WMP-HC Black Bars question

[tacomaguy20]

Hello guys,

I'm new to the forum and was searching for an answer to this question but couldn't find it. I watch a lot of movies on my HTPC and I reencoded some movies and removed the black bars on top and bottom ideally to maximize the compression of the encoded movie without losing too much quality. I do play my movies regularly so the black bars still display in media player even though they were removed from the movie. My question is; is there a way to change the shade of the black in the black bars that display in WMP-HC when the actual black bars have been removed? I was playing a movie and the black bars seemed too light and I didn't want to darken the movie by adjusting the image settings. Is there somewhere that Media player specifies the shade of the black bars and can it be adjusted? In my case, darkened. I know maybe I shouldn't have removed the black bars originally but we're talking hours to reencode each one and I don't want all that hassle right now.

[jagabo]

I was playing a movie and the black bars seemed too light

That probably means your graphics card or MPCHC is set up incorrectly, or you converted incorrectly. MPCHC's black bars are at Y=16. All consumer distribution formats also have black at Y=16. Get some calibration videos and set your system up properly. Try the MPG video in this post:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/374734-Superblacks-and-superwhites-question#post2414529

[tacomaguy20]

I think you were right about my calibration. It was my projector settings that seemed to be throwing the colors off. Thanks