Brightening image

[Mean-Hippy]

Howdy,

I have these AVI family video that I took using my digital camera (Fuji Finepix S5200). Its an awesome camera photography but of course the video is horrible. The quality would give you guys a rash I am sure but hey, its my baby girl so its high sentimental value stuff and I want to preserve it.
One of the problem I have is that the capture is so weak that everything shot inside looks like it was filmed by candle light. I am completely ignorant in this matter but I reckon there is probably some image treatment software out there that will allow me to kick up the luminosity of the image. Any hints?

Thank you very much!

[redwudz]

You might try VirtualDub. It has quite a few filters available and works with most AVI type files. One filter I would try first is the 'Levels' filter. It can adjust the dark areas, mid areas and bright areas.

One problem you may run into is when a video's dark, there may not be much detail in the dark areas. When you brighten that up, it may appear 'muddy' with loss of detail and contrast. I would work with a copy of your video, named differently, so there is no chance of damaging your original.

VD also has a 'Preview' so you can play back the video with the filters in place to see how it looks. I prefer to use VirtualDub Mod because I like the way it handles audio better, but either version of the program should work for what you want to do.

There are also many, many other filters available for VD. One place to look is: http://neuron2.net/

After you lighten it, you may need to adjust the color levels, contrast, etc.

Experiment a little and see what you can do with some adjustments. All freeware.

[Soopafresh]

Post ten seconds of footage. You can post a file up to 2MB in size here. There are some good filters to help you in this.

example.avi