making blacks "blacker" or darker...
 

Hello,

I'm wanting to make the black colors even darker in a few interviews that I just filmed. I have a black background that didn't disappear quite enough and I'd like to make this darker. I've heard editors use the term "crush" or "crushing" the blacks. Is this what I need to do? And if so, what does "crush" mean and how do I accomplish this in Vegas. Note: I'd like to make the blacks darker without changing the overall brightness of my shot. Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I greatly appreciate everyone's help and feedback on this forum.

Jerry

One simple thing you can try is clicking the track FX button and picking "Sony Color Corrector" and then in the drop down menu try "Computer RGB to Studio RGB" and see if that makes any difference for you.

There is a black-crush FX I believe, but I've never been happy with the results from it. Very possible I am just using it wrong, hehe.

That's probably the black restore filter. It has its uses, such as making sure that dark greys really are black, but, when using it to crush blacks it can look bad. "Bad" meaning that you have a sort of banding effect where something that should be smooth abruptly transitions from dark to black. Hard to describe, but you'll know it when you see it.

Much more useful for crushing blacks is the Sony Color Curves filter. Grab the handle that's indicated by the blue arrow and move it down and around - voila, you're crushing the blacks. The waveform scope is very handy to help you figure out what range you're pushing down into black.

Crush means pushing the black to make it 'blacker than black'.* Got yr waveform monitor turned on? A 'normal' video waveform will have a smooth variation between the top (white) and the bottom (black). Moving the waveform down toward black will create a hard line at zero.

Alternatively, you can 'clip' your whites by pushing them into a hard line at 100 (or higher with potential risks down the road).

The color correction or curves filters will give more precise results but you may want to start with Brightness and Contrast--it may do exactly what you need.


*actually, that's an analog term that really doesn't apply anymore.

How are you judging that your blacks aren't black enough?
What is your final delivery medium?
If it's a DVD, then you should be making adjustments based on viewing the video on a properly calibrated video monitor as a computer monitor has a completely different gamma and can not be trusted to accurately represent what you're viewing.