Compensating for flaws in video
Ideally, video producers have complete control over production elements such as shot selection, lighting, and video format. But in many cases, they have to shoot in harsh sunlight using an inferior video format. Or, producers might have to use a videotape that is either inadequate or unsuitable for streaming. This section includes some common flaws that appear in video and tips for dealing with them.
- Oversaturation. Occurs when colors in a video bleed outside the edges of objects or smear when an object moves. You can often fix oversaturation before capturing video by adjusting your capture card's saturation setting to a lower level. Saturation is the amount of color in the image. Too little saturation produces images that can appear black and white. Too much saturation produces colors that appear artificially bright.
- Too bright or too dark. If a picture is extremely bright or dark, the recording can be beyond repair. You can recover a picture by adjusting the following properties for your capture card:
- Brightness, to raise or lower the video level.
- Contrast, to optimize the number of shades of gray or levels of luminance, also known as the grayscale.
By raising the video brightness setting and optimizing the grayscale, you can correct a dark picture. However, in doing so, you increase video noise because noise is most noticeable in dark areas of an image. It is possible to partially hide the noise by increasing the contrast. For more information about capturing video, see your capture card documentation.
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