DivX - White is playing back grey!

[muzicman82]

I've encoded two videos at 8000kbps on the Extreme Encoder setting using 2-passes. The purpose is for near HD quality display on a 50" plasma. I used the native resolution of the plasma (1360x768). My render was sent to VirtualDub from Premiere Pro 2.0, using DebugMode FrameServer. Everything went fine. The videos play fine, and with the except of my problem below, they look great!

My problem is that white doesn't really appear white. I'm playing back with VLC Media Player, but the same problem exists with DivX Player. When I playback, and take a screenshot where I know had a pure white background, it lifts off of my screen being #D6D7E5. If I import the video back into Premiere Pro, it looks like it should, and white is pure white. So it seems that my encoding is fine, but players don't interpret the colors correctly?

I'm using DivX 6.4, Premiere Pro 2.0, and VLC Media Player 0.8.5. Any ideas?

[jagabo]

Your graphics card's overlay settings could be causing the color shift. Open your AVI file with VirtualDubMod. VirtualDub does not use overlay so you'll be able to rule out overlay problems if the colors look OK there.

Both Divx and VLC have color controls that can be applied at playback -- but it seems unlikely both would be off the same way.

[muzicman82]

I have an nVidia Geforce 6800GT.

Can I set VLC to not use overlay?

[jagabo]

Can I set VLC to not use overlay?

Not that I know of -- but you can run two instances of VLC. Since only one device at a time can use overlay, one will get it, the other won't. See if they look any different.