Solved old video restoration

i have some old family video from the 50's that I would like to see if I can restore somewhat. some of the footage is quite dark. is there anything I can do with sony platinum 13 to fix some of this footage. also because of a lot of camera movement can I stabilize that to some extent. thanks in advance.
syl thompson

Hi Syl

Thanks for posting on the Forum.
I have an in-depth tutorial you can read and watch about how to use Colour Correction tools.
Movie Studio Platinum has most the exact same tools that Vegas Pro has in this department, except for Video Scopes. So you will be able to do quite a lot.
How to use Colour Correction Tools in Sony Vegas Pro

Stabilization is not so easy.
If there is too much movement, the Stabilization process has to zoom in on the video quite a bit, to create the illusion of it being still. If you are working with low resolution transferred video, it can really make a mess of things and make it worse.
The Stabilizer in Movie Studio is only basic, compared to more expensive programs.

To use stabilization, you need to apply the effect before you drag media to the timeline.
Step 1. Import all your videos into Movie Studio, so you can see them in the Project Media tab.
Step 2. Right-click the video you want to stabilize and select Media FX.
Step 3. Open the Sony folder and find Sony Stabilize - select Add/OK.
Step 4. From the drop down Preset box, you can select Light, Medium or Heavy, then press Apply.
Step 5. Drag to timeline and preview. If it doesn't look good, remove from timeline and right-click video in Project Media tab. Go back to Media FX and delete effect and start again with different settings.

Regards
Derek.

I doubt that there was family video available around the 1950's. I assume you are talking about 8mm movies. In this case you need to digitize these movies first if you want to be able to "fix" film footage.

There are a couple of ways to digitize old movies - (a) Using a projector project them on a white card and record this with your digital camcorder.
(b) Look for a telecine machine on Ebay and use this. A telecine machine enables capturing footage at the movie projector film gate (this is a much better method).

If your footage is indeed video this will be in analogue format which needs conversion to digital. I have a Thomson ADVC 110 which will do this without great problems. These machines are not expensive -however, your PC will need a firewire connection to accept the files coming through the ADVC