MCE 2k5->Xbox 360 Brightness/Contrast/Color of target not matching source?

[Psycloned]

All,

I've encoded a movie straight from vob to WMV VC1 and noticed that during playback of the streamed video from the MCE machine to my 360 that the brightness, contrast, and color are off from the original. See below:

Original VOB source:

http://mysite.verizon.net/johnwolf/images/VOB_Source.jpg

Encoded WMV:

http://mysite.verizon.net/johnwolf/images/WMV%20Encoded.jpg

I used Encode 360 which uses the Elecard Codec for decoding the VOB stream(I think?) and WME to encode to VC1.

Are there some settings I can set either in the WME settings or the Media Player app on the MCE machine that would fix this? I don't want to adjust my tv set as all of my devices are connected to the same component input and adjusting one would affect the others.

Anyone have experience with this?

[puppydg68]

All,

I've encoded a movie straight from vob to WMV VC1 and noticed that during playback of the streamed video from the MCE machine to my 360 that the brightness, contrast, and color are off from the original. See below:

Original VOB source:

http://mysite.verizon.net/johnwolf/images/VOB_Source.jpg

Encoded WMV:

http://mysite.verizon.net/johnwolf/images/WMV%20Encoded.jpg

I used Encode 360 which uses the Elecard Codec for decoding the VOB stream(I think?) and WME to encode to VC1.

Are there some settings I can set either in the WME settings or the Media Player app on the MCE machine that would fix this? I don't want to adjust my tv set as all of my devices are connected to the same component input and adjusting one would affect the others.

Anyone have experience with this?

The Xbox 360 is responsbile for the greyness in your blacks which accounts for the constrast diffrence you are expereincing. When blacks aren't black it can throw everything off a little. They seem to have the black pedestal set incorrectly on Xbox360 and have never gotten around to fixing it. If you watch anything and compare standard dvd player or even Xbox1, when using component cables at least the xbox 360 turns blacks to dark grey and has an overbrightening effect. There have been many reviews on this. http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=125#MicrosoftXbox%20360%20(Component)

"The 360 passes a below black pluge, but its default black level is 7.5 IRE with no way of adjusting it to 0 IRE. You’ll have to adjust your display accordingly, as black levels will appear elevated. The white level of this player is a tad low at 98 IRE but still within our passing criteria. I wish manufacturers would pay closer attention to their output levels, as a properly calibrated display will have to be re-adjusted for these issues.
"

this may be your issue? I notice distinct difference between video output on xbox 360 as compared to pretty much any other player in the house on the same tv set. I wish they would take note of this and allow us an adjustment in a future upgrade. I keep hoping for it with each release. if I adjust my plasma to compensate for the xbox 360, it throws every other device off.

[Psycloned]

The Xbox 360 is responsbile for the greyness in your blacks which accounts for the constrast diffrence you are expereincing. When blacks aren't black it can throw everything off a little. They seem to have the black pedestal set incorrectly on Xbox360 and have never gotten around to fixing it. If you watch anything and compare standard dvd player or even Xbox1, when using component cables at least the xbox 360 turns blacks to dark grey and has an overbrightening effect. There have been many reviews on this. http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=125#MicrosoftXbox%20360%20(Component)

"The 360 passes a below black pluge, but its default black level is 7.5 IRE with no way of adjusting it to 0 IRE. You’ll have to adjust your display accordingly, as black levels will appear elevated. The white level of this player is a tad low at 98 IRE but still within our passing criteria. I wish manufacturers would pay closer attention to their output levels, as a properly calibrated display will have to be re-adjusted for these issues.
"

this may be your issue? I notice distinct difference between video output on xbox 360 as compared to pretty much any other player in the house on the same tv set. I wish they would take note of this and allow us an adjustment in a future upgrade. I keep hoping for it with each release. if I adjust my plasma to compensate for the xbox 360, it throws every other device off.

This may account for some of the visual difference during playback as it's worse than the screenshots above, however note that the 360 is not a factor in my example. Both of these shots were taken with the capture feature in PowerDVD 7, the first while playing the .vob that I ripped using smartripper and the second while playing the .wmv file that is the result of encoding the vob to wmv/vc1. These are source shots, not captured from the 360 playback.

If I could correct the source some then I could possibly compensate for the 360's shortcomings, however I'm not sure what preprocessing/configurations I am able to do to correct this before encoding takes place. I need information regarding that. I would prefer a solution where I can set the brightness/contrast for the encoder rather than post processing the encoded .wmv.

[foxyshadis]

On PCs, the video driver is incorrectly converting standard YUV to RGB with a fullscale "PC" levels matrix. You can usually fix this by setting players to use overlay rendering mode. Alternately, you can encode to PC levels (requires a levels or coloryuv in avisynth), but that breaks in anything that correctly converts it.

I don't have hard information on what levels xbox renders at, but it's worth trying the avisynth or ffdshow fix. I don't believe there's anything built into WME to change levels.

I'm working on a FAQ on this topic, because it comes up dozens of times a year. In this case it might take some xbox hacking to display existing encodes correctly.

[Psycloned]

On PCs, the video driver is incorrectly converting standard YUV to RGB with a fullscale "PC" levels matrix. You can usually fix this by setting players to use overlay rendering mode. Alternately, you can encode to PC levels (requires a levels or coloryuv in avisynth), but that breaks in anything that correctly converts it.

I don't have hard information on what levels xbox renders at, but it's worth trying the avisynth or ffdshow fix. I don't believe there's anything built into WME to change levels.

I'm working on a FAQ on this topic, because it comes up dozens of times a year. In this case it might take some xbox hacking to display existing encodes correctly.

Can you point me to where there would be information on the avisynth and/or the ffdshow fix? Does this fix correct the decoded vob?

I am a bit of a novice here. My assumption that encode 360 is running the vob through the ffdshow mpeg2 decoder and then encoding it to vc1. Would the ffdshow fix cause the decoded stream to be closer to the original so that the final wmv encoded video will be as the original? I figure if I can overcompensate by turning up the brightness then it might be ok on my tv. I plan only to ever stream these movies to my 360 as it's the only streaming device I currently have/plan to buy so but I need to start first by getting an encode to playback on my pc that looks the way I'd expect it.

I guess my alternative is to run it through premiere or somesuch with a brightness/contrast effect applied. This is an option but I'm afraid that re-rendering it would apply additional compression, something that I'm trying to avoid, unless premiere is smart enough not to recompress.