Player's color profiles?

[juhah]

Here's the problem:

I used HueyPro to calibrate my monitor. However, all the video players seem to ignore the corrected colors so they look bad. I have tried to correct the video color in the display driver settings (ATI Avivo in my case) and also the monitor settings with no success. I noticed that the HueyPro creates a new color profile that windows uses.

How can I set for example Media player classic to use this color profile? Or is there any other way to correct this problem?

[guns1inger]

My guess is that the calibration program does not affect the overlay settings, and these are what is causing the difference. Go into your drivers, find the video overlay settings and make sure they are set to something very neutral. Failing that, you should be able to tell the player not to use the overlay.

[jagabo]

As I understand it there are three independent color subsystems in Windows:

First there are the profiles that are shared by different programs. These requires that a program be written specifically to use the profiles. Any time the application goes to put something on the screen it is translates using the selected profile. There can be many color profiles in the system so the application can adjust for different devices (typically used to assure colors on the screen will match different printers). But these color profiles do not effect the colors used to display other things drawn by Windows or other programs.

Second there are the Desktop color controls. These are accessed via the graphics card's setup applet (Nvidia Control Panel, Avivo Control Panel, etc) in the "Desktop Color Setting" section. This system uses a lookup table built into the graphics card and effects everything in Windows (window borders, window backgrounds, text, icons, etc.) except video. This is invisible to applications -- they don't know the colors are being adjusted by the graphics card.

Third is the Video Overlay color control. This effects only video in programs that use Video Overlay. Ajustments for this is located in the graphic's card's setup applet under Video Color Settings. This is also invisible to applications except in the sense that a program chooses whether or not to use Video Overlay. Only one program at a time can use Video Overlay so if you play a video in two players at the same time the colors will likely be different because one player will use Video Overlay and the other will use the Desktop for display.

Then, of course, any program can do its own color adjustments before giving the data to Windows to display. Most media players include these adjustments.

I'm not aware of any media players that use the first mechanism to display video. You will have to adjust the Video Overlay color controls manually using a calibration video.

[juhah]

My guess is that the calibration program does not affect the overlay settings, and these are what is causing the difference. Go into your drivers, find the video overlay settings and make sure they are set to something very neutral. Failing that, you should be able to tell the player not to use the overlay.

I'm using ATI driver and catalyst control center, but I couldn't find anything related to this in the settings. Some help please?

[jagabo]

CCC -> Avivo Video...

[juhah]

CCC -> Avivo Video...

Thanks, but I already tried this with no success.. I just couldn't adjust the colors correct no matter what.

[jagabo]

Well, that's where you adjust the video colors. What is wrong with your colors? Black/white levels off? Color cast in the gray scale? Too much/little color saturation? Etc.

[juhah]

Well, that's where you adjust the video colors. What is wrong with your colors? Black/white levels off? Color cast in the gray scale? Too much/little color saturation? Etc.

There's too much yellow and green.. for example I have an animation where I have a grey sky but it looks yellowish. In virtualDub it looks normal. And also the video is a bit too bright. I tried to adjust the tint, brightness and contrast mainly, but I couldn't get even near the wanted result. It would be better if there were adjustment for each color channel separately (I mean red, green and blue).

[jagabo]

Video uses YUV internally, a grayscale image (Y) and two subtractive color channels (U and V). So most color tools for video work with those rather than RGB. Does perfect grayscale video appear with a yellowish tint?

Try this video:

[juhah]

Video uses YUV internally, a grayscale image (Y) and two subtractive color channels (U and V). So most color tools for video work with those rather than RGB. Does perfect grayscale video appear with a yellowish tint?

Try this video:

Yes, there is a yellowish tint there.

[jagabo]

So... no tint in VirtualDub but a yellowish tint in a media player? Is it a slight yellow cast or a large shift? All the blocks or some? What media player do you use? As a short term solution you might be able to change the output device the player uses.

[juhah]

So... no tint in VirtualDub but a yellowish tint in a media player? Is it a slight yellow cast or a large shift? All the blocks or some? What media player do you use? As a short term solution you might be able to change the output device the player uses.

Yep, no tint in virtualDub but in all the most common players (Media player classic, Windows media player, Winamp, PowerDVD etc). The amount of tint isn't that big but you can clearly see it. It's not in blocks, the whole video area is tinted. I tried to change the output device in Media player classic but I didn't find anything

[jagabo]

In MPC or MPCHC you can go to View -> Options -> Playback -> Output. In the DirectShow Video box try the different output devices. You have to exit the player and restart it for the change to take effect.

You can force VLC to use the desktop rather than video overlay by selecting Tools -> Preferences -> Video. In the Display box, use the Output pulldown to select Windows GDI Video Output. That should give you the same colors as VirtualDub. But doing that is disabling all the graphics card's optimizations for playing Windows. You'll get higher CPU usage and it may not be able to play HD videos smoothly.

I would also update to the latest WHQL certified driver for your graphics card.

Another possibility: if your monitor is misadjusted (ie, set too blue) and you used your profiler to compensate RGB values then video will continue be off because your monitor is off. Set your monitor to more neutral settings and recalibrate.

[juhah]

In MPC or MPCHC you can go to View -> Options -> Playback -> Output. In the DirectShow Video box try the different output devices. You have to exit the player and restart it for the change to take effect.

This one did the trick!! I found a device (VMR9 Windowed) that doesn't use overlay rendering, so the colors are correct. This problem has been very irritating for a long time! Many thanks to you!!