/Luma slider control, or click on the three-wheel icon to get the full shadows/mids/highlights color wheel/luma controls available.

 

And below those are controls for saturation, contrast, sharpness ...

 

So you start a key, set the mask to check and modify the key, then uncheck the mask to see the change the controls below the key are modifying the image.

 

Neil


grenadier, Neil, Thank you,
Looks like this is going to work pretty well. One thing that really surprised me is how effectively the mask works as you play back the footage in how it reveals the temperature changes. You actually see part of the image that was manipulated by the camera’s AWB setting.

Inspiring
January 18, 2017

You can keyframe the Temperature and Tint parameters inside the Effects Controls panel. It's going to be easier than trying to apply an effect to balance the two settings, and you'll be able to set the keyframes at varying speeds depending on how quickly the camera adjusted.

Participating Frequently
January 19, 2017

I may just need practice doing this because I think I made it worse. Thank you so much for your suggestion. I never noticed I could keyframe color temperature. I'll keep working on it.

chrisw44157881
Inspiring
January 19, 2017

i remember setting up some crazy experiment in premiere where it used its own image colors to white balanced itself every frame in realtime with an adjustment layer. I'll have to see what I did. transfer mode color i think.

another alternative I made which 'may' be better than keyframing to death is actually an AE template I made that white balances the same way cameras do and removes the color cast every frame. Works so well, I haven't updated the code in 4 years.

AE CS3

CreativeCOW

I bet Neil's idea could be adapted to make a nice auto w/b preset. Maybe he'll post in here.

Inspiring
January 18, 2017

Use the Blade tool to cut the clip into two pieces at the center point of where the white balance change is taking place. Correct the color in the first half of the clip. Correct the color in the 2nd half of the clip. Place a long dissolve at the cut point you made to smooth out the change between color corrections.

MtD

Participating Frequently
January 18, 2017

Thank you, this worked for a short part of it, but my camera dramatically adjusted every 15-30 seconds for like 8 minutes. I've seen this happen a little with iris but I've never seen so much color temperature difference shooting inside when the sun is diffused by several windows. Thanks for your advice.