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Old 16th January 2007, 11:19   #21  |  Link
Audionut
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadBangeR77 View Post
I tried that too, true enough No matter what I was doing with brightness, contrast and saturation the black color just didn't want to look like black And the whole image was darker. Waste of time, imo.
I dare say that your monitor settings are not adjusted correctly, hence you would need to adjust those settings first.

With an Nvidia card you want to do as JarrettH and qyqgpower has suggested.
Use a program like display mate to adjust your monitor/desktop settings.
http://www.displaymate.com/

In FFDSHOW.


And in MPC.


And adjusting the desktop color settings in the nvidia control panel will adjust the video displayed in MPC. Atleast it does in the latest control panel/drivers.

edit: Using the incorrect settings can really make the difference between correctly displayed picture an crap. As seen in the screen shots posted by qyqgpower.

Last edited by Audionut; 16th January 2007 at 11:21.
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Old 16th January 2007, 11:38   #22  |  Link
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This is a screenshot using the settings as posted above.


Adjusting FFDSHOW setting to use YV12 as shown below.


Results in this washed out image.


Adjusting MPC to use overlay as below.


With FFDSHOW set to use YV12 as posted above, Results in a very dark and oversaturated image.
Sorry I couldn't easily capture an image rendered with overlay.

Last edited by Audionut; 16th January 2007 at 11:40.
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Old 16th January 2007, 11:50   #23  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Audionut View Post
This is a screenshot using the settings as posted above.


Adjusting FFDSHOW setting to use YV12 as shown below.


Results in this washed out image.


Adjusting MPC to use overlay as below.


With FFDSHOW set to use YV12 as posted above, Results in a very dark and oversaturated image.
Sorry I couldn't easily capture an image rendered with overlay.
And where is the problem ???

All looks normal for me ...
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Old 16th January 2007, 12:39   #24  |  Link
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This is just something you have to deal with. It's like fiddling with the knobs to calibrate your TV and monitor. Get a reference pic and movie (SMT has posted several of these), calibrate your settings for your preferred output method, and happily watch away. Expecting a magic bullet to take care of every combination of player, codec, video driver, video card, and monitor to work out of the box is overoptimistic.

(Video card drivers are the #1 culprit, due to not adhering to TV/PC conversion standards; everything else has to work around the problem. If anything, blame nvidia and ati.)

Some people prefer RGB because it needs the least effort to calibrate, and it's the least likely to break after upgrading stuff. But YV12 is faster more versatile for post-processing, and YV12 in overlay faster still. So find one that works and stick to it.
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Old 16th January 2007, 13:36   #25  |  Link
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@ Audionut

I think a small misunderstanding took place, 'cause I didn't tell the whole story.

1) I "played" with overlay brightness /contrast /saturation settings in ffdshow, while using tv-scale in VMR9, without any fix (ffdshow YV12 => RGB32 or changing 2D dispaly drivers of my graphic card). The reason was I had googled for many threads on that matter, and some claimed everythig could be done with proper monitor calibration, without fixing the range (not everyone uses ffdshow, we seem to forget ). Since I didn't want to calibrate my CRT (for my work, surfing, and all other possible uses it's just perfect right now for my eyes, I had had spent days on calibrating some time ago) just to watch a film, I used the above software, more infirior method. After that I also tried to mess with with my monitor directly, but still couldn't achieve the desired effect. That all coresponds to your 2nd movie screenshot (YV12 in VMR9, using tv-scale, resulting in washed-out colors). So ...

2) I decided to go for YV12 => RGB32 HQ conversion (forced, as in your first screenshots of ffdshow /MPC's settings) in ffdshow and that resulted in a prefect image (like in your first movie screenshot), while running in VMR9 renderless.

@ Seb. 26 - I can see the difference.

Everything was set as in your first post, with the exception of 2D reendering (I find 3D rendering useless, since I don't use any shaders effects). However, it cost some additional CPU cycles, 5-10% more than using YV12 & Overlay, that I wanted to spend on sth else. Funny thing, VMR7 renderless was even slower (?!).

3) After all that I tried YV12 in Overlay (default for many software players) and in VMR7 windowed, and, believe me or not, I didn't get any any oversaturation (compared many screenshots VMR9, RGB32 vs. Overlay, YV12), only with nice, bloody red color bleeding in some cases. When no red is present, I can't spot any difference.

