VS9 - Advice Needed: Badly Lit/Dark Video best method to fix

[KevinMeyer]

Hi All,

Can somebody please give me some advice:

I have some video footage that was taken at a wedding reception, the hall was dimly lit (as they always are at weddings to create ambiance with the candles and all).

Since I have a low end video camera, the footage I took of the speeches came out very dark (faces are difficult to see etc).

What is the best way, in Videostudio 9, to try and fix this? I understand that it will never come out perfectly but hopefully someone has some advice on the best way to try and make the footage usable.

I know VS 9 has got a video filter to lighten dark footage.

Is this the best way to fix the footage (as it does make the video noise a lot more noticable).

Or should I instead try fiddling around with the colour correction using hue / brightness / gamma / contrast etc?

After that I was thinking about adding a video filter to try and make the video noise less noticable (blur, comic whatever even though this will change the look of the footage), any advise on which filter would work best?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Regards Kevin.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Kevin

Try using the first two filters together.

Auto Exposure and Auto Level

It’s a case of trying a few options.

Without seeing the video its hard to say which is the best approach.


Good luck

Trevor