Video capturing in low lighting w/ Pinnacle Studio 9 av/dv help!

1.) The video I recored was in a low lighting environment... It was somewhat clear and dark while recording (You could make out people within the banquet). When I capture it to Pinnacle using their prop. hardware and software... the picture is darker. I don't know if it's my older monitor ('99) or if it's the quality of the software. I adjusted my adobe gamma settings to be really bright (on the monitor) but the picture doesn't get noticably better. I edited the scenes in Pinnacle Studio but I can't get a good representation of what's actually been edited because the playback hangs somewhat and while changing the color settings there's no indicator of how the video has changed. Basically the still (or hung) image n the right won't adjust when I move the briightness slider.

2. When I do manage to see some of my changes, the picture is really grainy. Will this get better once I render the picture or is this a, "What I see is what I get" type of picture for my DVD movie?

3. Is there an alternative way to save the picture? Like I said... you can make out the objects when played back within the MiniDV player but as soon as it's captured to my monitor, the playback is darker thatn what's being played back to me in the LCD.

 

Have you tested what the Colour looks like when watching on your TV set??
If it looks bad on your TV and the Changes you are makeing in Studio 9 aren"t haveing a effect on the Video then I would think that it is Probably a Limitation of the Software....
Studio 9 is Good for basic stuff but when it comes to more complex image enhancement and it"s Filters it doesn"t quite cut it....
If you are going to be trying to adjust the properties of your video like the Brightness and contrast ect you should get a More professinal Video eding program that has a wider variety of effects and Filters like Adobe Premier or Vegas Video....
I work with quite a Bit of Low quality footage and I am usually able to clean it up pretty good useing the Filters In Vegas Video ,It has literally Hundreds of filters you can use to change the look of the Video and Make it brighter or darker and clean up backround noise....
Sorry I can"t help much but I"m not a big Pinnacle fan.. good luck

 

I ran the Pinnacle updates and was able to see in real time the video edits I was doing.

I hooked it up to my T.V. and the video (even though it's in low light) came out ok. I've been reading a couple of other forums and the culprit seems to be my 5 year old monitor. It's gamma settings are different from a T.V. therefore it's darker. I was able to edit the video and see the results.

Things seem to be ok for now.
Will surely lt you guyys know if I run into other problems...

FWIW: Adobe Premiere 6.0 i have... It's too confusing and I surely couldn't see the real time video edits.

Is Vegas anymore user friendly than Pinnacle?