Vegas Pro, throughout all the years of Sonic Foundry, Sony and now Magix has always been a great fast video editor with one glaring problem - the way it manages video levels.
Despite thousands of forum posts and YouTube videos, there is still a great deal of confusion about how Vegas manages studio vs. full-range levels and that confusion has resulted in many 'overly-contrasty' videos created and uploaded - especially when rendering to popular formats like Sony AVC.
This custom-designed False Color LUT is designed to help you easily get your exposure right for studio delivery without needing to understand the complexities of reading video scopes, adding levels modifiers prior to editing, or using additional plug ins. Simply add the LUT as the final 'effect' to a clip or the timeline, then use your preferred FX tool (Vegas levels, color grading, brightness+contrast etc) to quickly and, in seconds, precisely adjust your exposure. Disable or remove the LUT and you have a perfectly exposed image, ready for additional production or rendering.
In Vegas Pro 17, the new colour grading palette makes this super-simple, but it works well in older versions (at least as far back as Vegas Pro 12) as well with free or low-cost plug-ins like the Vision Color plugin (https://vision-color.com/products/lutplugin/).
If you have ever been frustrated by Vegas Pro, and produced a video that has come out too dark with lost shadow detail, or too bright with clipped highlights, this is the solution
The colour highlights are based on the popular Atmos-series of professional monitors, and allows you to dial in perfectly-exposed skin-tones and identify clipping or black-crush at a literal glance - without needing a calibrated monitor or looking at video scopes.
Get perfect exposure in seconds! Simply activate the LUT; set shadows above Purple; skin tones around Mid-to-Light Grey (with Peach as the guide); and whites in the Yellow-Orange range (Red is clipped). The Green bar is approximately 45IRE for grey card balancing.
A video introduction and demonstration of the workflow in both Vegas Pro 14 (suitable for Vegas versions 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) and Vegas Pro 17 (with the new colour grading panel) is included and available at https://youtu.be/U5OO7_xLa90
Be aware this LUT is designed exclusively for Vegas Pro's full-range video preview and scopes. A version to suit other NLEs is also available.
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