Agree 100%.
Some correction is mostly needed.

That is one of the many little jobs that makes the editing of 2.000++ stills and videoclips from the last holiday into a finished video an effort taking approximately 3 HOURS per MINUTE of the final holiday-video... (that seems to be my current rate)

But: every SECOND of this work makes FUN :-)))

Ivan123, it's gotta be the pictures on the left. However, on the second picture, the one with the lady, you might want to tone down the Red colors a bit.

You're right about the red. I filmed it with the camera setting 'sunset' which causes the abundance of red.

Another thing to reflect upon: the nature of 'natural' colours and colours on different types of screens. The pictures to the right are indeed the 'unprocessed' ones. Still, the blue tablecloth here is much closer to the natural colour, I mean by this the colour as I see it in real with my own eyes. However, if it looks like this on my tft laptop screen, I know from experience that it will not look natural on my CRT television. And vice versa. And I'm a bit bothered by this. Maybe there is some way of calibrating both screens?

This is why professionals have CRT TVs connected to their desktops. ;-)
I recently got a 32" LCD HDTV that uses the TV gamma for video testing. This is my video station: http://www.osnews.com/img/18375/ilo1.jpg Notice how different the two images/colors of the robot look between the PC monitor on the left and the HDTV on the right.

Alternatively, you can connect a second PC monitor on your PC, and tell Vegas Movie Studio 8 Platinum to use that as "preview monitor". In the preferences of that preview monitor, you can tell it to use a TV gamma, so what you will see in that preview monitor with the tweaked gamma is what your TV will eventually show too. This way, you have a way of testing the final cut.

Three things come to my mind when I see your set up:
1) wow!
2) Are those robots from Battlestar Galactica?
3) A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind. ;-))

Yup, Cylons from Galactica. :)
My desk is never clean. :D

First of all, you folks are way out of my league when it comes to this sort of thing. Maybe I just don't have a decerning enough eye, or maybe I am too lazy to really care if it is 100% correct. This has gotten me thinking though. Several of my videos look great on my computer monitor but then seem "washed out" when played back on the TV. Could this be the same thing you are talking about?

First, if you work on the video until it looks 'perfect' on your pc screen, it will look bad - uh, un-perfect - on the tv. Luckily, most modern tvs have several default colour schemes you can try out until you get that natural colour back. That's what I do.

Second, Vegas kind of gets under my skin: the weather is terrible here, so I can't do much else - besides babysitting my two toddlers and my wife ;-D
As I have had Vegas only for two months, I'm a fresh newbie, and you should consider Eugenia a 'Master Wizard' of the highest rank!

When Vegas loads a video in itself, it applies a TV gamma. But it doesn't save it with saturated-enough colors, so when you play the same file either on TV or even Windows Media Player, it won't look as good as it does inside Vegas. I usually go around this problem by:
1. Buying a TV and connect it to my graphics cards' Video-out port ;-)
2. By over-saturating the colors a bit. They will come ok after the final compression.
3. By applying the "studio RGB to PC RGB" (or something like that, I don't have the app in front of me right now) filter, so I force the app to use the TV gamma values when saving the file.

Eugenia,
A very interesting article and I'd love to know more.
1. Firstly, is Aav6cc more useful than "Sony Color Curves" ?
2. What exact effects that you are seeking, does this add beyond the "Color Corrector" ?
3. It seems that your overall aim is to boost the predominat color in the scene. Why not just manipulate overall contrast and saturation ?
4. What is the thinking behind your settings on the "Color Corrector" ... why set the lows bluer and the highs redder ?
5. Is it all just a matter of fiddling till things look nicer or is there some science that can be applied ?

"is there some science that can be applied"
I remember from my trial period that in Vegas Full, you can pull up some kind of colour histogram/-graph. (Video Scopes) The curve should be nicely spread, but often it is not, so then you can apply colour curves until you get a nice spread.
Unfortunately, VMS does not have this function. Look for 'using the histogram' in the online help of VMS.

ADB, it is not that much of a science, it is about the "look" you are after. I personally like the contrasty film look, that exploits the main character's in focus main colors and darken the rest of the scene, while not losing detail.

I find the Aav6cc easier to use than curves. Curves also play with highlights, so the two filters are not exactly the same. Each on its own.

>why set the lows bluer and the highs redder ?

Actually, I set lows on greener and highs on redder. This is because I decided that I want the dark areas to be greenish-blueish, while the face remains natural red. If I didn't do that, then the whole picture would have been either completely green or just too dark.

"When Vegas loads a video in itself, it applies a TV gamma."

Eugenia, do you have some reference for that? My experience indicates that Vegas plays the file as-is unless the user adds some processing. If you don't add anything to the effects chain then Vegas should be displaying the file exactly as it is with no changes at all.

Vegas uses its own way of rendering files in its program. Other apps use different decoders which vary in the color range. What you get with Vegas' playback is not necessarily what you will get with WMP. I have made tests and I have seen files playing fine on vegas with punchy colors, and then loading the same file on Quicktime or WMP and the result was completely washed out.

After these tests, I always oversaturate my clips, just so the final output is as good as it is when editing.

I would blame that on those players. I know Windows Media Player always makes wmv files look washed out no matter what software produced them. On the other hand, when i import media into Vegas and spot check a few pixes they have exactly the same RGB values as the media file.

It could indeed be the players' fault. But I tried VLC, Quicktime and WMP and they are all washed out. And what matters, is the final cut that the people will see. So, I have to over-saturate before I export.

That's fine, and quite understandable. I do the same. Just don't go blaming Vegas for something it isn't doing.

Erm, I don't remember blaming Vegas about anything in this thread. I blamed the players, or at least, the differences between applications.

You mentioned that Vegas adds a TV gamma when loading a file, which isn't true.

It might not have been correct, but it was not a blame. If anything, that would be a plus.