Videos with black backgrounds

[tiedie]

I have a video that has an all black background, I've tried encoding with MediaCoder and MeGUI (both 1280x720, x264 2-pass, 5000bit rate) the colors in the encoded video look dull and the black background isn't black its like gray almost.

When I select "Quality-based" in MediaCoder the background looks fine but the file size is 30MB per 16 seconds and on a 5 minute 16 second video...we are talking huge, plus it crashes MPC anyway


Anyway to fix the gray looking backgrounds?

[poisondeathray]

Are you sure it's not a playback problem?

vmr9 renderless will usually give you this problem. In MPC, if you switch the renderer to overlay mixer it will usually fix the levels. You could also use another player like kmplayer

[tiedie]

I just tried several options in MPC and the encoded video still looks the same, like I said the original video is fine, bright colors, black background, the edited and saved (uncompressed video) also looks the same as the raw video and also when using Quality-based the background is fine but I don't want to deal with a 630MB video that is only 5:16 long...

MediaCoder gave me great results when using the same results on a Team Fortress 2 video I made of course there are no solid black backgrounds in that video but still I can't believe I can't figure this out


edit, video has the same dull/gray background in WMP also, VLC etc...

edit2, here are 2 shots, top is the original uncompressed and the 2nd is the encoded video (its from a game called Audiosurf if you were wondering)

[poisondeathray]

Are you recording uncompressed or fraps? It should usually be full range (0-255) from a PC game, and this will be unchanged if you are using megui.

Expect the colors to be less vibrant because you are going from RGB 4:4:4 to YV12 4:2:0 , so there is less color information, but blacks should still be black (this indicates a levels issue, again usually a playback issue)

Post your avs script , a sample of your source, a sample of your encoded video. You can use vdub to cut a small sample of your source (set to direct stream copy for video & audio). There are many free hosting sites eg. mediafire.com, megaupload.com

[Blaze77]

I have had the same problem no matter what encoder or player i use, the dull grey or overbright looking encoded videos, and yes the source files look fine

What i did was go to Graphic Card settings put brightness to 0% and contrast to 100% that made encoded videos look much like the source.

When i updated new graphics card drivers the settings changed a bit, now 40% brightness 65% contrast seems to match the source quite nice

Try playing with those settings till you match the look of your source


For me its, "Nvidia Control Panel" "Adjust video color settings"

[jagabo]

How are you viewing your videos? That can make a difference in the black levels. Your second image definitely has a brighter black level (18,18,18 vs 1,1,1 in the first image). That's about the difference between PC levels and TV levels. The video might be encoded properly but your playback software isn't displaying it properly.