How to fix overexposure?

If you're willing to work in FCP and do 8-bit renders or exports, you can try Captain's Blowout Fixer, as someone else has suggested. (Do a search and it should come up.) It indeed allows you to swap the luma information between color channels, getting rid of blown-out levels. (The luma in each channel is often quite similar.) Unfortunately, it does not render or export properly in 10-bit space.

By the way, coming out of FCP in 10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 will only take your expanded HDV and re-format it, without discarding any information. But it is an unnecessary conversion (that could make for minor but probably insignificant round-off errors), if Color will take in HDV directly. And if it does, then it will expand it and convert it to RGB, then process it as such. Exporting out as 10-bit uncompressed might give better quality than ProRes, although often it's not possible to tell the difference between the two.

First I'd try Captain's Blowout Fixer. After all, it's free. I've used it with success to fix blow-out highlights.

here's a link:

http://pistolerapost.com/pluginz/

Patrick

Standard Disclaimer: I may receive some form of financial compensation for the above link (since there's a link on my free page to my commercial plugins - Captain's Blowout Fixer is still free.)

Actually, i had some overexposed footage that i took with my XLH1a because i forgot to set the ND filters in the camera, the image was really blown out but i was able to fix it on FCP with two simple filters under image control. Use Gradient Colorize and Proc Amp and that should fix it pretty decently, just play around with them and you'll figure it out. im pretty happy with my results.
i hope this helps

In an overexposed image the highlights are compressed or clipped and the shadows are lifted up to the midtone area. So the idea is to build up contrast in the highlights and bring the shadows back down and possibly reduce contrast there. I would use the Luma channel curve in the Prog In Room. Place a point in the curve near the top (perhaps around 90%) then drag that point down as far as it will go without making the image look worse. Then place some more point further down the curve and tweek them to get a natural looking contrast in the midtones and shadows. Sometimes adding some color into the highlights in one of the secondaries can give the impression that not all the detials are clipped, or perhaps adding some noise using the Color FX room will help the illusion of details in the highlights. Overexposure is much harder to hide than underexposure, but this technique should help. Good luck from Boaz. p.s. please mark this question answered if you feel that you have got the help you need.

Regards Boaz