4) Finally I read more about compressed colors and decided to give YUY2 a try, and that's exactly what I'm using atm: VMR7 windowed (screenshots can be taken, important while dealing with different codecs, CQMs, filters etc.) + YUY2. The above mentioned bleeding can still be noticed, but is much smaller than by YV12. Point.

The point is, as foxyshadis wrote, we've got a vast variety of different configurations: monitors, graphic cards and their drivers, decoders, software players, display modes and hell knows what more The only thing everyone has in common, we don't like washed out colors (this thread began because of them). Anyway, thanks a lot for your efforts.

PS. ATI Radeon 9800 PRO @ XT, old drivers - and I do want to stick with them.

PS2. When a 30-year old guy, who has started with ZX Spectrum 48 and a tape recorder, is looking for solutions on washed-out colors, then some other people also might. That's why I hope all my mumbling above might be useful, at least for one soul, lost in color ranges.
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Old 16th January 2007, 14:21   #26  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadBangeR77 View Post
@ Seb. 26 - I can see the difference.
I wasn't say << I can't see difference >>, but :
<< The difference is normal : you compare Overlay and VMR9 with YV12 input ... so result is different ... >>

What I know about this :

TV scale is 16..235 ( for Y, 16..240 for U & V )
PC scale is 0..255

Some renders do "TV->PC scale" :
- Overlay.
- VMR9 with RGB32 input.

Some don't :
- VMR9 with YV12 or YU2.

So it's normal to don't have same color when changing render or frame format ...

Last edited by Seb.26; 12th April 2007 at 16:52.
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Old 16th January 2007, 14:31   #27  |  Link
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Dunno what the mods (congrats. for your mod nomination foxyshadis btw ) think about this, but what about making this thread a sticky ?

I believe it's the sort of problem that's encountered often enough to have a permanent subject on the matter (imho ).

It isn't AVC-specific though ... the software-players section seems appropriate if you ask me
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Old 16th January 2007, 15:09   #28  |  Link
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@ Seb. 26
I get it - it was obvious for you, sorry, my mistake.

@ DarkZell666
Yeah, why not? I think we can all agree on the following:

1) RGB32 is always the best quality-wise. Even if sb doesn't get washed-out colors, it always delivers the best possible image and is not affected by color bleeding. Enable it, when you can, no matter what player and output mode you use. Just one downside - it's also the slowest one!

2) Performance-wise YV12/YUY2 running in overlay or VMR7 windowed (when it can run in overlay) is the fastest solution, not affected by tv-scale color range, however affected by color-bleeding and sometimes oversaturation (not in my case). YUY2 doesn't seem to utilize more CPU than YV12 and has got less color bleeding, so force it, if you only can.

The above is as general as it can be - it deals with color spaces, and tries to stay away from specific software players /graphic card drivers /decoders and so on.

3) Output modes affected by tv-scale (washed-out colors):
- VRM9 renderless & windowed
- VMR7 renderless (&windowed, in some cases).

Btw. my hosting has expired and I didn't pay yet - where could I upload some examples?
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Old 16th January 2007, 15:23   #29  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadBangeR77 View Post
@ Seb. 26
I get it - it was obvious for you, sorry, my mistake.
... probably mostly due to my poor english ...

About RGB32, another bad point is that there isn't lot of FFDShow's filters that accept it ...

Classic playback chain looks like :

Codec produce YV12 or YU2 ( YV12 is native for almost codec )
FFDShow do filtering and out RGB32-HQ ( with TV scale since main renders do TV->PC scale ... but I think Haali's don't do )
Render ... render frames



... my 2 cents are over ...
( soon )

Last edited by Seb.26; 16th January 2007 at 15:33.
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Old 16th January 2007, 15:33   #30  |  Link
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IMO there are some other problems with Overlay :

1) all post processing are done on a limited dynamic range ( 16..235 ... full is 0..255 )
-> Not a really big problem, I don't thing it produce visual artefact

2) Overlay crop BTB & WTW
-> This point is important for me ...

3) you can't snapshot overlay

4) you can't use clone mode for dual monitors

Last edited by Seb.26; 16th January 2007 at 15:40.
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Old 16th January 2007, 15:38   #31  |  Link
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useing RGB32 in CoreAVC will give you better chroma upsampleing but still not as good as ffdshows high quality mode i reported that problem months ago to the devs but it looks like it's still not enhanced thats really sad especialy, seeing that Mainconcept allready has this better upsampleing even with Hardware acceleration ready in their latest Decoder.
But as foxyshadis allready said it is personal preferance at least how Hollywood DVDs look on a PC Monitor in the end as those are calibrated for Video color balance and gama response also the Operating System plays a role here Windows is different in Gama then for example OSX you never gonna see the Movie how it looked in the Studio in PP for example, as those Systems are calibrated for Film not for Video.
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Old 16th January 2007, 17:48   #32  |  Link
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...seeing that Mainconcept allready has this better upsampleing even with Hardware acceleration ready in their latest Decoder...
Any hints about when the demo of this codec will be available?
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Old 16th January 2007, 20:01   #33  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkZell666 View Post
Dunno what the mods (congrats. for your mod nomination foxyshadis btw ) think about this, but what about making this thread a sticky ?

