Colour Correction

The Canopus’ colour correction tool allows you to change either the overall colour level in red, green and blue, or intermediate ranges, just changing the midtones or the shadows. It’s also has professional tools like Vector scope and waveform.

This filter also has controls for contrast, brightness and gamma correction - allowing you to brighten up the face of someone standing with their back to the window without ruining the shot, for example

Here you can see the colour correction window.  Note the sliders for red green and blue as well as brightness and contrast.

A vectrascope and waveform monitor which will adjust themselves to display the picture content as the video plays off the timeline are availlable

Black/white level

This is a comprehensive colour correction tool that allows you to select a section on the screen that should be either black, white or grey and try to make them into those colours.  So click on a section with a blue cast and the filter will remove the blue and make it a pure white/grey.  There are now quite a filters like this in other programs, but the Canopus filter has been one of the best as correcting shots we have used.

You can also show a split screen view which shows the image with an uncorrected version of itself, or a split with another image somewhere on the timeline for colour matching.

Matrix

This filter makes all men in the shot look like Keanu Reeves..  OK it doesn’t really - it actually gives you control over sharpness and blur over the image but is actually quite hard to interpret.

Antiflicker

Very useful for stills this filter minimises the flicker caused by thin lines on an interlaced TV screen.  Excellent for adding to still montages.

Sharpness

Sharpen up and image in real time.   Again a time consuming filter if you need to do a lot of it - and here playing back in realtime.

Picture in Picture

Canopus have 2 picture in picture effects - tthe first full 3D and this 2D pnp the second.  Why?  The simpler answer is this was developed first and 3D added later.  There is not much you can do in the 2D editor that you can't do with the 3D, but as the 2D pnp major advantage is you can combine many more in realtime.

This effect allows you to move clips around in real time in 2 dimensions.  You can't zoom into a clip, or rotate it, but you can make it smaller, add borders and control the speed at which it flies along the path.

Setting Up the Picture in Picture

You add the Pnp effect filter to a clip on one of the tracks.  Define a start point and just click any where

And finally you can add a start or end effect to the path so the clip can disappear, zoom out  or whatever...  On a powerful system you can have a clip moving on the main track and the superimposition track at the same time.

3D Picture in Picture

2D & 3D picture in picture effects that can be keyframmed so that you can fly video around the screen. The 2D version is simple and can manage many layers - the 3D version has more options and does a very good job of scaling images to practically any size..

Canopus have an excellent 3D picture in picture effect.  Inside Edius this can be used on any track.

The effect is high quality and very customisable. It allows you to take a piece of video and move along a 3D path you design, complete with soft shadows and a highlight which drifts across your image.

All factors are keyframmable.

Chromakey

The Canopus Chromakey is amazingly good.  The quality of the key is astounding and you can tweak the results very easily. 

Here you can see some of the more sophisticated controls.  The results can be key framed, applied to a rectangular region and best of all the adjustments you make are seen instantly on the TV attached to the computer so you know what the results are going to be without waiting. 

Two different display are available on screen:

                       1.                                                            2.

1. The key - you can see just the matte generated by the computer - very useful for fine tuning.

2. The keyed version - notice the blue sky has been replaced by another image 

Chrominance

The Chrominance filter works in a similar way to the Chromakey filter but instead of removing a certain range of colours and putting in another picture you can apply any of Canopus's filters to the parts of the picture you have selected.  For example here we have selected the sky and changed the colour.

You can apply any of Canopus filters to the keyed part of the image.  The filter also allows you to apply a different effect to the edges between the two images. 

Using this filter you can do the effect as shows, or select different areas and just colour balance selected colours.

You can also use the filter to achieve effects like picking out a red dress in a scene and making the rest of the scene black and white.

You can use more than one Chrominance effect if your machine is powerful enough, and even if not you can then render the effect.

Lumakey

Key out the light or dark areas of an image.  Lumakey is easier to get right than Chromakey, but you always have to be careful about how you light your subject.

The Region Filter

The region filter allows you to take any effect and apply it to a region of the image - the region is either rectangular or oval and has a user definable fuzzy edge.  You can also define a path for the region to follow.  This can be used to highlight a particular section as shown, or to put, for example, a mosaic pattern of someone's face you do not want to be seen..

             The Original                                             The result

OLD MOVIE FILTER

An old movie filter in real time?  Yes.

A popular effect but it takes effort to make it look good.  You need to add decent flicker, dust scratched, grain, a random bounce and even hairs...

This effect has to be seen to be evaluated properly.  The screen shots below just give you a flavour of the effect.

Apart from making your movie look like it was made in the 1930s this effect is also hugely useful for adding a 'film' look to your videos. For example, by only using certain effects like deinterlacing plus a bit of film grain, and by adding a colour correction filter to add a yellow tint to the picture you can achieve a typical 1950s-look to an image.

These shots show the old movie effect appiled to a clip on the left - you can see a scratch running down the frame, although the jitter and grain is hard to spot on a still image!

On the right you see the same shot with a colour correction filter added to give a sepia tint.  This now looks much more like a 1930's train film.

Blur and High quality blur

The Original...                                                And the blurred version...

The High quality Blur is better than the basic but needs a bit more processing power.  The degree of blur can be varied and key framed.

Soft Focus

     The original....                                               ...the soft focus result
 
This is an excellent effect for a wedding video as it give a nice romantic sheen to a scene - very similar to the effects applied to all women in the original Star Trek.

Motion Blur

A very sophisticated blur which can only really be appreciated on moving scene...

Slow Motion

Canopus software has excellent slow motion features.  Canopus were the first to introduce decent slow motion on their edit cards – and have now been followed by Matrox.  The RT.X100 now has decent field based slow motion.

Most slow motion effects just mix the fields to produce a smooth result where as Canopus also fades between the four frames around the current frame.  This can produce a more fluid result at low speed, although it does result in a slightly fuzzier image. 

Better slow motion is possible using other programs but is all renderable – particularly annoying if all you want to do is take and image  and slow it slightly to fill a gap!

Solid colour

Add a solid colour to a project.

Colour bars

Add standard colour bars with tone.  This may sound like a pretty boring feature but it is actually very useful!

Noise

Add video noise in real time.

Mirror

Mirror the image horizontally or vertically - very useful if you have crossed the line while filming!