Question: How to brighten/gamma_correct video during transcoding, not playback
 

I have a DVD, "The Road" specifically, that was created so dark by the DVD manufacturer that it is basically unwatchable. I understand their desire for a dark brooding video for this title, but this is ridiculous.

So I came up with the bright idea (no pun intended!) of ripping the DVD, adjusting brightness/gamma, and reburning it in a more watchable form. I know how to rip DVD's, seperate audio/video, requantize, adjust audio/video sync, multiplex, author a new DVD, burn it, etc. ... but what I don't know is how to adjust video brightness/contrast/gamma. I assume this would be done with "transcode". Unfortunately the manpage for transcode is just about as long as the novel War And Peace, and manpages aren't always the best when you're really looking for a tutorial (I *have* tried reading through the transcode manpage, but didn't find what I was looking for). I have done all my video work in the past from the commandline, but if there is some GUI app that has this adjustment ability, and I'm not talking about during playback only, I suppose I could break down and use that. But I prefer commandline.

Has anybody done this and can offer some tips? Thanks!

If mplayer can do it, which it can, then mencoder can make it permanent. I've heard that recently ffmpeg can also apply such corrections.

I don't use transcode and have not used it in ages, so I wouldn't know what it can do.

Thanks H_TeXMeX_H - I don't know why I didn't consider mplayer/mencoder. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place with transcode (or maybe transcode can do it, but I just haven't found that capability yet). Anyway, I will start investigating mencoder now. Thanks for the tip. I feel stupid for not thinking of that myself.