Mask That Color!

Today I'm going to be talking about how to execute the color masking effect in Sony Vegas 8.0. This effect is incredibly useful if you need to insert or change specific colors in video, photography, or drawing. This is another effect that I have seen being hidden across the RuneScape video making community, which is another reason why I am going to be exposing it to everyone as well. So, lets begin, shall we?

This effect applies to both in-game and real life post production:
The nice thing about color masking is that is takes very little time to do. To start off, you're going to need some kind of footage to put into the track. It can be RuneScape, or real life. To explain in this tutorial, I'm going to use RuneScape. You do the exact same steps to color mask for real life footage, so don't feel like you're missing out!

Footage in Sony Vegas, not yet color masked.

 Next, you want to apply to Color Corrector Secondary effect to the footage. Now, you will see that the Color Corrector Secondary has two levels to it. The top level color corrects the footage very straightforwardly. The bottom level is far more complex. The bottom level is the level we're going to use to color mask. You will see a line of text in this level that says, "Select effect range" with an eye dropper directly to the right of it.

The select effect eye dropper button that allows you to pick what colors will be masked.

This will allow you to select what colors are going to be masked within the footage. Next, we're going to check the show mask box. This will immediately make your footage appear like this in the preview screen.

The footage in the preview screen once "Show mask" has been selected

Next! To get rid of that blackness, you'll see a section named "Limit luminance" that has the bars "Low" and "High" extended. Move both bars to 0.0. Next you'll see a section named "Limit saturation" that has the bars "Low" and "High" as well. Turn those to 0.0. The only section that you have left is "Limit hue." Don't do anything to "Limit hue" yet.

The Color Corrector Secondary menu so far in this tutorial. *Note* Your "Center" bar in the "Limit hue" section of this menu may be different from the picture, depending on the color you're choosing to mask.

 Now comes the tricky part. You need to mess around with the "Center" bar and the "Width" bar until you see the shape of what you're trying to mask is highlighted. For me, I'm masking the tree's color from a dark brown and green, to fully green. In order to do this, you need to move your "Chrominance" to the color you wish to be replacing the old color. After you've tinkered with the settings on the "Limit hue" and selected the color you want, you will need to deselect the "Show mask" button, and voila, you're done! Congratulations, you have officially color masked.

The finished product, with some minor errors on the archers outfit.

 

As you can see, there are small errors, and part of the scene around it is color corrected as well. This is partly because I did this very quickly, and also because I didn't tinker around the width and other settings as well. It helps to use all of the tools in the Color Corrector Secondary menu to your advantage, as well as to take your time! It never hurts to experiment when it comes to this. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Have a good one!

Motion Blur in Sony Vegas

Adding a sense of speed and realism to graphics that are in motion can make your videos look far more professional than before. The easiest way to go about doing that is to add a motion blur to the objects that are moving quickly. In this tutorial I'm going to explain how to add a motion blur to particular objects in your composition in Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro. This tutorial will allow you to have complete control over the appearance of the blur and the speed in which your object is moving. Let's begin!

To show you how we're going to add speed today, I'm going to use text as our object. You can use any other image or video file as your object as well, however text is the easiest to explain and show. So, I have a simple transparent text that says "http://postprochat.blogspot.com" I have not done anything to it yet, other than edit it from saying "Sample Text" to "http://postprochat.blogspot.com."

Text editor in Sony Vegas Pro. No effects applied yet.

The next step is to have it in motion. I like to pick a destination point first, then make another keyframe of where the object is starting from. Refer to the image below.

Showing the starting point, then the finishing point of the text in the Pan/Crop tool of Sony Vegas. Click on the image to see it better.

After you have a starting point and a finishing point, you can then move points closer or farther apart to each other. If you move them farther apart, the movement will be slower. If you move them closer together, the movement will be faster. Now, so far we've covered the essential steps to make the object move, but we haven't inserted that motion blur to the object yet. To do this, we want to apply the "Gaussian Blur" effect to the text on the track. After doing that, we need to set the Horizontal to 0.000 since the text is only moving vertically. Next, we want to move the Vertical to about 0.016. Look at the image below to see if yours looks like this.

