Restoring Movie Film
 

I am working on restoring old movie film and editing in Vegas 6. I was wondering if anyone knows any good techniques or plug-ins for playing with the color and look of the film. The color film is extremely red and I tried playing around with it for a while but I couldn't get it very good. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks.

Mitch

I would use this Virtualdub (not Vegas) plug-in. See also: VirtualDub MSU Color Enhancement.

How do you install it into Vegas? I cannot figure it out.

You don't. You use the plug-in with Virtualdub, as broadly explained here and here. Before that, you might need to convert your footage into a format readable by Virtualdub.

Mitch--

Have you tried using the "-" (that's a minus sign) color droppers in Vegas' color corrector? If you use those droppers for each of the color wheels, and select with each of them an area in what is supposed to be a white area in the image, then Vegas will basically do a white balance on your footage.

Um...you sure? I thought it was (right to left) white - grey - black

At least that's what I've been doing. (Except I usually skip the "grey" one)

Vegas?
 

I bought Vegas 6 last year and i was really disappointed. I'd use Avid Xpress Pro Hd....the color correction option is outstanding! It costs. But it's worth it.

If the film has an overall red or magenta cast, this is probably due to yellow dye layer fading. One of the problems in restoring old film (in terms of color) is that the three dye layers, cyan, maganta, and yellow, will fade at different rates. You need to use a color correction tool that will allow you to work with curves, and correct for each layer individually. Synthetic Aperture's Color Finesse 2 and the color correction tools that are part of Avid's XPress Pro and Media Composer offer the level of sophistication you need to do the best job possible. The Color Finesse 2 plug-in works with After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro 5.x, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid, and Combustion.

Avid's tools are indeed better for this particular purpose, however, since you have Vegas, Vegas curves tools will allow you to work on each channel specifically, plus you can install the Moosehill 6 way color corrector (free) for Vegas which gives some additional control.
If this is a one-off job, probably not worth the cost of purchasing and learning Avid Express, IMO

Good tip, if the Moosehill 6-vector correction works for, I agree, no need to jump into fancier software.

I do have Avid as well, I just haven't really taken the time to learn it. So you all would recommend that for color correction over Vegas? I also have After Effects and Premiere. I have options, just let me know which one will do the best job at getting me good colors. Thanks again for all of your help.

I'd be happy to answer any of you're Avid questions...i work on Xpress Pro HD what version are you operating on?