Trying to clear up footage that looks "too bright"?

[SimonT]

Hi there

Wasn't sure of how best to title this thread and hope I've posted this in the correct forum, but anyway.

Shot some footage a while back using an old Sony 8mm Handycam.

Unfortunately, when I came to transfer the footage onto my laptop for editing, I found that that I hadn't quite got the "brightness" set right on the camera when I fillmed it, so some of the footage looks overexposed/too bright.

Is there a way of colour correcting/altering the brightness on my image editing software to try and improve the picture so it isn't so bright and blurry? I'm going to be using Corel Videostudio 12 to edit the footage, although I also have access to Magix Media Edit Pro if that's any better.

Tried doing some tinkering with Corel's colour correction feature, but being a complete newby, it just made the brightness look differant, as opposed to better.

Any tips? I've attatched an image below so you can see the problem.

Thanks in advance!

[aedipuss]

not much you can do for overexposed/washed out footage. unfortunately all the details are gone.

[poisondeathray]

You might be able to improve it very slightly, but a RGB screenshot doesn't show all the data (high and low ends are clipped when you take a screenshot, because of the colorspace conversion) . If your software works in Y'CbCr, you have a better chance of recovering whatever detail is in the superbright region (if your camera recorded any at all). If you post a small sample clip someone will examine it and make suggestions

[budwzr]

You're looking at "artistic" colorizing, at best. Something like Dodge/Burn. There's too many blown areas to ever have it pass for regular film.

[jman98]

This is outside the realm of Videostudio, but I will mention it anyway as an alternative. I've used the Tweak filter in AviSynth with a negative value (-35) for "bright" and a changed value for "cont" (I used 0.8 here) to make some improvements something like in budwzr's example, but you can't expect miracles. I sure wouldn't call what I got in the end as perfect, but it did look a heck of a lot less bright and it did restore some details.

[budwzr]

You can add bling to detract. And spice it a notch. Trick the eye into appreciating the white space. Brain sez...hmmm...smells nice and fresh.

[lordsmurf]

This is a lost cause.
Any attempts to make it better will overall just make it worse.

[jagabo]

A little more detail in the bright areas might be recoverable with the original YUV data. Gamma 0.45:

[sanlyn]

You might be able to improve it very slightly, but a RGB screenshot doesn't show all the data (high and low ends are clipped when you take a screenshot, because of the colorspace conversion) . If your software works in Y'CbCr, you have a better chance of recovering whatever detail is in the superbright region (if your camera recorded any at all). If you post a small sample clip someone will examine it and make suggestions

Agreed. We don't know how the original image was made. Once the video goes into RGB, there's no way to correct the original YUV video or to even know how much or how little is there. Playing with the screen cap itself will go nowhere IMO. A short clip from the unprocessed original is the only way to analyze what can be done -- if anything.

[budwzr]

This is a lost cause.

So according to Smurf, THIS is also no-good?

[jman98]

Homade????

Verily thou needest to use thy spell checker.

[budwzr]

Homade????

Verily thou needest to use thy spell checker.

No, that's in the vernacular of Podunk. Haven't you seen stuff like that?

I hope the OP got some ideas, good or bad, they're still useful.

[SimonT]

Thanks for the replies all.

Yeah, I realise it'll never look 100%, just wanted to see if I could make it look slightly less worse.

Someone asked me to post a video clip, so for what its worth, here's a breif clip in Mpg format.

CLICK HERE

(in case anyone is wondering, its footage from last years Peterborough Zombie Walk)

[budwzr]

Maybe swap some colors and make it like a "surreal" shot?

[jagabo]

Someone asked me to post a video clip, so for what its worth, here's a breif clip in Mpg format.

I think you reencoded that video. It has hard clipping at Y-235 (just a little noise above) so no bright detail can be revealed. You need to upload a non-reencoded sample of the original. In any case, in the best of circumstances, only a tiny bit more detail will be available.

