DVD rip output too bright

[Emmet45]

I have started to rip my DVD collection, but have encountered a problem. The DVD rips are too bright compared to the original movie. I have tried ripping with both MakeMKV and DVDfab, and it looks the same. The black bars above and below the movie are grey, and this is after only the rip itself, i have not compressed the movie in any way.

This is how it looks like, and i have inserted a black box on the lower black bar to compare just how bright it is:
http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/8415/vlcdc.jpg

Can anyone help me to fix this?

[yoda313]

What media player are you using? I seem to remember some having a setting to make the bars a different shade rather than black.

Also you say rip - are you using the video_ts folder for playback and you haven't converted to anything right? Some people mix and match the term ripping and converting incorrectly - just want to make sure we are on the same page that you are playing with the originally ripped vobs and your symptoms are not in the converted file you made.

One other thing to test is to burn the video_ts folder to a disc as a dvd and play back the burnt disc and see if it exhibits the same symptoms. You can use a rewritable disc for this test if you don't need a backup of it on a physical disc at this stage (ie don't waste a blank dvdr if you don't need to just use a rw).

[jman98]

I've had issues like this doing playback with VLC under Win 7 ever since they moved to the 2.x series. I've given up ever being able to completely fix it. It's definitely a VLC issue. Recently even ArcSoft's TotalMediaTheater is now doing the exact same thing on my PC. I dislike its control panel a lot, but MPC-HC is able to give me a correct playback image so I use it for testing now. I can verify my DVDs on a Mac and look fine and they do with MPC-HC too, but TMT and VLC both are consistently giving me a too bright image so I've had to switch to MPC-HC for all my testing under Win 7.

[hello_hello]

It's a PC vs TV levels issue. Chances are the ripped video will look fine using a standalone player because video uses TV (limited range) levels and the TV will expect TV levels. PC monitors use PC levels (full range) so the video needs to be expanded to PC levels on playback or it'll look washed out. The fun starts once you realise some players/renderers automatically expand the levels, some won't do it at all, others automatically do it for some types of video/containers but not others..... chances are that's what's happening in Emmet45's case. The player/renderer is automatically expanding the levels for DVD video so it looks fine, but stick the same video in a different container and it doesn't. I think the MadVR renderer does something like that..... I can't remember.

I don't know anything about VLC, but MPC-HC using the WM9 render won't expand the levels (although you can use a pixel shader to do it by right clicking on the video and using the Shaders menu, selecting the "16-235 -> 0-255" shader and then enabling shaders). MPC-HC using the EVR Renderer expands the levels by default. It's option can be accessed by right clicking on the video and selecting Renderer Settings/Output Range. O-255 means it's expanding the levels. The option is greyed out for most other renderers.

As a general rule the best solution is to tell your video card to do it if you can. It'll expand the levels for all video regardless of the player being used. It shouldn't matter if a player is already expanding the levels as the video card shouldn't expand them a second time. If it does, tell the appropriate player not to do it. I don't know where the option is for ATI cards, but for Nvidia it's in the Nvidia control panel under Adjust Video Color Settings. Select the appropriate monitor if you're using more than one, then the Advanced tab. Choose "with the Nvidia settings" and then select "Full (0-255)". Hit Save and black in your video should now be black.

If your PC is connected to a TV via VGA it'll expect PC (0-255) levels just as a standard PC monitor does. If it's connected to a TV via HDMI it'll probably expect TV (16-235) levels by default. I actually switch my TV to expect PC levels (so Windows itself looks normal) then get the video card to expand the video levels so video looks normal on the TV too. If the TV can change levels, it'll probably be called HDMI Black Level or something similar.

If you use a NVidia video card there's sometimes a particular combination of monitors which for some reason stops the video card setting from surviving a reboot for one of them. So after the first reboot or two it might pay to open the control panel and make sure it's still expanding the levels as you want it to. If it's not, you may have to reset the video card settings after every reboot.

Even the decoder can change the levels, so one decoder will.... another won't. If you go into MPC-HC's options and double click on the mpeg1/2 transform filter you'll see it has an option to expand levels. None of the other decoders do though.

It's also possible for it to be wrong the other way around.... the PC outputs PC levels while the display expects TV levels, in which case black won't get any blacker but the picture will look too dark. It generally can't happen using a PC monitor but it may happen when a PC is connected to a TV.