Copy the footage to another layer and sharpen the heck out of the top layer. Then play with the opacity and sharpness of the sharpened layer so that it just overlays a little sharpness to the out of focus layer.

You can't get back something that isn't in the photo in the first place. You can try to digitally sharpen all you want but it will do little unless the focus is just barely off. This is of course why NASA spent millions to correct the light path of Hubble.

I have found that sharpening techniques work best on images that already have decent sharpness. It's more of an enhancer, not a fixer. Sorry for the bad news.

- Mark

Let me embarrass myself in hopes of saving you much time and money.

I spent days trying to fix a shot from a documentary shoot. It was an unscheduled interview in a dark room with a shallow DOF camera. I thought I would "grab" it while my camera assistant was busy on another shot. The footage was terrible to begin with, because of the low light - grainy and ugly from a lighting standpoint. After I taped the chair down, got good eye focus and started the camera, the talent , of course, scooted forward in his chair and now my focus was on his right shoulder but I didn't know it till I reviewed footage at end of day.

Spend hours with a program called Focus Magic that made some incredible claims. and also tried an image sequence through Photoshop CS3 "Smart Sharpen" set to remove lens blur. Both made marginal improvements above typical "Sharpen" filters, but still introduced artifacts that were as bad as the bad focus. Of course the shot was trashcanned as soon as I came to my senses.

My bet is - whatever you do to try and fix the shot will make it stand out as the weakest scene in the project and you'll feel ill every time you have to watch it. Toss it and reshoot if possible, or just punt. Here's a quick throw together of what I was able to achieve (realizing your footage probably isn't starting out with as many strikes against it as mine was.) You'll probably wonder why I even tried to save it in the first place. The ego is a terrible taskmaster.

http://www.powerplantonline.com/vegas/Focus.jpg

Larry

...but before you give up, try my suggestion of doubling the track, sharpening the copy, and adjusting the opacity. If the focus is only slightly off, it will work wonders, if it is way off it won't help much. If you are delivering on SD DVD or YouTube you may well get away with it.

I had a project several years ago where my wife took my camera to Ecuador for a backpack and educational supplies distribution trip. She gave the camera to her uncle to shoot. The footage I got was horribly shaky and out of focus. It was really important to my wife that I somehow make a video out of this. That was long before Mercali or the Deshaker script. I deshook the footage in VirtualDub and did the sharpening and opacity trick in Vegas and it came out surprisingly well.

Larry's experience is the same as mine. Involved "fixes" for bad shots usually introduce more annoying artifacts than the original problem.

For example, the footage is out of focus. The view instantly recognizes out of focus and says "it's a little blurry" and then moves on to focus on the content.

Now you try and fix the out of focus with some digital wizardry and introduce some strange artifacts that come and go. These artifacts are not something the average person has experience with (it's not like taking your glasses off!) and the viewer focus on them, trying to figure out what the heck they are and why they are there. And consequently doesn't become absorbed in the production.

Mark

Then there is this: Make the shot look like it was intentionally shot out of focus like a dream sequence. Or a sequence that does not recognize the person in the interview.
JJK

Yup, make it look as though you intended for it to be out of focus. Tint it blue, or do some film damage, if at all appropriate. Perhaps you can shrink it down into a picture on picture frame, inset into a photo of the house or building or park, or whatever.

Look at the following thread about half way down where I posted some settings for the Vegas convolution kernel filter, one of them enhances focus and another enhances detail. See if either of these might help.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=726138