Too Dark Video

Probably, this is the most often problem that happens to your video. As a rule, you get dark videos when shooting indoors in poor light, at night, or against the sun. Underlighted video lacks many details, the picture is almost completely black, only most bright objects (such as lamps, windows, lights) are visible.
Take a look at the image below. This is a screenshot of a video taken in a restaurant. The entire image is too dark to distinguish any details. Not only far objects aren't visible but also the close ones. The only bright spots are lamps:



We are going to brighten the video changing its contrast in order to make small details visible. To fix this video, we'll apply the Auto Contrast filter.

1. Open your file with EnhanceMovie by clicking

2. Drag and drop the Auto Contrast filter to the Preview area:



3. Voila! Immediately when you drop the filter into the Preview area, it is applied to the opened file. Auto Conrast is an automatic filter, which means it determines its best settings depending on the properties of the current file.

Compare the original and the enhanced videos:



You can notice that the picture got volume and perspective, you are able to see not only lamps but also the interior. The filter brightened up such close objects as napkins on the table while people at the bar became also visible.

Why this filter?
The Auto Contrast filter enhances highlights and shadows, making the dark parts of the frames darker, and the light ones lighter. It adjusts the entire movie using histograms of each individual frame. This filter is especially good at repairing videos with a big number of relatively small dark objects.

IMPORTANT TIP: every time you use the Auto Contrast filter or the Brightness/Contrast filter, don't forget to apply the Denoiser filter in the end. The Denoiser filter will greatly reduce the amount of noise that inevitably appears when brightening videos. To apply the Denoiser filter, simply double click its icon:

Make sure that this filter is located in the bottom of the Applied filters list. If it's not, move it to the bottom with the Down button. It should look like this:

Now our job is done!

See also:
Tutorial: How to fix the blurred video
Tutorial: How to repair the purple video
Tutorial: How to filter the interlaced video
Filters: Auto contrast