Brightness Correction Post-Recording

[saabdriver]

Many of these Dash cams struggle to produce a bright clear image straight out of the camera. I have yet to purchase one as I try to find the right balance I am looking for. My question is to those of you who have editing software available for your video output files.
Do you find that a dark night-time recording can be helped in any way by changing the video playback properties to enhance what comes out of the camera? Perhaps the IR lights that are generally regarded as worthless can actually provide a spectrum of light that can be successfully enhanced? This is a complete mystery to me, maybe I'm watching too much CSI.

 

[rjgscotland]

Basically the answer is no I'm afraid. The compression algorithms in these cameras, especially those that use the h264 codec are quite aggressive and they tend to lose all detail in dark areas as a result - once something is dark enough, it's decided to just make it pure black. The sensor in my camera picks up more detail in the dark areas than is recorded to the file, as they can be seen on the screen during recording, but disappear in playback. For most cameras, adjusting the gamma, brightness and contrast afterwards of night scenes will only result in boosting the lighter areas and also tends to have a negative effect of making the compression artifacts stand out more.

Here's an example of trying to boost DVR footage. There's no real enhancement - it's just boosting the already visible areas and also the noise in the process. I realise this isn't a typical scene as I was using my DVR-007 down a tunnel, but I'll show a comparison with some road footage too later on.