Match brightness?

Is there a way to match the brightness of a portion of a clip to another portion’s?

I have some clips where the camera (a phone…) automatically lowered brightness for a couple of seconds repeatedly. I can correct it using the brightness plugin and keyframes, but it’s taking forever to do it manually, is there a way to automate it?

No. Needs to be done manually. :grimacing:

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Are you using the waveform scope to measure brightness of the clips? If not, that graph will make brightness tweaks much faster and more accurate than eyeballing it.

I’m not! That sounds interesting, how do I do it?

From the menu, turn on View > Scopes > Video Waveform. If the brightness of two clips is equal, then the graphs should look pretty much the same. If one graph looks like it is jumping up or down vertically compared to the graph of the other clip, then the brightness doesn’t match. Ignore horizontal movement. Use the scale markings to keep track of brightness values while switching between clips.

One thing to consider… if the phone felt the need to lower brightness to avoid blowing out the highlights, then raising brightness in post will probably recreate the problem that the phone wanted to avoid… blowing out the highlights. Instead of the Brightness filter, consider using the Color Grading filter to give you more selective control of midtones versus highlights, so you can brighten one range without necessarily brightening the other.

Another hack if not doing so already… Suppose the first clip is on V1 in its final resting place. If the second clip is on V2 directly above V1, then it’s fast and easy to compare the two clips to each other by toggling the track visibility of V2. Once the clip on V2 looks right, then it can be moved to its final resting place. Repeat.

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Thanks. Yes, the “hack” is what i’ve been using so far. I think that the phone overreacted to slight movements of the sun or the clouds…next time I’ll just use artificial lights only.

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