Adjust the FX / LUTs

Steve777

Newbie Joined: Mar 24, 2018 15:31 Messages: 3 Offline

Solved by

Jan 19, 2021 06:32

Dear Cyberlink Forum and collective experts.

I am trying to improve some underwater diving footage but have come up with a snag.

I thought an easy fix was to apply the 'Underwater' effect on PowerDirector 365 (under Sports), however I cant see anywhere where you can adjust the instensity / amount of effect as there is too much Red / colour at shallower depths but is perfect at depths of around 20m.

So, I thought, lets add another video track directly below my main track and copy and paste the underwater scenes. I could then apply the Underwater FX to the bottom track and adjust the Opacity to get the perfect amount of colour adjustment for each scene. However, whilst the colours now looked perfect and were easy to adjust there seemed to be a misalignment of the videos with some shadow type trails effect despite copy and paste in the exact same spot (the frame 0) and zooming in to make sure the videos above each other were aligned.

Therefore, I have 2 questions:

Is there any way to adjust the amount / intensity of effect of an FX / LUT in Powerdirector 365?

or

Is there any way to easily exactly align the same clip one above the other to prevent shadow trails and then use effect and Opacity on Lower clip to achieve the overall desired effect ?

Grateful for your advice

p.s. I did try using Colour Director with the 'strength' adjustment but I couldnt find the sames 'underwater' effect that I use on PowerDirector so the results were not as good (spent ages trying to adjust but just couldn't get the same result). It also takes much longer as the diving at different depths requires individual adjustment for each clip (due to change in light at different depths) so I find it much quicker just to apply a LUT / FX from the preset on PowerDirector 365.


Filename	Original.jpg	Download
Description	Original Footage
Filesize	321 Kbytes
Downloaded:	6 time(s)


Filename	Underwater FX.jpg	Download
Description	With Underwater FX (too much Red and Colour)
Filesize	395 Kbytes
Downloaded:	5 time(s)


Filename	Blended.jpg	Download
Description	2 Tracks one above the other with 50% Opacity on lower track (good colour, however 'shadow' trails on video)
Filesize	356 Kbytes
Downloaded:	4 time(s)

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Jan 20, 2021 16:51

Up until very recently, you could use the Color Match tool in PD to match one clip to another, and there was a slider with 10 levels that could be set to give you the best results. Unfortunately, that functionality now seems to be unavailable if the reference clip has a LUT applied. See this post for more details.

If you were making the LUTs in ColorDirector, you could set them up exactly the way you want (one for each range of depth, for example), then export them and use them in PD, but it doesn't work the other way around.

I don't think I can see any "shadow trails" in the screenshots or when I try this on my own system using one of the sample Skateboard clips, but one way to confirm that the clips are perfectly synced would be to copy the first clip onto a lower track and set the opacity to 50% or so and make sure everything is aligned when you play it back.

Once you know they're synced, apply the LUT to the lower clip and adjust the opacity as needed.

Depending on the specific clips and your system's performance, you may need to change PD's preview mode to non real-time so your system has enough time to process the LUT while it's playing back in the preview screen. Otherwise you may end up seeing one frame from the original clip and the preceeding one from the LUT clip which could look like a trailing shadow.

Producing the blended clips should also resolve the issue, and if you have further work to do replace the blended clips with the produced version on the timeline so real-time preview is available again.

Steve777

Newbie Joined: Mar 24, 2018 15:31 Messages: 3 Offline

Jan 20, 2021 17:28

Quote Up until very recently, you could use the Color Match tool in PD to match one clip to another, and there was a slider with 10 levels that could be set to give you the best results. Unfortunately, that functionality now seems to be unavailable if the reference clip has a LUT applied. See this post for more details.

If you were making the LUTs in ColorDirector, you could set them up exactly the way you want (one for each range of depth, for example), then export them and use them in PD, but it doesn't work the other way around.

I don't think I can see any "shadow trails" in the screenshots or when I try this on my own system using one of the sample Skateboard clips, but one way to confirm that the clips are perfectly synced would be to copy the first clip onto a lower track and set the opacity to 50% or so and make sure everything is aligned when you play it back.

Once you know they're synced, apply the LUT to the lower clip and adjust the opacity as needed.

Depending on the specific clips and your system's performance, you may need to change PD's preview mode to non real-time so your system has enough time to process the LUT while it's playing back in the preview screen. Otherwise you may end up seeing one frame from the original clip and the preceeding one from the LUT clip which could look like a trailing shadow.

Producing the blended clips should also resolve the issue, and if you have further work to do replace the blended clips with the produced version on the timeline so real-time preview is available again.

Thanks, lots of good tips there. Perhaps the align issue was just the playback in the preview as when 'Produced' it looks good so using the clips one above each other on different video track and apply LUT and adjust Opacity to lower one.

I should probably spend more time in Colour Director but havent been able to make a decent LUT from scratch yet so will stick with the Downloaded ones for now.