producing DVD for TV and Computer Drives

[sdsumike619]

Not quite sure how to ask this question, but here goes:

I'm making music instruction DVDs once again. So I shoot the video, drop it into the computer, open it up on a timeline in Vegas. And I have it being shown on my external monitor (a properly calibrated TV)

Now I'm looking at the TV, everything looks great, color, brightness, everything....and I"m looking at the preview window in Vegas on my COMPUTER monitor, and it's soooooo much darker.

If I make the necessary adjustments to make it look good on a computer monitor, then it gets waayy to bright and washed out on the Television screen....

What is the fix here? Customers buy DVDs for playback on both televisions and on their computers.

[xavierdemon]

You didn't specify what monitor you had, I would suggest that you need to calibrate your monitor. I have a similar issue with my camcorder's display being very bright and darker on my monitor, however the DVD's I've produced look fine when played back on DVD players (with no brightness adjustment).

[sdsumike619]

My computer monitor is just a 21" "Sun Microsystems" CRT monitor,, nothing special...How do I calibrate IT? I mean , I know how to calibrate my television pretty well,,, I guess I'm just kind of lost it seems when it comes to this issue...

[xavierdemon]

There are quite alot of programs that will assist you in calibrating your monitor and quick search will help you, I myself use Adobe gamma utility which is included with Photoshop. Even just using the advanced setting in the Display properties might help to set the brightness of your monitor. Most monitors also have OSD (on screen display) setting which will also allow you to change the appearance of your screen. As with all things reading your manual will help you.

[holistic]

Calibrate monitor :
http://www.praxisoft.com/pages/products.wiziwyg.html
NTSC analog television handles black differently to digital (MPEG2)
http://www.signvideo.com/dv-black-level-dvd-7.5-ire-0-ntsc-part-2.htm

You may need to do seperate encodes (disk authoring) .
One for TV and the other for computer based. Or ask your customers what applicaton they use for playback on the computer because some play back darker than others. eg: WMP seems to play back darker than most.

[BJ_M]

xavierdemon answer is incorrect .. see your posting of this question and don't double post .