Dark Video in MPEG2 - Converted From AVI Using TMPGEnc

[superJess]

I have an AVI that I produced from Pinnacle Studio 8 after editing the original AVI that was captured using my DC10Plus capture card. Both AVI files (original and the one from Studio) are the same brightness and look fine.

However, when I convert to MPEG2 using TMPGEnc the video looks significantly darker. On some video it's not that obvious, but on video that was dark to begin with it makes a big difference.

I've done this type of work before without these types of problems, but I'm sure there is some variable I missed. In TMPGEnc I *mostly* used the instructions here on the Configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality, DVD-compliant MPEG-2 here: http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html

The only real difference is that I changed it to create a System video+audio file because I just wanted a mpeg2 I could play on my computer for now. I plan to look into doing the real DVD thing (audio+video separately) later.

Any idea what could be causing the darker video? I might expect a little color change, but this seems too dark.

[celtic_druid]

Well other than the colourspace change, I can't really see how TMGPEnc could effect brightness. It could just be a playback issue.

If you want there is a modified version of MPEG2Requant that can change the brightness of MPEG2 without re-encoding. You would have to demultiplex the m2v first though.

[superJess]

Thanks. I can try that, but I would like to understand why it's happening to begin with. I tried to take screenshots of the same spot in the AVI vs. the MPEG... but I couldn't get a screenshot to work with MPEG by just doing a print screen. It would lose the video and just display an empty box when I pasted it. Weird.

[celtic_druid]

That means MPEG's are being played back via overlay and the avi's aren't. Like I said, playback issues.