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I have a footage which was shot by a mobile phone. Phone was put on auto exposure, and mobile was not able to calculate exposure correctly in video.

First half of the video is exposed correctly, the second half is underexposed.

I am not able to fix the second half of the video. I tried some of the effects but all of them apply on all of the footage. So if I correct the second half of the video, the first half is over exposed.

I am using After Effects CC.

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  • Have you tried splitting the layer at the start of the overexposure point using Ctrl+Shift+D and then disabling effects on the layer trimmed to show the first half?
    – Gyan
    Mar 12, 2016 at 4:29
  • @Mulvya The exposure doesn't translate in a snap. It takes 1-2 secs to translate from normal to underexposed. Mar 12, 2016 at 4:55
  • Place the effects-disabled layer on top. Fully expand the corrected layer in the timeline and trim the top (uncorrected) layer till the exposure change starts. Maybe extend it a bit more and animate its opacity so that the transition is smoother.
    – Gyan
    Mar 12, 2016 at 5:04

1 Answer 1

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The under exposed section will never have as much detail in the shadows as the correctly exposed section, so you will never be able to make the second section look as good as the first. Having said that:

You need to duplicate your layer, then correct the exposure in the second half using level controls, or colour correction effects.

As you correct, switch the layer on and off, to compare it with a good part of the first layer.

Once the second half is looking better, then work on the transition point.

The second layer should be on top of the first layer.

Make some Opacity key frames on your second layer, starting at 0% and building up to 100% when the poor exposure section has fully begun.

You may find that a dedicated application like Davinci Resolve (the free version) is better for colour correction than After Effects.

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