Videos too dark, increasing contrast washes out specific areas

[Cyber Akuma]

Not sure if im posting this in the right forum.

I wanted to record some gameplay footage from a Playstation 2 game, so I hooked my PS2 up to a DVD Recorder then ripped the DVD to my PC.

I pretty much only have freeware tools at my disposal.

I used gordian knot just to produce a resulting d2v and avs file.

Thing is, the video had black borders around it (I can easily crop those out) and was very dark, some parts were practically pitch black, even when the dvd itself was played in my PC. But the DVD looks fine when played on my TV.

I tried messing with different birghtness/contrast levels in VirtualDub but the only way I gould get any detail to come out was to practically set to brightness and contrast at such a high level that the whole video looked washed out, and on top of that the biggest problem was white areas like text or 2d images coming out completely terrible, way too bright and colors and detail unviewable because of the brightness.

After talking with some friends they recommended I use the YUV->RGB PC Aspect option in DGindex and recommend I put the lines "ConvertToRGB32(matrix="Pc.601")" and "ConvertToYV12()" under the mpeg2source line in my avs.

It comes out looking MUCH better now, but its still just a little too dark. But now even the slightest brightness/contrast adjustment completely whites out the text and 2D areas.

Heres some comparisin screenshots. The top row is playing the vob directly in Media Player Classic and the bottom is playing the AVS. For the second and third image in both rows, the text that is in white and the 2D character portraits get discolored and blurred/washed out if I increase the contrast or brightness (fleshtones turn white for example):

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a207/Cyber_Akuma/Forum%20Hosted%20Junk/abipricompare001.jpg

Any ideas what I can do about this? I highly doubt such a thing is possible but if there somehow was a way to apply the filter to only the darker areas and ignore or dampen the effect on brighter areas it would probably work. Or is there a better way to do this?

[jagabo]

ColorYUV(off_y=-16)
ColorYUV(gamma_y=150)
ColorYUV(off_y=16)

[redwudz]

You could try the 'Gradation curves' filter with VirtualDub. https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/gradation-curves-virtualdub-filter-v1-45-t348488.html

I use it when the brights or darks are out of range to balance them back out. And I wouldn't use a computer monitor to rely on for tweaking adjustments for a video that would be shown on a TV, unless it's a calibrated monitor. Computer monitors have a different display format and display darker than a TV. Check the video on a TV before you delete the original file.

You can also try the ColoMmill filter for additional settings, but it may not work with all video types/color spaces:
ColorMill: colormill2.1.1.zip

[jagabo]

Use VideoScope() or Histogram() to examine levels.

ImageSource("abipricompare001.jpg", start=0, end=23, fps=23.976)
ConvertToYUY2()
Crop(720,0,-720,-480)
ColorYUV(off_y=-16) #get blackest blacks to zero
ColorYUV(gamma_y=150)
ColorYUV(off_y=16) #put blacks back at 16
VideoScope()

It needs more saturation after that big a gamma change though. Try adding Tweak(sat=1.5), or thereabouts. You should be able to get better results with the original video. Some blacks have been lost in the JPG image you posted.