How to Improve the Picture Quality of Your Video Footage

The problem with older analog video and cine footage is that although the picture and audio quality seemed good at the time it was shot, much of your material will appear to be over saturated with color and perhaps even grainy. However, all is not lost; all beginner level computer videoditing programs have some means by which your footage can be tidied up and brought back to life. You don't have to dig that far down into the menu system to see what utilities are offered to help you modify the color balance, brightness and contrast.

With footage that was shot using older analog camcorders, especially those that employed color pickup tubes rather than CCDs and recorded to VHS and Betamax tape, you'll notice a tendency for the pictures to have a red bias if they were shot under artificial or low light. It's even more noticeable if a person is wearing a red shirt or jacket. The color will saturate to produce an image that's streaky and ill defined. Unfortunately, you'll never be able to eliminate this completely, because this is what was recorded onto the tape, but features such as a color corrector will help you to redress the balance somewhat.

Adjusting the red, green, and blue picture elements : A television picture is made up of the three primary colors, namely red, green, and blue (or "RGB"). With red being the busiest, or highest-frequency, color on the light spectrum, it's the one that's most likely to break up at the recording stage. Too much red looks horrible on VHS and even Video8, but it can be reduced in applications such as Pinnacle's Studio editor, which offers a set of video filter tools that can be applied either to a single clip or to a whole sequence. As with many other programs, the selected filter (or "video effect" in this case) is dropped onto the clip, after which manual adjustments can be made. The R, G, and B elements of the picture can be manually adjusted using the built-in slider controls and checked on the program's preview screen. Other programs offer a similar utility.

Using the same principle, it's possible to make your images brighter or darker in addition to having control over contrast.

Rendering : One thing you'll notice is that you will probably have to wait while your PC or Mac does a "catch-up" exercise after you've applied a filter to a clip or range of clips. This is called "rendering" and involves the program knitting together the filter effect and the clip to which it's applied. Although you're rarely aware of it, the program actually prepares a composite of all the elements in the form of a new temporary clip called a "render file." This is stored out of sight on the hard disk and is called up by the program whenever you ask it to play back the sequence. The speed at which the program can perform this render varies considerably depending upon your computer's specification and the program itself. Once complete, the rendered sequence or clip can be played back smoothly, such as when editing with Apple's iMovie program. If a clip's properties are changed, however, a re-render will need to take place before the file is again complete and ready for playback.

Some higher end PC and Apple Mac computer systems are powerful enough to offer what's known as "real-time" rendering and preview, meaning that you don't have to wait for this to happen, it's all performed in the background.