How to Adjust Shadows in Video

[cottage]

I have a couple of videos in which I'd like to adjust the shadows but haven't yet found a program that can do the job.

I have Photoshop Elements and it does an excellent job of lightening or darkening shadows or highlights of still images and that's what I'd like to do for a video.

I also have Avidemux and Proshow Gold and both do a good job of modifying brightness and contrast in a video but will not adjust shadows or highlights independently.

I have downloaded an evaluation copy of Adobe Premiere Pro but I can't find a way to adjust only shadows. In addition, it seems to crash frequently. Not only that but the current monthly rental cost is ridiculous (US $20.99/month!) particularly since I only have a small number of videos that I want to adjust.

Can anyone suggest a (free or reasonably priced) program that will adjust highlights and shadows in a video similar to the way that Photoshop Elements works with photos?

[poisondeathray]

davinci resolve . There is a free version

[smrpix]

Resolve is terrific. In Premiere Pro the Lumetri color corrector is also excellent.

[jagabo]

AviDemux: try the Y Gamma Adjustment in the AviSynth Color Filter.

[cottage]

Thank you for the suggestions.

Here is the result of my testing.....

AviDemux
This worked but was a little awkward.
It was necessary to input a new numerical value for the Y Gamma color filter, then play the video to see the effect.
It took several attempts to get an acceptable result.
Even so, the adjustment lightened everything not just the shadows.
Maybe I didn't do it correctly but the result was better than the original video but not perfect.

Davinci
This "sort of" worked too but was very awkward.
After loading the video and clicking on the color adjustment, it was necessary to move the color curve to change the effect. (infinite possibilities!)
This changed all the colors and once the desired effect was achieved on the shadows, the red color had shifted.
My original input was 640x480 but the only output that I could find was 720x480.
The output file was also four times the size of the original.
The result was less good than AviDemux.
The program was much more complex that I needed for this task.

Adobe Premiere Pro
The current version is only available as a very expensive rental so I managed to snag an evaluation copy of version CS4 which was (at one time) available for purchase.
This program was also much more complex that I needed for this task.
It also crashed frequently so I couldn't get any result.
However, I found a YouTube video describing how to adjust shadows in a video. (I believe it was for a more current version of Premiere). It seems to have exactly what I was looking for i.e. a "lighten shadows" slider that only changed the shadows. The resulting adjustment in this YouTube video was perfect. However, I'm not going to pay $US $20.99/month for the program.

Summary
I may not be using these programs correctly but AviDemux gave me reasonably good results at no cost.
I'm going to continue my search to see if there is a simple and free or cheap program that has a simple "shadow adjust" slider fro videos.

Thank you again for the suggestions!

[jagabo]

If you want something with an interactive preview try VirtualDub2 and its Levels filter. You can adjust the black level, white level, and gamma all in one filter with real time feedback.


[Attachment 51181 - Click to enlarge]

[cottage]

If you want something with an interactive preview try VirtualDub2 and its Levels filter. You can adjust the black level, white level, and gamma all in one filter with real time feedback.


[Attachment 51181 - Click to enlarge]

The adjustment works as well as AviDemux. However, unless I'm doing something wrong, VirtualDub won't let me save the modified video as MP4. It will save as avi but my original MP4 video is 2521KB, the avi output is 514,701 KB. Not exactly a good choice for the web.

Again, maybe I'd doing something wrong.

[jagabo]

Are you using VirtualDub or VirtualDub2? The former doesn't come with ability to ouput mp4. The latter does. On the Save File dialog use the Save As Type pulldown near the bottom to select mp4. You'll want to select a video codec first though.

[cottage]

Are you using VirtualDub or VirtualDub2? The former doesn't come with ability to ouput mp4. The latter does. On the Save File dialog use the Save As Type pulldown near the bottom to select mp4. You'll want to select a video codec first though.

I'm using VirtualDub2.

I've used the following panel:

[Attachment 51183 - Click to enlarge]
I chose both selections that said MP4.

In both instances I get the following error:

[Attachment 51185 - Click to enlarge]

Am I doing something wrong?

[jagabo]

You need to select an audio codec too.

[cottage]

You need to select an audio codec too.

There is no audio in the input video file. Audio/Compression was grayed out so I selected Audio/No Audio and that worked.

Thank you for your help. It looks like this will be a bit easier. I'll continue to play with it to see if I can get good results.

Thank you again!