Jay is correct of course.

I have experimented with your "dark" congregation shot and have got, I think, not too bad a result.

I ;ve tried to keep the links of the FX chain to in-house FXs. Si far this is now 10 FXs.

If you want my results and the veg you are more than welcome. I'm working in VP9c.

Grazie

"So far this is now 10 FXs"
10 FX's!! Wow. I'd love to learn how to do this stuff. Can you share your techiques with us? Or is there some resource (maybe online?) that can teach us how to do these kind of fixes?

...Jerry

Rather than levels, I simply copy the clip onto a new track, directly above the original. Then set the compositing mode to ADD. Next adjust the opacity as necessary.

I've achieved some amazing results with this technique, although rendering can take a while.

TFL! I keep forgetting about that ADD option! . . I've just now used it in combination with my treatment. Woah . . . . .

I've got "shirt whites" on the gentleman. And I think I've got all the different skin tones in place too.

I have the original UNDER my FX Event, using the TFL approach, and have the original set back 17%.

Grazie

All you need is Color Curves. They can achieve the same outcome as Adding or anything else. I've even used them to bump up saturation. The other tool I'd bring to bear if needed is Mike Crash's free Noise Reduction plugin. There's no way to emulate temporal noise reduction in-house and without that you could be missing out on a lot.

Adding or stacking images is a great trick but only if they are different images of the same object. With this technique the astronomers are able to do amazing things but they are taking 1,000s of images of the same object then aligning them, then Adding them. Because the noise is random it cancels out, the non random image Adds and hey presto, as the wanted photons add up you get your picture!

The good news though is we do have lots of images of the same thing (more or less) simply because we're taking video. Problem is it's quite likely they're not of exactly the same thing. If they are then Vegas has an in-house tool that does the same as stacking them, Motion Blur. So long as nothing moves in the frame this is a great tool for wrangling noise and other problems as well.

Now if there is a bit too much motion for MB to satisfy your needs then you can bring in the big gun. Temporal noise reduction. The smarts in that align the elements between frames, do the noise reduction on the aligned images and then put the bits back where they belong. This plugin actually does a lot more than that but hopefully you get the idea. It's helped save many an underexposed shot for me.

Bob.

All you need is Color Curves.

I got 3 of them!

Grazie

Grazie,

Yes, I'd love to have a look.

I'm using Vegas 8.0c, however.

Jay,

I did what you said, and it definitely helped.

I'd love to keep working with it though to see if we can do even better.

I have it in 9c . . .

But I can send you the "results"? - Doing email thru' this SONY forum. Reply and I'll attach back what I got.

Grazie

"I got 3 of them!"

One should do it all. That said the Color Curves FX is not an easy beast to wrangle at all and I can easily understand why you might use three even when one would do. My personal biggest gripe is not being able to enter node values.

Bob.

One should do it all.

- Awfully kind dear boy, awfully kind . . . . And speaking as a "one" I do it as often as I can.

That said the Color Curves FX is not an easy beast to wrangle . .

- Really? Strange, I find 'em dead easy?

I can easily understand why you might use three even when one would do.

- I don't think you do.

My personal biggest gripe is not being able to enter node values.

- Nah! Just push 'em about till I get a look that looks good. Bit like pushing paint around on a palette really? With a weather eye on the scopes too! Wouldn't want you to think I don't apply any scientific approach to this?

Grazie

I find the curves tricky to use, but when you understand what they're doing they are amazingly powerful.

For a 'quick' fix, I like to stack and Add.