[mgh]

HDRAGC plugin for avisynth can be tried as follows

invert().hdragc().invert()

A little known fact about the hdragc plugin is that it can be used for bringing out details in overbright frames, when used as above. (The plugin was designed to bring out details in dark areas. The invert() changes bright to dark and dark to bright)
Adjust the min_gain and coef_gain parameters for hdragc to optimum level.

[poisondeathray]

when using the hdragc technique, you have to either use the shift parameter, or use levels to bring Y' <=235 before applying hdragc , otherwise Y'236-255 will get crushed when you invert it before hdragc gets applied

[budwzr]

As a side comment, I had that same Sony Hi8 camcorder, and the best thing about it was the exposure wheel placed right at your thumb. So there's really no excuse for this kind of result, except that the camera must have been positioned and locked off during a darker time.

[SimonT]

Someone asked me to post a video clip, so for what its worth, here's a breif clip in Mpg format.

I think you reencoded that video. It has hard clipping at Y-235 (just a little noise above) so no bright detail can be revealed. You need to upload a non-reencoded sample of the original. In any case, in the best of circumstances, only a tiny bit more detail will be available.

Well I captured it to my HDD in MPEG 2 format, not sure how to paste a clip from this without the program re-encoding the video.

[SimonT]

As a side comment, I had that same Sony Hi8 camcorder, and the best think about it was the exposure wheel placed right at your thumb. So there's really no excuse for this kind of result, except that the camera must have been positioned and locked off during a darker time.

When I first started recording it was in a shady area and I was using the flip out LCD, those scenes looked OK. When I came to record them marching down the road, I was using the eye piece to conserve the battery. I did adjust the exposure wheel, and I thought it looked OK through the eyepiece, it was when I got it home and played it through the TV I found some of the external shots were over exposed.

[budwzr]

... I did adjust the exposure wheel, and I thought it looked OK through the eyepiece, it was when I got it home and played it through the TV I found some of the external shots were over exposed.

Makes perfect sense.

If you need help with editing, give a holler.

There's some video restorer people here, and if they're not chiming in, then it's probably a lost cause.

[jagabo]

Well I captured it to my HDD in MPEG 2 format, not sure how to paste a clip from this without the program re-encoding the video.

You can use Mpg2Cut2 to extract a short clip without reencoding.

[SimonT]

OK, here's a clip I've extracted, file size is a bit large though...

http://files.videohelp.com/u/216324/pbzclip.MPG

[sanlyn]

Lost cause. Hard clipping, from the lower midtones all the way up. The peaks at the right show no data, period. Nothing up there to retrieve.

[aedipuss]

campy version

[SimonT]

Lost cause. Hard clipping, from the lower midtones all the way up. The peaks at the right show no data, period. Nothing up there to retrieve.

Thanks for the reply, but I have absoloutely no idea what any of that meant?

[budwzr]

Lost cause. Hard clipping, from the lower midtones all the way up. The peaks at the right show no data, period. Nothing up there to retrieve.

Thanks for the reply, but I have absoloutely no idea what any of that meant?

Well, that's a histogram showing the color channels.

[budwzr]

campy version

Not bad!

[sanlyn]

Lost cause. Hard clipping, from the lower midtones all the way up. The peaks at the right show no data, period. Nothing up there to retrieve.

Thanks for the reply, but I have absoloutely no idea what any of that meant?

Shows hardly any video data across the length of the graph, and the the sharp, sky-high peak and cutoff at the right of all 4 channels (luma + colors) shows the camera's recording system was unable to encode anything above a certain brightness level (clipping). In other words, there's no data to retrieve. If you lower the contrast level (which I already did, in YUV) all you do is move the darker colors to the left and obscure dark detail (crushing), and the only thing the bright right-hand peak will do is move to the left (get darker). It will remain a skinny sharp peak, just darker.

Below is an image with interior lighting and a histogram showing color and luma data (adjusted to 16-235 for tv video). This hasn't been color corrected, and shadows need a little work.

[Attachment 14196 - Click to enlarge]

You've been working with video and photos and never saw a histogram?

[SimonT]

You've been working with video and photos and never saw a histogram?

I'm still a total newbie at this.