Brightness, Contrast and Gamma levels

Sidecar2 wrote on 7/10/2006, 9:45 AM
When importing a ripped DVD, the video often looks flat. I find I need to add the Brightness & Contrast and the Sony Levels filters and boost the contrast and gamma.

To get good blacks for a 720p WMV file on a computer, a particular file ripped from a DVD looked best with a +.24 contrast boost (left brightness alone) and a Sony Levels gamma boost of 1.137.

What other tricks to you all use to tweak video to look its best? Is there a "standard" adjustment you have found as a good place to start?

Thanks.

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 7/10/2006, 10:29 AM
Mike Crash noise filter to reduce video (real fine grainy) noise.

JJK
GlennChan wrote on 7/10/2006, 11:16 AM
When ripping a DVD and making a WMV out of it, you should apply the "studio RGB to computer RGB" preset in the color corrector filter. Technically, this is the right thing to do since you want to convert the levels.

If you want to step outside that... (somewhat shameless plug coming....)
see this video excerpt from my training DVD with DSE for one approach:
look for the video excerpt
Grab the preset file here

Basically you can use the color curves filter s-shaped to add contrast, and the secondary color corrector to put saturation back into the highlights.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/10/2006, 12:05 PM
Generally, you shouldn't have to make gamma/contrast/brightness corrections from an existing DVD. If the original DVD looks fine, you should get exactly the same video when you place the video into Vegas and then create a new DVD from that. I would start by making a test DVD that is nothing more than a copy of the existing DVD. You should see no gamma/contrast/brightness difference at all. If you do, then you need to make sure you are using standard project settings.

I have used video from hundreds of DVDs -- mostly ones I had already made, but I've used a few snippets from other DVDs as well -- and have never seen any shifts or changes from the original.
GlennChan wrote on 7/10/2006, 12:24 PM
In this case sidecar is going to WMV, not DVD... so a levels conversion would be appropriate.