Black and White Effect - behaves oddly

Spark

Newbie Location: Calgary Canada Joined: Aug 18, 2009 22:56 Messages: 10 Offline

Solved by

Sep 30, 2009 17:04

Hi,

PD8 build 2013. If someone knows a quick way to turn part of a movie into black and white please let me know.

I was just finishing up a movie and thought it would be a simple process to switch a video clip to black and white (to make the clip look older than it was). I went to the effect room and applied the Black & White effect. When I played it I noticed color would fade in and out. A little editing showed that there were keyframes set by default to change the degree of color. Odd, but I just removed the keyframes and made sure the B&W was fully set. No luck, the edges of the video stayed in color. I then noticed you could mask the effect in a square or circle. This still doesn't help. If you mask out the color it just adds color to the resulting video edges.

I didn't want to use the "old movie" effect since it makes it look too old. I just want high quality black and white. My solution was to import the clip into the free MS editor and quickly turn it black and white. I find it really odd that PD can't do this and was disappointed I had to resort to using another product for what should be a simple effect. Considering all the powerful effects I can't help wondering if it can do it but I'm just missing something. Oh well, even if nobody has a suggestion I guess this experience might help someone else.

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Sep 30, 2009 17:15

Hi Mike,

Try applying colour adjustment.

Highlight clip >Fix/enhance>color adjustment then remove color with saturation slider all the way to the left.

You may need to fine adjust for your effect, and you may need to adjust some of the other settings like contrast, etc.

Apply to all if all the video needs doing exactly the same. If not do each part separately.

Cheers
Adrian

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

FredB

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 15, 2008 21:14 Messages: 1317 Offline

Sep 30, 2009 17:51

oops

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 30. 2009 17:52

Spark

Newbie Location: Calgary Canada Joined: Aug 18, 2009 22:56 Messages: 10 Offline

Sep 30, 2009 17:54

Thanks Adrian,

I did try changing the saturation etc (sorry, I didn't mention that) but it resulted in grainy looking video. I forget the source video format and can't check yet because I'm not on that computer, but I think it's was high def .wma. I tried a test with an .mpg file and moving the saturation all the way to the left does make good looking black and white. I'll remember to try the saturation slider again then next time I need B&W.

Thanks!

OldFilmMaker

Newbie Location: Wethersfield Connecticut Joined: Sep 30, 2009 18:21 Messages: 3 Offline

Sep 30, 2009 18:54

Try attaching some junk footage to the head and tail of the scene, render it to one piece, then render it with the efx so the "color" fade at each end is on junk, then trim it.

Hope this works. Where's the cutting room floor in this place?

James W

Senior Contributor Location: Lakeland, FL USA Joined: Aug 18, 2008 10:36 Messages: 911 Offline

Oct 03, 2009 08:22

Hi Mike,

I just tried this and had no problem. I just put inserted the B&W effect and set the degree to the far right for all the default key frames and the gradient depth was at the far left. I left the mask set to box. My entire 16:9 clip is entirely B&W.

I tried adjusting the gradient and that made my edges in color. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT