Imported movies are too dark?!

Hi there, I haven't really used imovies much, but today I'm just importing some footage into iMovie, the footage is really really dark, you can't see the detail very well. When its played back on the camera is lovely and light, just like when it was shot.

Can someone help me and explain why this is and if there's something I can do to rectify it.

Camera btw is a Panasonic NV-DA1 digital video recorder which uses mini DV tapes.

Thanks all!

have you tried brightening the screen

Thanks for your reply, yes the screen is ok, everything on my screen looks fine and when I put it to max brightness the imported footage looks rubbish still.

It looks lovely and perfect viewing it on the camcorder, but when I import it into imovies it looks terrible!

Wait untill you play it back on your TV before you say its too dark. The same thing happens to me, especially with my HP monitor. Once the footage gets back to where its supposed to be played (on an NTSC TV) it looks great again.

Thanks for that bluesmudge I will try that.

But what happens if I just want to archive it or use it for web or other applications/uses, will it always be that dark?

Small giraffe said:

But what happens if I just want to archive it or use it for web or other applications/uses, will it always be that dark?

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It could be dark because the camera got the exposure wrong.

Del said:

It could be dark because the camera got the exposure wrong.

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Hmmm I don't think so, as it does playback on the camera all perfect.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I'm feeling very dissappointed with imovie!

Could it have something to do with the Mac colour gamma? I know that Windows boxes, who don't have the same colour gamma as we use, dominate the world in terms of market share and that a lot of things are made taking into account only the bigger market share... So what I am saying is that if one of my photos looks just right to me and I send it to a Windows-using friend, I'll get a lot of "the picture is pretty dark" if I'm not careful...

Maybe you have to tweak your monitor settings? Although that would be lame for the rest of your Mac experience...

The thing is that you would have to make one test just to see how the clip comes out on the web. That's the only thing I can think of, other than maybe borrow a friend's PeeCee and download a clip there, see what the video looks like, then you'll know for sure.

Small giraffe said:

Hmmm I don't think so, as it does playback on the camera all perfect.

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Manys the time i took a photo on my digital still camera where it looks ok on the cameras LCD only to see on the bigger screen that the exposure was off!

Well in the past that is, cos i never take bad photos anymore lol