The text with the Gaussian Blur effect added to it. Horizontal set to 0.000 and Vertical set to 0.016.

Next, we need to use our observational skills to see when the text stops moving. Click on the first keyframe in the Gaussian Blur effects panel, and tap your right arrow key until you see the point where your text makes its complete stop. Once you've found that point, turn your Vertical to 0.000 on your new keyframe and you're done!

Tapping the right arrow key until you've found the ending point, then setting the ending Vertical Gaussian Blur keyframe to 0.000.

Once you're done, the final product should look like this. Remember, you can move the Pan/Crop keyframes together to make the movement faster, but make sure you also adjust the Gaussian Blur keyframes as well, or else the blur will be timed incorrectly.

I hope this tutorial helped you creating a more professional looking movement when you have objects in motion in your composition. This will create a sense of realism within your video as well, so feel free to use it whenever you like. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section. Have a good one.

Off Topic: The Ability to be Anonymous on The Internet

Hey everyone, today's blog post is a little different. Everyone once in a while I feel it appropriate to explore some other topics slightly. In this blog post, I'm going to be talking about anonymity on the web.

A lot of people have this question. They wonder "Can I really be anonymous while surfing the internet?" The simple reply is "Yes." There are various forms of rerouting your IP address and hiding it from tracking software that can show who you are. One very easy way to do this is to download a program called "Tor." This program takes your actual IP address, reroutes it through its networks and many other people's networks, and connects your internet (while on Tor) to a different IP address. This allows you to appear to be in Sweden or Russia, while you may actually live in Ohio or Arizona. Tor is very user-friendly, offers a variety of tools, and is a leading developer of anonymity software. Tor even allows you to be anonymous within a click of a button with the Tor Browser Button, which is available for all operating systems that can support Mozilla Firefox. The best part about Tor is that it is absolutely free. It is an open source company and full access to all of its features are available to anybody. Tor can be used to protect your identity, ensure your safety, and make sure you're secure on the internet. You can download Tor for Windows, Mac, or Linux at http://www.torproject.org. I highly recommend you check it out.

Another program I really like is HTTPS Everywhere. It is an encryption service that allows complete recognition of sites that use HTTPS encryption to secure the connection between you and the website. They offer a free add-on as well for Mozilla Firefox, which you can install by clicking here. For those of you who may not know what encryption is, it's basically a way of directly connecting your computer's internet connection to their server. There is no third party traffic connection in between, allowing you complete server-to-server safety.

As always, be sure to have your computer updated weekly, and make sure you invest your time into getting some kind of anti-virus/anti-malware program. The combination of both will offer you far more security of your information, your security, and your peace of mind!

I hope this post helped out some people who may be interested in this. If you have any other questions regarding this, please let me know. Thanks.

Depth Of Field, Anyone?

A question I get asked a lot is how I implement depth of field within my RuneScape videos. Fortunately, the question is very easy to answer, but not so easy to do. In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to manipulate depth of field in a RuneScape video, and how to obtain depth of field in real life filming.

Real life filming:
Right off the bat it's nice to know what depth of field is, if you don't already. Depth of field is when something in a scene is in focus, while the rest of whatever is in the scene isn't. Depth of field is commonly used to emphasize something, or create a sense of depth (no way!), so be sure you're using it for the right reasons. It's not always necessary to have depth of field in a photo, film, or drawing. In most of my videos I've included a depth of field because my videos are very dark, and having an emphasis on whatever it is I'm emphasizing makes the "dark effect" far more powerful. Let's jump right in on what depth of field look like through a real life camera lens.

Photo by Ben Davis. 2010.

This photo was taken on a Canon Vixia HV40 video camera. As you can see it has a fairly shallow depth of field, giving it a more intense sense of depth, blurring out the tree in the background. This puts an emphasis on the berries in the front, thus, creating the subject of the picture. This applies to all the variants of depth of field, so make sure when you're using it that you have something you're emphasizing. Otherwise, you may just have a blurry picture or an accidental tilt shift image.

