No it’s very simple, just adding a little brightness first, then a touch of contrast to make the image crisp will improve things a lot. Try it, you’ll be surprised.

You drop the Brightness & Contrast filter onto the clip, then adjust its values in the effects control box. And yes, I add this filter to most clips to smarten them up. Try moving the sliders up to 20 for brightness, and about 12 for contrast (or just enter numeric values by clicking the zeroes).

This ratio – contrast at three-fifths of the brightness value – works fine for most things, but far greater values can be used very effectively.

(Colour balance isn’t usually so necessary. After years of adjusting colour balance in darkroom printing, I’m used to tweaking it to compensate for naff lighting and things, but it’s not a must, so don’t be too concerned about this.)

I loved using Premiere 6.5, it has a great nuts’n’bolts feel to it, more so than Pro 1.5 which I’m stuck with. Give this a whirl and post back.