Crop/Merge black bars and greyish area?

[Nitrius]

I got a 4:3 PC monitor, resolution 1600x1200. When i watch widescreen movies, i got two area, top and bottom, which is black, and under that a grayish area, but smaller bars and the movie. Like this:

-----black-----
-----black-----
-----grayish/black-----
-----the movie-----
-----grayish/black-----
-----black-----
-----black-----

If need, i can post a screen.

Am looking for a way to merge the black and grayish area together, without touching the movie, so it stays in the right aspect ratio and nothing disappear outside the screen, something like dragging the black bars over the gray area so it all seems black. I've tried The KMPlayer, and it got a feature that almost does it "Fullscreen(Overscan)" but am looking for an inverted method, instead of the movie going above the black bars, i want the black bars to go over the movie. Kinda sucky explanation, but hopefully someone understand. I don't mind all the black bars, what is irritating me, is the difference in the color, i want it all black and then the movie.

Is there any video player that can do this? And how?

[jagabo]

The grayish bars immediately above and below the movie are part of the video. You need to adjust the black level of your player (or your grahpics card's video overlay feature) so they appear just as black as the other black bars.

[Nitrius]

You know how i can do that? Got an ATI 4870 graphic card, and the current software playing tool i got is The KMPlayer.

Edit: Found a setting for brightness and contrast(and hue, red, green, blue etc..), so i went back and forth with those two settings, and it seem i've found the rigth spot.

Thanks! =)

[jagabo]

Did you find those controls in Catalyst Control Center or in KMPlayer? You should use CCC (Avivo Video section) to calibrate the system, then use KMPlayers to fine tune particular videos when necessary.

[Nitrius]

Found them in The KMPlayer. What's the benefit of using the Avivo section in my CCC?

Edit: The Avivo settings doesn't seem to do anything with the video in The KMPlayer at all.

[jagabo]

Found them in The KMPlayer. What's the benefit of using the Avivo section in my CCC?

Avivo will do it with the graphics card's hardware. KMplayer does it with the CPU. If the hardware settings are too far out of whack KMPlayer will not be able to fully correct the video. So it's best to have the hardware close to the right settings.

Here's an 10 second MPG file with some gray patches for calibration:

levels.mpg

On a properly calibrated system the patches marked 16, 12, 4, and 0 should all be perfectly black. You should be able to see that 20 is slightly lighter than black. The patches marked 235, 239, 251, and 255 should all be full white. 231 should be slightly darker. You should be able to see a difference between all the patches in the row from 16 to 235.

[Nitrius]

KMPlayer doesn't use a lot of CPU here, and according to Rivatuner, my GPU is getting used while playing movies in KMPlayer, though the effect from avivo is not applied, they are applied to Windows Media Player though. And so far the settings for Brightness and Contrast in KMPlayer haven't caused any problems for me, and it managed to blend the grayish/black bars.

Running Vista Ultimate x64 SP1.