How to fix fluctuating white balance/exposure in a video

[inaniloquent]

Hello

I feel like this is a relatively common issue with filming where for example you have a dark background and are wearing light clothes; everytime your arms move into shot your camera tries to compensate for this new light and adjusts the contrast etc. It resulted in my video having very noticible fluctuation in contrast and white balace, changing often. It distracts from the content. I am very new to this software and was wondering if there was a way to fix this.

P.S. I have edited my video into lots of seperate clips so preferably a solution that I don't have to apply to...70 seperate teeny little clips haha.

Thanks!

[chrisw44157881 · Accepted solution]

as far as I know, there are no plugins that can do all of this all at once fully automatically.

Luckily,

I made an AE template that automatically fixes constantly changing white balance, shadows, saturation, contrast, flicker, on the fly.

about the only thing you need to move is if you enable the text layer and scroll Gamma Clamp at gamma*10 so that the text box reads @ 25 as an average every minute or so.

it will also fix timelapse and old movie's flicker.

auto white balance cs3 and up

CreativeCOW

[inaniloquent]

thanks! i'll give it a shot

[R Neil Haugen]

The better permanent solution is to get the camera OFF auto settings for white-balance and contrast at least, if not going totally manual. It's one thing to try and match stills in RAW formats with auto camera settings but horridly more complex to try and fix video.

Neil

[Benjibar]

This sounds like exactly what I need, but I'm struggling to understand how to use the template (sorry, I'm no expert in AfterEffects!).

Is there a simple way to use the template? Do I drag my clip over or under the existing layer (master solid) and what do I do following that?

Another question is, the project is set to 480p, but my footage is 1080. Can the template be modified to accommodate for that without decreasing the resolution of the footage?

Thanks!

[Jim_Simon]

I feel like this is a relatively common issue

Not for professionals, at whom this software is targeted.

[janieo95]

@Jim_Simon Wow, such a helpful response! Thanks SO much for taking the time to share.

[R Neil Haugen]

It's very easy to avoid the situation the OP was in, and very hard in post to recover from it. A pro can't afford to blow the time ... no DP will get a second job if they shoot that kind of camera setup for a first one. It's simple ... set your camera to all manual settings and properly CONTROL the shoot. When you need to, you add controlled and crafted lighting setups to the scene. The constant changing of exposure ... goes buh-bye.

That's professional work. You eliminate all variables that cause problems later. All the way through the job. Or you don't last long in the business.

Jim's response was pithy ... but accurate. DP's need to know their part of the craft, but further ... what the choices they make do to the next person down the line, the editor. Editors need to know what their choices mean to a colorist or f/x person. The DP should also know how to set things up for the colorist also. As far as their work does have a ripple effect on down the line.

This software is designed to allow professionals to push their content way down the line. They didn't build in things to recover work that few people using it would have produced, but concentrated on the things to allow editors working with good professionally created media to work to get fantastic results.

Neil

[bluefug]

Yeah... so I get this footage and it fluctuates and has auto-white balance on it. Should I tell the client to "do it better next time they shoot video" instead of editing what I have and finishing the job? I'll see if I can find an answer to this question.

J

[R Neil Haugen]

You're welcome to work on it and get as good a result as you can. At times, it's all you can do.

I do suggest educating the client as to how to shoot it better. If you charge per hour, you can mention it took 3 extra hours to mostly sort of clean up what would have been three less billing hours shot with correct camera settings.

As someone now past 40 years of living off my camera and post skills ... I prefer to work with educated clients.

But we don't always have that.

Note the AfterEffects script listed above ... might be of use for you.

Neil

[Leonardos5EB8]

not always tho,

I've just fallen into this problem because the footage I'm dealing with is self-submitted videocam footage (I'm arranging a compilation of those) and funnily enough the higher quality one is the one with auto-exposure 😞

[Pratibha Bibyan]

how to apply a background to a video

[Ordiscene]

Here is a little Tutorial how you can fix it in Premiere Pro

https://youtu.be/SP7Qh-rGSq8

[Alan5E11]

Thanks, I take timelapses very early in the morning and the exposure difference between "before sunrise" to "sunrise" is so great that I don't feel I can just set the exposure and let it run. If I'm wrong, I'd love to find a better way since I'm still learning filmmaking (and know I have a lot to learn). I also have my most incredible sunrises back when I was a beginning beginer (unlike now, when I'm just a beginner 😉 ), and didn't know to lock White Balance at the time.

I look forward to watching the tutoral and appreciate you putting out this info.

[BlasD]

Although this is a labourious process, this is a very good fix for the problem. I encountered this exposure problem in a video I am editing and since I am a begginer in Premiere Pro it will take me a long time to fix it, but with this tutorial I have a good starting point to do this job. Thank you for sharing this knowledge and Happy new year. 

[rebane2001]

Ignore what R Neil said, there are plenty of reasons a pro might still need to work with fluctuating footage even if they're a true pro or whatever, so here's how to actually do it:

1. Apply the built-in "Color Stabilizer" effect.

2. Find mostly static dark and bright areas in your shot and move the black/white point positions there.

3. Click "Set Frame" button beside the effect title.

4. Adjust "Sample Size" as necessary for a more stable result.

That's how quick and simple it is! 🙂

[R Neil Haugen]

I never said nor implied a "true pro" wouldn't have to deal with fluctuating footage ... just that if it's avoidable, one should avoid creating such a mess. Because it's a right royal pain to fix, from personal experience.

Um ... I assume you mean the Color Stabilizer effect in AfterEffects? As I can't find that in Premiere ... not even through all the ones in the Obsolete bin.

So I presume you left out a rather key step, that of either "replace with Ae comp" or simply opening the clip in AfterEffects. Because Ae has that effect, Pr does not.

How well does it handle color shifts during different lighting situations? I've not tried it for this use. Most of the times I've needed this fix it was because of clouds over sun, then not. Especially when filming indoors yet lit by huge windows. When it got a bit darker (not so you noticed at the time of course ... ) it also shifted a bit cooler color.

The more you can tell us how well this works, the better! And thanks for posting about it.

Neil

[Rag and Bone]

I've never tried it, but Light Equalizer is an extension aimed at this problem.

[rebane2001]

Yes, it's an After Effects effect, my bad. I googled for "fluctuating exposure after effects" earlier and this thread came up as the first result - I didn't notice that this thread was actually in the PP subforum (the sticky banner just says "Adobe Support Community" and AE was discussed on this page as well).

I absolutely agree that it is best to fix things beforehand, but most people googling for this problem and finding this thread here already have the broken footage they're trying to fix, so discussing fixing this in camera is moot here and an actual solution is a lot more helpful.

I've only tried this on footage where the light source itself stays consistent and only the wb/exposure of the camera changes (eg smartphone footage with auto-adjust). On this kind of footage this method works wonderfully and saves otherwise unusable clips. This also applies to the color shift as long as you're using the levels mode (default) of the effect. I'd imagine this would also work well in your outdoors scenario, but as mentioned I haven't tried it myself.