Solved Strange artifacts in Color Wheels - Vegas Pro 13.0

I do a lot of color correction work with my clips. For a number of years now I have been using Vegas Pro 8.0. My favourite color correction tool is Color Wheels. I find this system hard to beat! Well, in the last couple of weeks I have upgraded to Vegas Pro 13.0. Yes, the color wheels are still there although now I have somewhat of a problem with them.

If I have to do some strong correction, little square flashing artifacts appear on my preview window - the stronger the correction, the more artifacts. These are not very large, but they are annoying and you can see them when you play back the clip. Is this a peculiarity of Vegas 13.0?

I notice that the color wheels feature in Vegas 13.0 gives 2 choices: Parameters and Custom. The "Custom" choice is familiar from Vegas 8.0 - I wonder which of the two gives better results? I haven't made up my mind about this as yet and would appreciate some comments....

I have never heard anyone report this problem when using the Colour Correction plugin.
I have seen this happen to people after a video has been rendered using GPU Acceleration - however this is not specific to one particular version of Vegas.

The type of problem you are reporting (artifacts) normally relates to compatibility problems with the Graphics Cards and/or Graphics Driver you have installed.
What model Graphics Card are you using ?
What Driver version do you have installed ?
Do you have your Graphics Card turned ON or OFF in the Vegas Preferences ?
Go to Options - Preferences - Video tab to check this.

If you have the Graphics Card turned ON, what happens if you turn it OFF ?
Please note that you have to re-boot Vegas after changing this setting to effect the change.

It might be a good idea to post this problem on the Sony Creative Software Vegas Pro Forum.
Sony Vegas Forum

There is no difference in the effect applied between the Parameters tab and Custom tab for Colour Correction.
If you change a Colour Wheel in one tab, it reflects into the other tab.
Parameters is mainly used when you need to apply Keyframes to your corrections.
Personally I use the Custom tab by default.

Regards
Derek.

Hi Derek, Thanks for the prompt reply. The graphics card is the NVIDIA GE Force 7600 GS running under version 307.83. I have been using this card for the last 4-5 years.
In Vegas preferences the graphics card is turned off. The system appears to have decided my graphics card cannot be used to use GPU acceleration and does not offer the option to turn it on.

Thanks for pointing out the differences between the Parameter and Custom Tabs. I presume you know the trick of using the Vector scope and color wheels together without using the eye droppers. This makes it real easy for beginners to use as you can see on the preview window what is happening. If not, I will be pleased to give you the details.

Regards,
Hans Gelton

If your Graphics Card is not being used by Vegas, I am not sure what is causing your artifacts problem.
The only other thing I can think of is the Video Codec you are using.
I have had people report artifacts when they import video from crappy generic cameras that use weird video codecs - however this is not going to be your situation.
Post your problem on the Sony Forum I suggested and/or post problem on the Creative Cow Sony Vegas Forum - this is probably the best Vegas Pro forum anywhere.

I am not sure what you mean about the eye droppers ?
I did make an in-depth introductory article about colour correction recently, in which I showed people how to use the Scopes.

You're welcome to post something on the forum, if it is different to what I have shown in the article.
If you are really keen, make a video screen capture tutorial like I do and upload it to YouTube. Then you can embed it on the Forum.

I have read your article about colour correction. The eye droppers are under each colour wheel. One has a plus + , the other a minus -. The minus eye dropper is clicked on to sample a color cast (if there is one). Each colour wheel has them. Now they don't always work very well in all occasions. You can see this in the preview window.

What I do when they are not working well, is to open Video scopes and make sure the Vector scope is on magnification. Any imbalance of colours shows up straight away. This can be seen if the light bands go outside the circle in the Vector scopes. (By the way I have Video scopes on screen at all times)

I find that it's a sound idea to set the waveform in the waveform scope first - this appears to make adjustments in the Vector scope more accurate. I then refer to the colour wheels and pick up (with the mouse) the small circle inside each colour wheel and pull these around until each: the lows, midtones and highlights are all contained within the Vector scope circle. If one or more readings cannot be brought into the centre circle, adjust saturation until they all do (if possible).
(Notice that at this stage I am not using the eye droppers at all. Often I use both together)

When I am doing the sampling, I usually do the mid-tones first as they have the greatest effect on a colour cast.

Often its difficult to judge what the colour cast is: Too magenta? Too red etc.etc. Vector scopes will help here.

Am I making sense here? I am not that keen to make a tutorial like you and upload it to YouTube. I think you are making a fine job of these tutorials already.