Encoded AVI plays back so bright.....

[sdsumike619]

I have some video I'm editing for playback on the web. Using Vegas 6, I used the studio to computer rgb filter and then increased the gamma just a bit to make the picture a bit more vibrant than it was. I've attached what I'm looking at on the timeline in vegas, looks perfect to me.

Problem is, when I go to encode the timeline to an avi file, I playback that encoded avi file on the Real player and that nice yellowish gold tone of the guitar appears almost white, basically the brightness of the picture is taken up several notches and looks awful. I can't figure out how to get a screen capture of what it's showing in those programs.

As I'm writing this, I put the questionable AVI file into vegas and it looks perfect, just the way it looked before I encoded it...

Does anyone know why the real player, and also the Quicktime player are playing back this AVI file so darn bright?

[sdsumike619]

copied the avi to another computer on the network, played it in its real player and the playback was normal, it wasn't as crisp becaue it was an LCD display as opposed to the CRT I'm using, but the colors and brightness were basically correct. So now I'm isolating the problem to my computer only - however I don't know what the problem I need to address is..

Edit: Encoded the avi to WMV, played it on my computer and the other one.. Looked fine on the other one, but with mine same problem with the brightness so it's doing it with AVI files and WMV.....

[jagabo]

Adjust the brightness of you graphics card's overlay settings.

[sdsumike619]

my graphics card? hmm... would that be the problem if the video is looking just fine on the vegas timeline? In other words, Vegas doesn't utilize the graphic card?

[sdsumike619]

Oh I found the controls in the nvidia control panel for video color settings -you were right!
So should I just adjust the settings in there to make the video look like what I see on the timeline?

[BJ_M]

i remember fixing that same video for you over a year ago ....

i think i redid some of your audio also

[jagabo]

So should I just adjust the settings in there to make the video look like what I see on the timeline?

Someone who knows Vegas will be better able to answer this. I don't know if Vegas compensates for the difference between TV and computer monitors. Your sample looks washed out on my monitor -- the black level is to high.

I've calibrated my monitor with QuickGamma (for normal desktop computing) and I have the desktop and video overlay settings the same. That means the desktop black level is too dark for video. But I don't watch video on the computer monitor, I use the computer's s-video out which I've calibrated for TV display.

[sdsumike619]

yep you've helped me quite a bit... by the way, different video, same musician... Apparently, this whole time, my video card's overlay settings were @#%ed up and this is what has been causing me all this grief about trying to get decent looking video.

I do have one question. Now that my overlay settings are correct, all I did was apply the studio to computer rgb filter and raised the gamma just a little bit to make the picture come to life a bit. Is this "acceptable" ?

[sdsumike619]

jagabo,
when you say my sample looks washed on your MONITOR, do you mean computer monitor or an NTSC monitor? Because on my computer monitor it looks just the way I want, the background is black and the shirt is just a tad lighter than black...

I calibrated my monitor with adobe gamma as best I could... Someone else want to comment on the picture I posted and how it looks on their COMPUTER monitor?

[BJ_M]

looks washed out to me .... i would not apply computer rgb or raise gamma

[sdsumike619]

damn damn damn.... so if it looks washed out for both of you, then that means my monitor isn't calibrated right even though I thought it was...... So is adobe gamma worthless? Maybe I should try that quickgamma?

[BJ_M]

isnt it supposed to look more like this?


though on this cheap laptop --- hard to tell....




this is reduced gamma and added saturation

[sdsumike619]

yeah that looks great actually!
I went back into the overlay settings and discovered the non-video controls weren't on default, turns out things were too dark. When I hit default, I instantly saw that my image was indeed washed out and yours looks spot on! I'm using this quickgamma program now to see what I get

[BJ_M]

adobe gamma is off anyway - off in adobe land

[sdsumike619]

ok well I used quickgamma as best I could, my eyes are hurting now... it's set at 2.35, tried to follow their directions as best I could.... Your image looks good and mine is washed so I guess that means it's right

[jagabo]

Yes, BJ_M's image looks good on my computer monitor. I have QuickGamma set to 2.35 too.

[sdsumike619]

Ok, question:
Should (or should not) an encoded NTSC DV AVI file look the same (as it did on the timeline before encoding) when played back through real player or windows media player?

If it should look the same, then some settings are off somewhere. Because after setting the overlay settings on my video card for both image and video to their defaults, and then using quick gamma to set the monitor correctly, the encoded AVI is back to looking lousy again.

Man I wish I could get a handle on this...