sorry about bombarding the forum with questions. this is my first real project using vegas and i'm still learning.

QUESTION 1: i have a few under-exposed shots and wish to fix them so that they look better. i found 3 plug-ins which might be useful to do this: BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST, COLOR CORRECTOR (by adjusting GAIN), and HSL ADJUST (by adjusting LUMINANCE).

i was curious what method you guys think is best to lighten up a dark shot. it was during a wedding reception. it was evening, there was some lighting around, but apparently not enough in certain areas. it is important that the picture quality doesn't change much. i don't want grainy video.

QUESTION 2: what exactly is the difference between pre-rendering and just plain rendering?

thank you all for your patience!

i was curious what method you guys think is best to lighten up a dark shot.

Put a small light on the camera to lighten the room! (seriously)

what exactly is the difference between pre-rendering and just plain rendering?

Physically, nothing. They both create new files on the hard drive. Prerenders will tend to be a bunch of small files while rendering will be one large file. However, you can lose the pre-renders much more easily doing normal editing. When you want to render a section AND make sure you don't have to render it again, I will either "Render As..." or "Render to a new track".

thanks Edward. i hope you're not working TOO much overtime because of me :)

next time i definately will be more prepared as far as lighting up the place. but since i'm stuck with these few shots the way i shot them. is there a "preferred" method of correcting the luminance or brightness or whatever?

thanks.

Take a look at BillyBoy's tutorials http://www.wideopenwest.com/%7ewvg/tutorial-menu.htm. Hopefully something in there will help you get started.

1- I prefer using the color curves for boosting brightness. To boost contrast and brightness the same time, make an "s" curve with most of the curve concave down.

2- If you run problem footage through Virtual Dub first there are some filters in it to reduce video noise.

In Vegas you can use the median filter to do this, but it takes FOREVER to render. It's something like 100:1...

glen: i'll try it. thanks.
edward: i put the link you reccommended on my "favorites" and will definately read through the relevent tutorials. thanks.

Does Virtual Dub do something that vegas cannot do? I have heard about this program a lot but have never tried it. Is this a program I should try and learn?

yeah but some dude (cant remember the link now) is making a shell for Virtual Dub plugins so u can use the plugs in Vegas.
VD has a great stabiliser :)

It's Satish Kumar
http://www.debugmode.com/pluginpac/frameserver.php

Satish's WAX plugin will accept DirectX filters and VDub plugs.

How about some links to those plug-ins:-)

It was indirectly given above. The root url is http://www.debugmode.com. You can find all of the tools Satish has provided with the various links on that page.

Edward,
I don't want to get wrapped around the axle over this...but the link I provided was based on the assumption that Peter was refering to the link to Satish's Frame Server....

That's fine. But it IS an indirect link to all of the rest of Satish's tools as well including WAX. Wasn't trying to discredit your link in any way, shape, or fashion.

Thanks all, Guess I needed to look closer.

(Update) I looked on his pages and didn't find the great stabiliser that Peter talked about.

It's NOT there. The tools on Satish's site gives you the ability to either use VDub tools direct on the timeline OR frameserver to VDub for processing there. The stabilizer tool is a plugin for VDub that you will have to locate elsewhere.

Some of the places to look for filters that will work in WAX include:

VirtualDub.org (http://virtualdub.org)
Donald Graft Filters (http://neuron2.net/)
VirtualDub Filters (http://www186.pair.com/vdub/virtualdub_filters.html)
Harry's Filters (http://thepluginsite.com/)
Deshaker Filter (http://biphome.spray.se/gunnart/video/deshaker.htm)

Thank you Guy for all the links!

Hey Adi,

I find it more useful to use the Levels setting instead of a combination of Brightness and Contrast settings.

Levels adjusts the Birghtness and the Contrast of the image at the same time, allowing you to brighten (or darken) a shot while maintaining the relative contrast levels of the image.

This saves you the hassle of balancing separate Brightness and Contrast settings in two different plugins/sliders.

Justin