Post Processing Protune Video Footage

Graded Protune footage in Kdenlive.

Before color grading (just luma correction).

Are you asking yourself too: how do I set up my GoPro Black Edition or Silver Edition for filming under water? How do I avoid tinted images? How do I process my Protune footage shot with a Hero 3?

Over time, I will post here several blog articles covering these topics and I will show you the aces up my sleeve when it comes to post processing Protune footage. I'm in no way a professional, so please be forgiving. Hopefully, you can benefit from my posts. Of course, useful feedback is always appreciated.

In case you are working with Kdenlive to cut and grade your footage, then you should take a look at my post Effectively Working with 2.7K Video Footage in Kdenlive. In it, I'm showing you how to create proxy clips to speed up your editing work without having to wait all the time for the project preview or clip view to update.

But the main starting point is Helpful Hero 3 Practice Above + Below the Waterline: so what is this Protune and how do I avoid color faults and tints in my footage? While Protune allows us to switch off white balancing this all comes at the price of post processing your footage.

Next comes my post Grading of Hero 3 (Above Waterline) Footage. In it, you'll learn how to uncompress the tonal curve that Protune uses, so you get back good-looking video. I'll also show how to properly increase color saturation and sharpen the footage to get the decent GoPro look. If you want to create the Protune custom effect in Kdenlive for easy work with Protune footage, then head over to Kdenlive Effect: Protune.

When you have mastered this step, you are ready to do Grading of Hero 3 (Diving) Footage. In this post, I tackle the specifics of grading underwater footage. In particular, I show how to deal with underwater footage shot in difficult light conditions that are typical for coldwater freshwater lakes.