Faint Video

[Jean-luc Oudin]

You can try the Color Corrector plugin. Apart from the color wheels (which you may or may not need) there are four other controls at the bottom for Saturation,Gamma, Gain and Offset. Try each control individually to get a feel of what you can do with them. You’ll have to spend some time trying differents combinations of those settings until you find something close to what you want, just don’t expect miracles.
You can also try this : Duplicate your video track and then change the compositing mode of the top track to something like Multiply or Hard Light, I really couldn’t tell you which one will work if any. The end result of Compositing modes is somewhat of a guessing game. Little side note, if you actually find one that works but you find it’s too much, try lowering the Opacity of the top track , it should tone down the effect.

[Tim Foxx]

Thank you for the response. I will give your suggestions a shot.

[Tim Foxx]

Well the Color Correction does work better then just Brightness / Contrast. I tried the Composite suggestion as well, but that was still just so so. I guess the film is just too faint to be worked with properly, but the Color Correction has at least got it to where you can get a good sense of what was shot and is somewhat watchable. Thanks again for the tips.

[John Rofrano]

Try this:

1. Open up your Video Scopes in Vegas Pro. (View | Video Scopes (Ctrl+Alt+2)
2. Select the Waveform monitor
3. Add the Black & White FX to your video at 100%
4. Add the Levels FX to your video
5. Adjust the Input start until the waveform just touches the zero (0) line on the waveform monitor
6. Adjust the Input end until the waveform just touches the one hundred (100) line on the waveform monitor. (your image is now using the full range of luminance.)
7. Turn off the Black & White FX (uncheck it or delete it)
8. Add the Color Corrector FX and boost the Saturation a bit and make any color corrections on the color wheels
9. Add the Color Curves FX to the video and adjust the top and bottom to make a nice ‘S’ shaped curve. (this will gently crush the whites and blacks giving you more contrast while leaving the midtones)

This should get you close to a normal image. You may have to go back and readjust the levels, etc. It’s an iterative process bouncing back and forth between the three tools but those should be able to correct any fading in the image. You can also add points to the Color Curves tool for more control or adjust the individual color channels separately. That tool alone should be used anytime you think brightness and contrast. It is far more sophisticated than the B&C tool.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Tim Foxx]

Thank you for that detailed post. I gave that a try and it did offer more control and gave me a bit more detail and contrast. I think that’s as good as I’m going to get it, thank you all for the great help.