Hi

I shot some indoor footage with a camera with faulty gain control.

I need to lighten the footage. I was using quicktime - brightness and contrast, ,but then experimented with gamma correction and found that it also lightens the image.

Can someone please tell me what the gamma correction is used for? Should I use it to lighten dark footage instead of the brightness and contrast filter?

Also try the "proc amp" and raise the video level that way.
Mark

Different ways to do things.

Brightness and contrast IMO is the worst filter.

Gamma correction is one way.

The 3-way color corrector is another way. Drag the midtone slider up. You may need to tweak the "saturation" slider.

Another way is to use the 3-way color corrector. Drag the highs/highlight slider up, and tweak the saturation slider until things look right. This may give you the most natural-looking results. You can use the waveform monitor or histogram or range check (crtl+z... the mac equivalent of that) to help you out. You want the highlights just to peg the maximum. On the histogram, things will just turn red.

Here's another one from the old photoshop days. Duplicate your footage to a second layer and set the composite mode to multiply...then adjust the transparency level of the tip layer to suit your tastes.