Clear it up: Camera used backlight settings

[co1615]

Hello,
I have a video I took and had the backlight setting on causing the video to be pretty white near the brighter areas, windows, doors etc... How can I clean it up and make it so maybe it's worth watching? It's hard to make out people in it. The video is a birthday party.

Thanks,
Trent

[redwudz]

co1615, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:

Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.

Thanks,
Moderator redwudz

Generally, if you used backlight settings and the brights are completely blown out, and the rest of the video is dark, there may not may be much to recover.

A few important questions: What format is the camera video? This makes a big difference with the suggestions. At least tell us the camera brand and model or I doubt anyone can give you much advice. You may be able to boost the brightness of the dark parts, but that will probably result in 'muddy' video" of those parts with lots of contrast loss.

Is it fixable? Not really most times. You may be able to find some compromise settings between the very bright and the very dark parts of the video. If it's DV-AVI, you might try VirtualDub and some of the internal filters.
If you want to try more advanced VD filters, look to: http://www.infognition.com/VirtualDubFilters/ You may be able to put a filter over the overly bright windows, but the dark areas will still be lacking a lot of detail. Just something to try.

And welcome to our forums.

[co1615]

Ok, sorry and thanks!

It was HI-8 from a Sony handicam which is now converted onto a Walmart dvd. They appear to be .ifo, .vob and .bup files. Not sure if this is enough info?

[jagabo]

If the brights aren't totally blown out you might be able to adjust the video. It would be best if you posted a short sample. Use something like Mpg2Cut2 to extract a few seconds from one of the VOB files.