VLC Brightness Tips: How to Adjust Brightness in VLC Media Player?

First of all, the answer is big YES! As you know, when shooting videos, sometimes it's inevitable to encounter poor or high light caused by weather, the machine itself, etc., all of which will lead to unnatural and uncomfortable brightness of the video. This situation also applies to downloaded movies, which undoubtedly affected the viewing experience. Don't rush to adjust the brightness of your monitor or screen, VLC Media Player can help you solve this problem.

VLC natively comes with a video effect filter that allows you to increase or decrease the video brightness, but it seems quite a few people have little impression of this feature. Well, next, I'll show you how to regulate VLC brightness temporarily, and introduce a smart method to apply and save the brightness effect permanently on a video. Let's get started.

Also Read: VLC Zoom Video | Flip or Rotate Video in VLC | Merge Videos in VLC | VLC Crop Video | VLC Pixelated Playback

Run VLC, drag the video you want to adjust the brightness to the player window. Or click on "Media" > "Open File" to play the video.

Go to "Tools" button on the menu bar and select "Effects and Filters" to open the "Adjustments and Effects" window. Alternatively, press the hotkeys "Ctrl + E" on your keyboard.

Switch to "Video Effects" tab, under "Essential" sub-tab, mark the checkbox next to "Image adjust". Here you can adjust VLC brightness. Drag the slider to the right to brighten a video, while towards the left to darken the video. You can also make the changes for Hue, Contrast, Saturation and Gamma as you wish.

When the brightness is satisfactory, directly close the window rather than click on Save button. Because clicking "Close" means the effects only work on the current video, it will be restored to default settings when you restart VLC and play another video; while clicking "Save" means it will apply the effects to all videos that will be played in the future, unless you turn it off again.

Follow the steps in Part 1 to enable the "Image adjust" and complete the VLC brightness adjustment. And here is the point: DO NOT close or restart the VLC player. Directly go to "Media" and select "Convert / Save" option. Alternatively, press the hotkeys "Ctrl + R" on the keyboard. On the pop-up "Open Media" window, add the video you want to permanently change the brightness under "File" tab. Then press "Convert / Save" button.

Select a desired format in the drop-down list of "Profile", then press the small "Wrench" icon to further edit the selected profile.

Switch to "Video codec" tab and head over to "Filters" sub-tab, scroll down and mark "Image properties filter" option, and click on "Save".

Now set a destination folder to save the converted video, at last, hit "Start" button to adjust video brightness permanently in VLC. If nothing happens, hit the "Play" button, and you will see the player's media position indicator is moving without video image, which means the conversion process is going on. After the conversion is complete, locate and play your converted video, the brightness effect should be applied.

I have to say that VLC is indeed a Swiss Army Knife in media player. As long as you dig into it, you'll find more surprises. Hope I have made everything clear in the post, if VLC brightness not working and there is any question or variance, feel free to contact me for help. See you in the next post.