Encoding with WME - Output too bright

[jaswah]

Hi,
I've been obtaining some HD video in matroska / h264 etc formats, and am converting to WMV-HD for playback on my xbox 360. However whenever i do a basic encode with windows media encoder blacks always come out too bright and the picture seems a little washed out...
Has anyone ever come across this? Do you know of a way around it? I've downloaded some WMV-HD movies and their color seems OK.

Thanks in advance,
Cheers
Jason

[zambelli]

Hi,
I've been obtaining some HD video in matroska / h264 etc formats, and am converting to WMV-HD for playback on my xbox 360. However whenever i do a basic encode with windows media encoder blacks always come out too bright and the picture seems a little washed out...
Has anyone ever come across this? Do you know of a way around it? I've downloaded some WMV-HD movies and their color seems OK.
Does it look washed out on your PC only, or on the 360 too? Is your 360's display calibrated correctly for TV levels with a disc such as Avia or DVE?

Typically video is encoded with black at Y=16 and white at Y=235. When converting to RGB (which has to occur either in software or hardware), it's possible to either preserve the range (TV range) or map 16..235 to 0..255 (PC range). The Windows WMV decoder doesn't remap the range, so 16..235 will come out looking as 16..235 - which will look washed out on your PC.