Improving lighting in video (dream the impossible dream)

[jgg]

Hi from Berlin,

I've been using ULead (now Corel) PhotoImpact to work on photos and VideoStudio for videos. I'd rank myself an advanced beginner on both.

PhotoImpact does all I want with photos, but I find VideoStudio less than optimal, so I also have several free video converters / editors: Handbrake, VidCoder, VideoToVideo, and X-WinFF. I also bought version 11 of Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, but after I got it (several years ago) I was so intimidated by its complexity that I've never even used it.

I've added "dream the impossible dream" in parentheses to my title because I'm afraid what I'm looking for simply doesn't exist, and may actually be technically impossible, but here goes anyway ...

PhotoImpact (I have version X3) has a setting (under Photo -> Light) called "SmartCurves". From a "simple person's" (like me) point of view, it's like a miracle. Just click it, and the lighting of most pictures is improved dramatically. It's not always perfect: Some shots need a bit more fooling around, and others are simply irreparable, but the results are generally pretty good.

I'm looking for a program (I won't say "money is no object", but I'd gladly shell out a hundred euros or more) that has the same or a similar feature for videos.

VideoStudio enables you to brighten the vid and make some other color corrections, and VideoToVideo does too, but the results are nowhere near as good as what PhotoImpact can do to a still shot.

Does such a "wonder tool" exist?

Thank you

[pandy]

Check section https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/video-editors-advanced - some of them are pro and free (for example DaVinci Resolve or Lightworks ).

[Cornucopia]

Unless you are working with a locked-down shot (on tripod) with little to no subject movement, artistically appropriate "relighting" is a gargantuanly arduous exercise (in futility?).
Most compositors do it by creating an empty virtual scene (in 3D modeling app) that closely matches the real scene, and then overlay adding the lightshine to the real in a compositing app.

Of course, if all you want is scene-specific global adjustments, that's much easier (relatively - still requires cutting scenes and tweaking).

Scott

[jagabo]

Most editors, even the free ones, have automatic brightness/contrast, color, and white balance filters. But you generally don't want to use them because they lead to pumping as the scene changes. For example, a dark shot will be brightened up but when someone in a bright white shirt enters the frame the picture will get darker, then when the white shirt steps out the scene brightens up again. You also get pumping at scene changes if one scene is dark and the next bright, or vice versa.

[johnmeyer]

I've used Photoimpact since I first met the developers in 1990. I've edited over 100,000 photos with it!

Photoimpact's Smartcurves is similar to HDR (High Dynamic Range). In fact, if you really want to get the most out of PI's Smartcurves, you can create a custom curve in the HDR dialog and then use that in the Smartcurves dialog.

So, since Smartcurves is similar to HDR, that's what you need to look for in a video editing program.

I also use Sony Vegas. If you "Google Sony Vegas high synamic range HDR" you get this:

Sony HDR

You'll find some Magic Lantern tutorials. Perhaps that will do what you want.

Finally, I don't know if Smartcurves is available via PI's batch facility, but if it is, and if you can save a preset and use it, then you can export video from Vegas as an image sequence, process that via a batch operation in PI, and then re-import the individual images as a video. The only problem is that while most things in Photoimpact are really fast (which is one reason I've stuck with it all these years), Smartcurves is really slow.

[jgg]

My thanks to everyone who's answered so far.

I tried DaVinci Resolve but was told I didn't have an appropriate CUDA driver or something like that.

I have an nVidia Quadro FX1800 with the latest drivers in a Lenovo ThinkStation S20 with 18Gb of RAM running Win 7x64, and though it's certainly not the newest system in the world, it runs stable, smooth, and (for an old guy like me who remembers computers with 8mb RAM) quite fast.

Anyway, at least Resolve appears to have uninstalled pretty cleanly.

I'll try to take a look at the other suggestions when I have some time. Again, thanks very much.

[pandy]

My thanks to everyone who's answered so far.

I tried DaVinci Resolve but was told I didn't have an appropriate CUDA driver or something like that.

I have an nVidia Quadro FX1800 with the latest drivers in a Lenovo ThinkStation S20 with 18Gb of RAM running Win 7x64, and though it's certainly not the newest system in the world, it runs stable, smooth, and (for an old guy like me who remembers computers with 8mb RAM) quite fast.

Anyway, at least Resolve appears to have uninstalled pretty cleanly.

I'll try to take a look at the other suggestions when I have some time. Again, thanks very much.

https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-legacy-gpus

Resolve 12.5 require CUDA 2.0 and seem your card not support anything above 1.1 - try instal older version of Resolve (perhaps 12.3).

[jgg]

Resolve 12.5 require CUDA 2.0 and seem your card not support anything above 1.1 - try instal older version of Resolve (perhaps 12.3).

OK; thank you.

[SameSelf]

The BMD DaVinci Resolve forum has a sticky at the top of Legacy nVidia cards no longer supported. Resolve is not a good program unless you are running modern, powerful systems. You will be plagued by hardware issues, playback issues, decoding issues, encoding issues, and on and on. Many people are sucked into it because it is free (what is not to love, right?), but bear in mind that the program is really a loss leader to get you to purchase BMD hardware. I only recommend Resolve to seasoned editors who are looking to upgrade their tools (i.e. spend some $$$) versus beginners. It took me a long time to feel comfortable in Resolve, and that was after years of editing video in Premiere Pro and After Effects. Hardly a week goes by when I am not troubleshooting some sort of advanced technical issue in Resolve. However, with all that said, if you have the bandwidth and the aptitude to obsess over very technical aspects of video and the hardware to go with it, then Resolve is very powerful. For example, a few months ago I shot an outside event and clouds moved through the shot. I had no choice but to do two different grades within the single shot (not an ideal situation). Fortunately using Resolve's keyframing tools, I was able to seemlessly transition from the sunny grade to the cloudy grade and back again. IOW I dreamed the impossible dream. I am nearly 100% certain I could have achieved the same end result using Adobe tools. But don't be fooled. None of those tools are "one-click wonder tools" like PhotoImpact (never used it). And I don't know if any analog to PI exists in the video world. But if one does, I am all ears.