I'm working on some video which was taken under hazy sky conditions, and need advice how to best correct the haze and improve contrast and colors without destroying the scene. The video was taken in the heat of summer in the desert southwest, where this type of phenomenon is quite common.
I'm working in Vegas Pro 15.0 build 416. Are there any effects or plugins which are specifically designed for this purpose? I'll post a sample clip this evening to show what I'm trying to achieve.
You'll have to experiment but I'd start with brightness/contrast, curves and unsharp mask. Might try a touch of black restore. Hitfilm had a vibrance filter that offered some help. BCC Magic Sharp. You might try some masking to isolate the luma or area you're looking to effect.
@monoparadox Yes 🙌
A UV haze filter can help during shooting.
Keep any post corrections light and natural looking. You can increase contrast slightly, but don't try to make it something it isn't.
Here is an example of the video I am working with. It was taken with a small Canon camcorder @ 1920 x 1080p 29.97 fps. A UV filter was used, along with a polarizer. Apparently, these were not enough to reduce the haze completely. 
You could try to brighten the sky somewhat (color curves Fx) and change the color to slightly more blue.
Really though that is a hazy sky and the camera lens is soft at the long end, so my suggestion would be to zoom in less next time if you aren't trying to show haze. Also try to shoot with manual exposure and white balance so it doesn't change during your shot (though the lens might automatically adjust exposure as you approach the long end if it is a variable aperture lens).
Apply an S-curve, when I did it however, it exposes a huge amount of compression noise, I suspect that's the youtube encode rather than your camera. The problem is when you go wide everything is overly saturated, S-curve and desaturate
You could try to brighten the sky somewhat (color curves Fx) and change the color to slightly more blue.
Really though that is a hazy sky and the camera lens is soft at the long end, so my suggestion would be to zoom in less next time if you aren't trying to show haze. Also try to shoot with manual exposure and white balance so it doesn't change during your shot (though the lens might automatically adjust exposure as you approach the long end if it is a variable aperture lens).
The camera I had didn't provide too much flexibility. This was shot 11 yrs ago, so the technology wasn't as advanced as we have now. I'll play with the S-curve, it seems to go magenta in the sky area, I'll have to see if I can balance it out.
VEGAS Effects has a dehaze filter.
I'll play with the S-curve, it seems to go magenta in the sky area, I'll have to see if I can balance it out.
I was also playing with white balance, meant to turn that off, it's likely what you see
Ignite Pro has a Dehaze also. It worked pretty good.
I think it's amazing -- wish we'd had it back when I was at Technicolor and Kodak.
Here is a free filter with which you can also experiment:
https://www.semw-software.com/en/autolevels/
@walter-i. I have to say that I can duplicate the results that I got with Ignite Pro using SeMW. Never thought of using it for that! It required slightly more tweaking, but the results were great.
Ignite Pro has a Dehaze also. It worked pretty good.
That's a really nice looking correction, I'm going to give that Dehaze a try. This was one of the worst-looking shots, but too valuable to toss out completely. The foreground areas didn't fare as badly fortunately.
Thanks very much for everyone's input. Some very good examples to work with!
Ignite Pro costs money. Unless you are going to be interested in the other plugins in that package, I would suggest you trying SeMW first. As @walter-i. mentioned, it's free. He also provided the link. It's not hard to use at all and the results (I have it also) compared to Ignite Pro were pretty close!
Link to Ignite Pro 5: https://fxhome.com/ignite-pro
Just for the sake of completeness, I would like to mention that there is also a full version of SEMW, - "Color Curves", which then costs something.
https://www.semw-software.com/en/colorcurves/
Color Curves, a great product! Don't forget Color Match too!