[Orlando Diaz]

What your wanting to accomplish is much the same for myself. Though I’ve learned a lot of the technical side of video and post editing, my cinematic prowess is lacking.
I try to watch lots of videos made by others to get ideas but they don’t always translate correctly when I attempt them myself. In many was it’s simply a talent but one that I fell can be learned to an extant through lots of practice and experimentation.

I started filming underwater when scuba diving and now I’m beginning to turn it to top side as well. A fellow diver who does the same starting producing some very good vacation videos while on his trips. He stated that what made a big impact on his style of filming was a book called “How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck”. He uses a GoPro and came up with some really cool, entertaining stuff.

I’ve been meaning to give this book a read myself. It couldn’t hurt.

Edit: I just bought it for my tablet so here I go.

[Orlando Diaz]

That’s basically how I’ve used them. I even found a preset which already has the curve luminance limits set to 16-235 as you demonstrated above.

I’ve used the curves FX a few times. I find that if I get the in-camera exposure right, the Level FX is usually gets the job done.

Thanks John

[Orlando Diaz]

I’m not too good with the Color Curves tool in Vegas but if it can bring back some contrast and DR it’s worth a try.
Thanks

[Orlando Diaz]

Well , my method of rendering the audio as a separate AC3 track then combined with the video in an mkv container worked fine. My media player when set to spdif/raw output provided DD 5.1 audio on my home theater receiver. The secondary 2ch audio track worked as well.

[Orlando Diaz]

I’ve done some researching into Onkyo home theater receivers within my price range and I didn’t see any that could handle AAC beyond 2ch. I think AC3 is what I’ll stick too. I’m still uncertain on my editing method for handling the multiple audio channels and the LFE.