I believe it's the sort of problem that's encountered often enough to have a permanent subject on the matter (imho ).

It isn't AVC-specific though ... the software-players section seems appropriate if you ask me
That's not a bad idea. I'll see if I can condense all the information out there into an easy-to-follow faq. (If anyone wants to contribute a draft they're welcome.) I think it might be time to move this into software players forum anyway.
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Old 7th February 2007, 01:14   #34  |  Link
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I'm suffering from this annoying problem too, on Win9x and an nVidia 5200 card. There's no obvious solution. Maybe nV's Win9x driver (as opposed to the NT one) is part of the problem.

* The VMRCCCSStatus registry value doesn't work for me (assuming I found the right location for it; the dox only specify it for NT).

* Software convertion to RGB takes more CPU than I can spare in many cases.

* Earlier drivers without this problem (<6x.xx) are either bad for games (in the case of 5x.xx), ruin video playback differently (4x.xx), or are too old for this gfx chip (<4x.xx).

Too bad it's not possible to run two driver versions concurrently, selecting which one each software uses. :(
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Old 7th February 2007, 04:14   #35  |  Link
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ensure the saturation in overlay settings in the drivers is at 100% (nvidia defaults it at 114%).
also, disable digital vibrance...
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Old 8th February 2007, 00:43   #36  |  Link
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ensure the saturation in overlay settings in the drivers is at 100% (nvidia defaults it at 114%). also, disable digital vibrance...
I'm not using overlay, of course. There's no way to have overlay not mess with the colors. I'm using VMR9 output.
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Old 8th February 2007, 11:58   #37  |  Link
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I'm not using overlay, of course. There's no way to have overlay not mess with the colors. I'm using VMR9 output.
Are you sure VMR9 is not messing with your colours ?
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Old 9th February 2007, 01:55   #38  |  Link
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Are you sure VMR9 is not messing with your colours ?
On the contrary, I am sure it is. That's the problem. :)

ffdshow/AviSynth/ColorYUV(levels="TV->PC") seems to help, though, I'm yet to compare it to the original to make sure it's completely identical. And I suspect this takes more CPU than just having the driver do the right thing. What's a way to benchmark decoding speed including the renderer?

ffdshow's HQ YV12->RGB is another option, which, at the same time, fixes the ugly chroma upsampling, but it certainly is more taxing.

I also hear MPC can extend the range with pixel shaders. Does anyone know anything about that? Might be a nice CPU-less solution (that is, if I were using MPC, and assuming my graphics card is fast enough to handle it).

I vaguely remember that extending the YUV range in software didn't work in older driver versions (I'm on 81.98 now) which just clamped it back, but I might be mistaken. I'll see if it works if/when I revert again to older drivers.

How pitiful can nVidia be, leaving Win9x with no single driver version that can both play games and show video (at least for the GF5 series)?!

Where's Matrox when you need them...
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Old 10th February 2007, 01:05   #39  |  Link
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I checked a few things myself, and no two of the following combinations produced identical outputs:
  • VMR9 + RGB32
  • VMR9 + YV12 + FFDshow levels 16-235 to 0-255 modifying only luminance
  • VMR9 + YV12 + FFDshow levels 16-235 to 0-255 modifying chroma as well
  • IIRC ColourYUV(TV->PC) did not yield the same result as either the second or third. It might have been almost identical to RGB32, albeit a little noisier. That might be my filter chain

Is RGB32 the one that definitely produces accurate colours? If so, I will just use it, despite the extra CPU utilisation.

Last edited by mushishi; 10th February 2007 at 01:44.
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Old 10th February 2007, 01:33   #40  |  Link
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I'm not using overlay, of course. There's no way to have overlay not mess with the colors. I'm using VMR9 output.
Unless your overlay is seriously borked, you can change the overlay colour information in your video card config. It's trivial to disable any modification to the colour information in there, even if the nvidia defaults are a little strange.
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