Uploading a clip is a really good idea because not all low-light situations are the same.

However, the general advice is this:

1. Do NOT ever use "brightness" controls. This raises the level of ALL pixels, washing out your shadows, and clipping the highlights.

2. Instead, start by trying to use the Gamma control in either the Color Corrector or Levels fX. This brightens the middle ranges while leaving the shadows and highlights somewhat intact.

3. However, Gamma can still result in not so good looking video. For really pro results, you need to learn how to use Color Curves. This fX lets you brighten each and every brightness level by a different amount. If you don't do this correctly, you'll end up "solarizing" the image, but if you don't make the curves too sharp and don't make them go "backwards," everything will look fine.

Finally, after you are finished making the video brighter, you'll probably find it is full of noise. Getting rid of noise is another topic and you can search this forum for dozens and dozens of posts on this subject. The Mike Crash Noise Reduction is certainly the easiest to use of all the various options (and it is free). The other popular, and relatively easy-to-use noise reduction option, is Neat Video.

[Edit] I updated the Mike Crash link. It worked when I posted, but then didn't work later. I think the link works if your browser has already been to that link before. This link should now hopefully work for anyone.

Good advice as always, John.

The Sony Color Curves filter can work some real magic with dark video, though as John says, a bit of noise reduction is often needed afterwards.

Go grab AAV Colour Lab at
http://aav6cc.blogspot.com/
Then play around with the levels control in the 'adjust' settings. This is a smokin' plugin that makes level controls very simple to do. I also use it to lighten the red and yellow channels to brighten faces while keeping the rest of the colour channels normal.

Some folks on this forum would disagree but here it is……

This is what I do if I don’t have the time to fiddle diddle

If the clip is overcast evenly , with little clipping then you need to add detail in the shadows first, so duplicate the clip and set the compositing mode to add

then set levels with AAV color lab

New blue Film Pro fx also does a good noise reduction or black crunch

wish he would make the color selection a push of a button rather than a drop down, would be much much faster.

Dave

If the clip is overcast evenly , with little clipping then you need to add detail in the shadows first, so duplicate the clip and set the compositing mode to add The words of a real artist at work! And I agree.

And yes to all the other stuff too. However, DO have the Scopes working so you can see exactly the results of what you are doing by a graph. Getting detail out of the gloom, without blowing or clipping perfectly good HIGHS is the real trick, assisted by watching them scopes. BUT the artistry should drive you to getting the narrative out of your GL2 - great camera! - output. Also, "gloom" in a church can be your friend too. Shadows and soft darks make for that sincere and spiritual feel.

Grazie

If the scene is merely underexposed, then playing with brightness and contrast should be sufficient.

More than likely, however, you will run into high dynamic range, where the highlights could be burnt out while the shadows are black.

The best you can do with burnt out highlights is darken them a little with increased contrast to eke out what is left of detail and to prevent futher loss in subsequent processing and display.

To soften the shadows in Vegas I have yet to find a solution as effective as the Shadow/Highlight effect in Adobe's products. I sometimes use the Fill-Light plugin from Radiance/VelvetMatter/VASST now included in Vegas version 9 or the Shadows and Highlights plugin from NewBlue, but both are disappointing in that the lifted shadows have poor contrast. They both appear to be global operations, distorting the tone curve to lift brightness of dark pixels regardless of the scene composition, whereas Adobe Shadow/Highlight is a local method in that it selects a shadow area and brightens all pixels in the shadow only, regardless of the brightness of individual pixels. This preserves the contrast within the shadow, and does not mess up midlights or highlights.

For minor correction or unimportant clips I use one or other of the two Vegas plugins mentioned above. For more critical work, I process the clip as an AVI file in Premiere Elements and then import into Vegas.

The Mike Crash link takes me to a page that slaps my hand and tells me I'm forbidden to go there.