Getting rid of red artifacts in editing

[RogerAGrimes]

I use AVID Studio. Often during video editing I will use auto-color correction for most frames to bring out better and more balanced colors. Ninety percent of the time it works great and I don't have to do any other color editing. But on 10% of the video that I enhance this way, a lot of the areas in the video (I think a lot of it is thick particulate matter floating in the water) will go super red, and force me to turn off auto-color correcting. Unfortunately, once I do this, even though I have a myriad of enhancement options, I can't get the same quality colors. I just don't have the editing experience (even after over 10 years of doing it) to figure out how to match what the program does automatically, but also remove the overly red portions. I've tried simply trimming down the red color, but that doesn't work, as it unevens the colors all throughout the video and doesn't just lighten the overly red portions.

I've read about these red artifacts before in this forum. What causes them? And just as important, does anyone have a hint about what I need to do in editing to remove them?

 

[asha]

I'm guessing what's happening is that you're forcing the white balance over to the red side of the spectrum, and when this happens, white particulates in the water column (or portions of the frame that are already properly lit) become too red as a result. I don't know much about video editing. All I can suggest is to light the video more evenly in-camera.

 

[RogerAGrimes]

That sounds about right. I'm using natural light (I'm waiting for the Sola 4000's to become available), and the parts that become overly red usually happens in bright natural lighting situations, and usually in the water column. I'll see if I can mess with the white balance settings during editing if I see the problem again. I'll let you know what happens.

 

[BDSC]

You may be waiting awhile on the 4000's. Word is they are having problems with them overheating and are trying to get that worked out. I have the Sunray 1000's with the battery pods but if I were going to get new lights today, I'd get three of the SOLA 1200's and mount one on each arm like normal and then mount one in the center. A guy over on wetpixel did this and he loves the set-up.

 

[RogerAGrimes]

That did the trick. I messed around with the editing WB adjustment and was able to get rid of 90% of the red artifacts. Hopefully, my better manual whitebalancing skills (which I'm practicing this Friday on my next dive), will make it so I need to do this correction less often.