How to adjust the brightness and contrast of a video in Sony Vegas ?

[kwanami]

I have downloaded two videos from youtube

I want to lighten it up , darken/lighten the color .

Should I use brightness and contrast FX tool or Colour Correction Tools ?

Could anyone please teach me how to adjust it ?

Here are the videos

https://mega.co.nz/#F!2851jZZI!LwtDPrKWJc9g-py_ffR47A

Thanks

[ SOLVED ]

[smrpix]

I downloaded your first clip and brought it into Resolve Lite (free, BTW.)

First -- there is nothing technically wrong with your file. It is a good, full-range broadcast legal image.

So any changes you want to make are a matter of personal taste. The skater is slightly underexposed, which is normal as a compromise against white ice.

I pulled up the shadows a bit here with the luma curve tool. Vegas has something similar -- color curves. But you are going to have to do this on a shot by shot basis without destroying the blacks -- which are fine, and the whites -- which are also fine as-is.



There are a LOT of Vegas color-correction tutorials on the web.
https://www.moviestudiozen.com/free-tutorials/sony-vegas-pro/526-colour-correction-too...sony-vegas-pro

[jagabo]

If you find those videos too dark or lacking in contrast maybe your graphics card and monitor aren't set up correctly.

[LMotlow]

I agree with msrpix, you should correct the YUV luma levels first for the fujitv 720p video. As he says, some of the camera shots will need slightly different filter settings -- even HD broadcast is seldom uniform from start to finish. Like jagabo, I see that smaller clip as far too dark, and the colors are wrecked. I would avoid "Brightness" and "Contrast" filters. They're too crude and hardly ever give you what you want. The 720p has too many compression artifacts -- 2000kbps is just too miserly for 720p action video. If you do manage to raise the dark levels in that clip, you're going to find a lot of noise in that area that will be difficult to clean.

I'm not sure what you want to do with the better video, which is the SBS 1920x1080. If you were thinking of authoring this to BluRay disc, 1920x1080 at 50p is not valid for BluRay. You can keep 50p if you resize to 1280x720, which would be BluRay compliant. I did that, and found a number of compression artifacts but not anything that can't be fixed. There are some soft edges, color bleed, some halos, which I didn't try to fix.

The 1080p doesn't need more contrast. Luma is okay, but despite the muddy look of the colors, most chroma exceeds RGB 255. Using typical brightness and contrast filters would be the wrong path to take. What you should learn to use are filters to correct gamma, midtones, and saturation of specific colors. Especially, the image below shows that the video is too blue. I suspect a color matrix problem somewhere, but even though it looks blue (skin tones look bad, almost grayed out with cyan) red is not only turning violet but the bright end is too extended.

The image below is frame 19051 from the 1080p video. If it doesn't look blue to you, you need to calibrate your monitor. The blue cast is obvious, and so are the inappropriate saturation and midtone levels.



Below, the same frame 19051 after correction with Hue, gamma Levels, and curves filters. Brightness and Contrast were not used:



Here are three more frames from the same video using the same filters with slightly different settings to suit each scene:

frame 100:


frame 958:


frame 21689:


I made these corrections in Rec709 RGB in AfterEffects. The first filter I loaded was a Hue filter to tame blue saturation and turn the color spectrum toward Red/Yellow. But few people can afford AE or the ColorFinesse plugin that comes with it, so I interpolated all the settings to Avisynth and VirtualDub filters (ColorMill, Levels, and Curves) and got pretty much the same results. Vegas has similar tools. Yes, color balance is of course a personal preference. But some things are just not correct, such as the crushed darks and burned-out color in your 720p original.

You also have to learn to use histograms, pixel samplers, and a few other tools. There are many web tutorials on histograms and what they tell you about an image. A site that I was referred to from videohelp several years ago is one that I found to be very helpful. It's a Photoshop site that talks about camera histograms, but keep in mind that the principles of color and tonal contrast for still photos and video are the same.
Understanding histograms Part 1: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms1.htm
Understanding histograms Part 2: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms2.htm

[kwanami]

Thanks smrpix the tutorials are useful

Thanks LMotlow It's too difficult for me...........You are professional Cameraman ?

Anyway , thanks LMotlow , thanks smrpix , you are a warm persons

[LMotlow]

Thanks smrpix the tutorials are useful

Thanks LMotlow It's too difficult for me...........You are professional Cameraman ?

Anyway , thanks LMotlow , thanks smrpix , you are a warm persons

I'm a hobbyist like yourself, not a professional. I started in video where everyone starts, with no idea about what I was doing until I did lots of reading, observing, and practice. Like others, I learned much from this forum and several members who no longer visit here. I'm still learning. Free internet tutorials are very helpful, including many free Photoshop and AfterEffects color correction sites, and tutorials for Vegas and other products I don't use.

DaVinci Resolve Lite is nice, but too complicated for beginners. But Vegas can also get complicated as you learn more. Give yourself time.

And, you're welcome.


The color pictures in the link to the web tutorial given below aren't rendered very well, but it's a lesson in how to use the Vegas Levels FX filter instead of brightness and contrast: http://users.wowway.com/~wvg/tutorial-1.htm

I corrected the basic color balance using a simple Hue control, which you can find in most apps like Vegas, Premiere, AfterEffects, etc., and even Avisynth and VirtualDub. General Hue filters don't always work in all situations, but it was effective in this case.