SETTING THE WHITE BALANCE OF A VIDEO FRAME

Disclosed is a method for setting the white balance of a video frame. The frame is first divided into sub-regions. Those sub-regions determined to be possibly dominantly monochromatic are eliminated from consideration, and the white balance is set by adjusting the color gain of the frame, the adjusting based on the other sub-regions in the frame. A sub-region is determined to be possibly dominantly monochromatic if the difference between its averaged color and each of a set of neutral reference colors is greater than a threshold. If the difference between the averaged color and at least one of the neutral reference colors is less than or equal to the threshold, then the sub-region is still determined to be possibly dominantly monochromatic if that neutral reference color, along with an illuminant type of a previous frame in the video, match closely enough to an element in an ambiguous reference color list.