In-game filming:
When you're in the game (using RuneScape as an example again) it is helpful to use the chroma key to your advantage. I call this type of scenery "set building for RuneScape." I say that because you need to mask out objects you want to emphasize within the game, reconstruct them in a purposeful manner, and then apply camera effects to them. This allows you to manipulate the DOF however you want to. You'll feel a great sense of freedom when you're editing: however don't be put off by how much work is put in to doing it. Let's go step by step to show you how I construct my sets. First off I start with looking around RuneScape for objects that seem respectively "maskable" in Vegas.  I then recorded them with Camtasia.

Draynor Mansion stairway

After I've found something I like, I make a decent mask, which is cutting a part of the scene out using the mask tool in Sony Vegas. I'm left with stairs with part of the Draynor Mansion flooring showing in between the stair posts. To fix this, I first duplicate the track that the stairs were on in Sony Vegas.

Duplicated tracks of the Draynor Mansion stairs.

After duplicating the track, I then begin to mask out the spaces individually. This process will seem a little tedious, but it is a very easy solution to the problem.

Masking the Draynor Mansion stairway spaces in between the stairway handle posts.

 That's definitely the hardest part of this, which isn't very hard at all. After that, I appy the "Color Corrector Secondary" effect to the duplicated layer (the one we just did the masks on). I set the hue to bright green, and turn the saturation all the way up, along with the gamma as well. Don't worry about the other knobs and switches.

Turning the Chrominance to bright green, saturation to 3.000 and gamma to 2.000

You just learned how to mask things even if they have obstructions in them, good job! Now you need to flatten this image and get rid of all of those layers. So, all you have to do is make sure your project settings are correct, put the preview mode into "Best (Auto)" and hit that little floppy disk icon right above the preview screen. BE SURE TO SAVE THE FILE AS A .PNG. If it is saved as a .jpg your image will not be transparent, it will just be stairs with a black background.

Saving the image of the green screen stairs as a .png file

After that, find your image in your project media, drag it back onto a time line and apply the "Chroma Keyer" effect to the image. You'll see a little eye dropper icon on the left side of the color rectangle. Click that then drag your mouse over to the green part of the stairs in the preview screen, and click the green! Voila, you have just successfully masked an abstract object in the game, with obstructions and chroma keyed them away. Now it's time to do the depth of field part!

Now, you're going to want to go into your Pan/Crop tools for this image, and zoom out on it. Don't make it tiny, but just zoom out enough so it's not hogging the entire frame.

Zooming out on the stairs with the Pan/Crop tool with the preview screen showing as well

After that comes applying the blur to the image. Go to the "Gaussian Blur" effect in your effects panel. Apply the effect to the clip. Set the Horizontal to 0.003 and the Vertical to 0.003. This gives you a nice even blur that isn't one ugly smudge.

Applying the Gaussian Blur effect to create the depth

If you can't tell by now, the effect is almost done. Now all you need to do is insert another track and put something on top of it. It helps to darken the stairs as well. Just simply apply a bump map to the stairs and fiddle with it until it looks right. After that, you can apply another bump map to the object on top to have matching lighting.

The finished product!

Congratulations! You successfully made the depth of field effect. Not only that, you masked an abstract object in the game, chroma keyed its obstructions out of the way, and applied a low lighting to make it feel like a suspenseful "What could be up those stairs!?" scene! You're a genius. I hope this helped a lot of you out there, and if you have any questions feel free to ask. Have a good one.

High Definition? I Think So!

With quality becoming a growing requirement for not only films but photography as well, we find ourselves trying to obtain the highest quality footage possible. This applies differently to real life than it does to RuneScape (or any other game), so I'm going to be explaining both, and let the secrets about quality be revealed!

Quality of video is done in multiple ways, just as everything else in post production is done. However, you have to ask yourself if the quality of your work needs to be increased or just tweaked. Small tweaks like lighting and little color corrections can be done in programs like AFX, Vegas, Photoshop, etc. However, if you really want to make the quality crisper, clearer and ultimately better you need to look at quality in a different perspective. From now on, think quality as size.

What I mean by size is that the dimensions of your video are most likely going to determine the quality as well. Sure, you need to have good lighting, good camera angles, but those are on-set issues that the cinematographer needs to deal with. Your job as the editor is to ensure that from what was captured on the camera, whether it be a film or digital, the quality is never diminished. To do this, you need to examine the dimensions of the video!

