<p>You can brighten the footage, but it's doubtful you'll get anything out of the footage. Odds are, the areas you see as black are clipped which means they'll just turn into grey when you brighten the footage.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-17T17:40:19.230Z
2015-11-17T17:40:19.230Z
KC McLaughlin
<p>My caravan was recently broken into. The good news is I have a surveillance camera installed and I captured and recorded the breakin. The bad news is the footage is so underexposed that it is almost black.</p>

<p>Is there anyway I can lighten the footage in Premiere Pro? Is premiere pro even the best software for that? I am not after high quality stuff, just lighten and cleanup enough to be able to identify the suspect. I have tried adding a brightness and contrast filter to the footage, and I can see he goes right up to the camera, but there is just not enough detail to even tell if he is male or female.</p>

<p>Any help would be appreciated.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-14T17:27:17.707Z
Of course, but I'd recommend denoising the clip first. Simplest way is using *brightness/contrast* tool, but this depends on your requirements.
p2or
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-14T17:54:32.907Z
Underexposure is the worst! The problem is that some areas are just completely black, so there's nothing to be recovered in any way ... and the noise is particulary bad, making it hard to make out anything in the video. See [my question here](http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/15276/how-to-deal-with-this-heavily-underexposed-footage). In this case, I was able to recover the video to some degree using a combination of Premiere's color and luma effects, but it still looks kinda awful. Maybe post a screenshot of your video, so we get a picture of what you're dealing with ...
MoritzLost
<premiere><after-effects><adobe>
possible to lighten almost black video?
BobbyP
# possible to lighten almost black video?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-11-14)

My caravan was recently broken into. The good news is I have a surveillance camera installed and I captured and recorded the breakin. The bad news is the footage is so underexposed that it is almost black.

Is there anyway I can lighten the footage in Premiere Pro? Is premiere pro even the best software for that? I am not after high quality stuff, just lighten and cleanup enough to be able to identify the suspect. I have tried adding a brightness and contrast filter to the footage, and I can see he goes right up to the camera, but there is just not enough detail to even tell if he is male or female.

Any help would be appreciated.

**Tags:** premiere, after-effects, adobe

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Of course, but I'd recommend denoising the clip first. Simplest way is using *brightness/contrast* tool, but this depends on your requirements.  
> **username_2**: Underexposure is the worst! The problem is that some areas are just completely black, so there's nothing to be recovered in any way ... and the noise is particulary bad, making it hard to make out anything in the video. See [my question here](http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/15276/how-to-deal-with-this-heavily-underexposed-footage). In this case, I was able to recover the video to some degree using a combination of Premiere's color and luma effects, but it still looks kinda awful. Maybe post a screenshot of your video, so we get a picture of what you're dealing with ...  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2015-11-17. Score: 0 | Accepted answer

You can brighten the footage, but it's doubtful you'll get anything out of the footage. Odds are, the areas you see as black are clipped which means they'll just turn into grey when you brighten the footage.


---

