Flash videos look darker after encoding

DVinci · Member Joined: 10 Jan 2002 Location: Canada

I encoded some videos to FLV with Riva FLV Encoder 2.00.0004:

480x360
deinterlace
29.97 fps, 768 bitrate
112 audio bitrate, 44100 hz, stereo

I watched them on a few PCs, and they look fine, but on mine, they look slightly darker tham the original avi files (DV codec) when I play them in Riva's player or browser. I brightened up the original video, encoded that, and it looked better.

My specs:
P4, 2.4ghz, 1gb ram, IE7, Flash9, Sceptre LCD monitor, nVidia 6600GT (drivers updated 10/22/2006, unsure what version #, - info via dxdiag)

I'm curious as to why my PC shows them differently. Could it be my specs or screen setup?

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Maybe the player you were using to watch the original AVI was using your graphics card's video overlay feature and the FLV player wasn't. Video overlay has separate brightness and color controls from the desktop.

You can easily check for this by playing the DV AVI file in two players at once. Only one player can use video overlay so the other will display directly to a window on the desktop. If the two look different you know it's an overlay issue.

DVinci · Member Joined: 10 Jan 2002 Location: Canada

Thanks jagabo. It was an overlay issue. I had the gamma settings (in Ctrl Panel) lower than the default (1.0), it made everything look darker, including the flv. The avi in WMP wasn't affected.