Explanation for real life filming:
 To make it simple and clear, you need to shoot the footage in the dimensions you wish to edit it in. It is vital that the editor, director, and cinematographer discuss the dimensions that the film is going to be shot in. In most feature film cases, the dimensions are 1920x1080 and up to 4K and so on. If you shoot in those dimensions, then edit in those dimensions, then render in those dimensions, you will lose no dimensional quality and have a very large image for the audience to view. This works to your advantage as well, because most of your audience isn't going to be viewing your material on an IMAX screen, so your film may be re-sized, and if it is re-sized proportionally, your quality will look better and better. This also applies to photography. See the image below for an example.

Example image used from DigitalTrends

                                                   

Explanation for in-game filming:

For RuneScape (or any other game, but I chose RuneScape since it's the easiest to explain example), you need to approach the filming side differently. Due to the fact that what you're recording is on the screen, it limits your options when it comes to F-Stop, shutter speed, etc. However, quality will never have to be an issue if you know what you're doing! Basically, RuneScape has a maximum display size of 1920x1080, which coincidentally (or not so coincidentally) is 1080p. However, if you want to lower your file size dramatically, and lower your quality somewhat, you can also record in 720p (1280x720). I personally recommend 720p because it offers very nice quality, fairly low file sizes, and the option have your videos played in HD on YouTube. The nice thing about Camtasia is that you can record in any dimensions you would like, however to follow HD and NTSC guide lines, I'd recommend you record in 640x480, 1280x720, or 1920x1080. Below is an image to show you what it looks like to record in 720p and 1080p with Camtasia in RuneScape.

720p recording

1080p recording

In conclusion, recording in the dimensions you want is just as important as rendering in the dimensions you want. It's important to know what the dimensions mean and what they are doing, and I hope this helped you understand that. Not only does this apply to real life filming, but in-game recording as well, so feel free to use this information for any type of screen recording! Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Adding That Dark Feeling

A lot of the time people believe that in shooting any film, whether it be in a game or in real life, you can darken the lights and it has a dark feeling. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. To insert any feeling into a film you need to first recognize the script, the actor's expressions, and the color.

To recognize the script, you need to review the scene and understand if it is intended to be dark or sinister, or if it's going to be somewhere in between. If you don't have a script, you're not out of luck. Review whatever is going in your head, and try to understand if your idea is going to be dark or sinister, or somewhere in between. This is usually the easiest step.

Next, you want to consider the actors. The actors can be human actors in a real life film, or game play characters like in Runescape, WoW, etc. Typically, if you have a game-film you will have voice overs, so speak with the voice over actors and direct very carefully how you want them to deliver a line. This will ensure that your acting for both the game-film and any real life films are clear and obvious to the audience. This step requires some directing skill, but is definitely the second easiest of the steps.

Lastly, think about the color correction. This step will ensure your film looks dark. When I'm color correcting anything that's dark I like to use blues and greens. These colors offer an incredibly effective way of inserting a feeling of darkness. Feel free to adjust anything you want to your liking here as well. The bottom settings are default and have not been changed.

The next step is to brighten the highlights, but darken everything else, especially the shadows. You will definitely need to tinker around with the settings, but don't veer too far away from that image, unless you're going for a completely different look.

If you're using a game video and you're chroma keying a character or object out, you can add a bump map to add an effect of three dimensionality, as well as a sense of darkness and shadows. Feel free to mess around the settings for these as well. This image just summarizes what it will look like, but make sure the intensity is not too high, but not too low either.

All in all, this is a very simple introduction to inserting that dark feeling in your video editing. I use this method for nearly every video I make when it comes to RuneScape and real life (aside from the bump mapping for real life filming). I hope this helps, feel free to comment if you need any more information, and thanks for reading.

Introduction

Hello everyone. This is my first post to Blogger, and it will surely not be my last! This blog delves into the world of post production, whether it's color correction, motion graphics, cinematography, etc. Along with that, the software used for not only post production, but other topics I find interesting such as anonymity and privacy on the internet. I hope this blog is not only informative, but interesting as well for you and everyone else here. If you're from my YouTube, then you probably know much about me, which is most likely not the best information your brain could have stored. Anyway, make yourself at home, and feel free to follow my blog.