Pinacle studio is a useless program – its like Movie Maker given a better look. Stay away.

If you are amateur and could not buy expensive adobe products, go buy Sony Vegas. Sony vegas have some share in the market for video editing – although their percentage is quite small in the professional industry. It is an all around video editing program.

Most professional use either Final Cut Pro (highest percentage), Adobe Premiere/After Effects, or Autodesk Products – all of which can drain your pocket.

Final Cut Pro is widely used but requires a MAC

Adobe Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop should be together when you buy one of them. Premiere is useless with effects, After Effects is not for video editing, and Photoshop is for sitll images only.

Autodesk Products have a very steep learning curve.

Hollywood – some companies in hollywood have proprietary software (a software that was created for ONLY their use and they are not available for anyone to buy).

How much can a grain or dark picture be improved?

Not much. Crap in = crap out. If its low quality then it always be low quality.

Yes it is a lot of work. People don’t want their video editors to have no sense of aesthetics and someone who cannot tell a story.

Producers don’t want to spend money on people who knows the “basic”.

Nobody is going to teach you while in the industry. They are already assuming that you know this stuff and won’t look in the internet for tutorials.

Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas or Cyberlink PowerDirector
and Adobe photoshop

Police may use Premiere, but not any that I know of. Every shop I know uses something on a Mac, or a version of Avid. I use Avid Media Studio with an entire plug-in package for forensic use.

If you are a beginner, one of the best packages you can get is the Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements set. Both will do almost anything you need to do.

Improving grainy and dark, or grainy dark, images or video, is a hit and miss operation. It is very dependent on the original image. Some can be brought back to life, more or less, and some are basically hopeless. The only way to know for sure which is which, is to try.

You may try AVS Video Editor which has many great functions. The features in the official site are below:
1. Direct Transfer to iPod, PSP, Mobiles and Other Portable Players
2. Supports Virtually ALL Video Formats
3. Burn Movie DVDs
4. Capture and Edit Video from External Devices
5. Edit Video and Enhance Your Movies
6. Create Slide Shows
7. Make Perfect Audio for Your Video Editing Tasks
8. Scene Detection
9. Convenient Video Editing Tools and Interface

There is the free download link:
Also, you can use Photoshop which may be difficult for us:

final cut is good for video, and adobe is good for photos