Black Level Issue when taking screenshots with MPC

[Arshad07]

As you can see in the following screenshots, it has got some black issue which i dont know how to solve. But it displays fine in MPC while playing, its just when taking screenshots that this happen.

when pressing ctrl + I for screenshots

http://i1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc455/Arshad07/AWalktoRemember2002HDTV720pmkv_snapshot_010510_20110518_172514.png

GFX Card: Ati Radeon 5770
S/w: MPC-HC 1.5.0.2827
VMR-9 Renderless

Ffdshow settings:

http://i1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc455/Arshad07/Untitled-3.png

[JanWillem32]

The "save image" and "save thumbnails" functions actually save a copy of the picture as it comes out of the mixer. It's not altered by the rendering engine. Because of that, I prefer to choose the manual image saving approach:
first, I disable color management in the renderer, as it modifies a picture only correctly for my monitor (I can always encapsulate a generic bt.709/bt.601 color profile in the output .PNG file if I want to put set a color profile on the saved image),
enable "View"->"Video Frame"->"Normal Size",
depending on the needs for the output, disabling aspect ratio correction in the "Video Frame" menu is also possible,
enable "View"->"Full Screen" and wait for the mouse to disappear
press "print screen" on the keyboard,
open a image editor (even regular Paint suffices) and paste the image,
any modern image editor can crop the black borders automatically and has tons of editing and saving options available.

That will probably give a different picture than the "save image" and "save thumbnails" functions. How much different, depends on the filtering options you've enabled in the rendering chain.
Also, there are a few mixer incompatibilities known with converted RGB input for the mixer. Although VMR-9 usually behaves a bit better than EVR in this regard, it's still only a last resort option. I've enabled it only for if native Y'CbCr formats in their correct 4:2:0, 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 forms, such as YV12, NV12 and YUY2 have failed to render in the mixer.

[Arshad07]

When i open the image in Paint, it looks different than the one i posted here. It looks as it looked in MPC-HC.

But now i got a bigger problem. Its looks a bit greenish in the outputted image. What am I doing wrong?

http://i1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc455/Arshad07/Untitled-5.png

[Arshad07]

Any solution to all of that? I never had any problems before. But i recently re-installed windows, and now I got this problem.

[Arshad07]

Ok after some tests, I discovered this.

When I upload the image to an imagehost, it looks exactly what it looked in MPC-HC. I put the three together, I get 2 of same image(MPC-HC & Firefox) and one different color tone(greenish), and wrong black levels. I think its a problem with my GFX card? Correct me if i'm wrong here peeps.

[JanWillem32]

I'm quite familiar with the quirks of color management, color controls and such in quite a few programs. Settings in the video card's control panel and the Windows color management tabs can affect display, too.
Can you describe in detail when the odd colors appear for you, and when not? It's a bit hard for me to deduce that from your last post, sorry.

[Arshad07]

The odd color appears when i opened an image in Windows Live Photo Gallery or Windows Photo Viewer.

The odd color doesnt appear when i opened an image in Paint Brush and when i upload it to an imagehost.

[JanWillem32]

What are your color settings in the video card's control panel and the Windows color settings tabs (both are in the Windows Control Panel)? It might be that Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Photo Viewer try to use the settings in those tabs, while MPC-HC and Paint Brush don't.

[Arshad07]

I dont know how to access Windows Color settings, can you help on this please.

For video card's control panel, here you go(let me know if you need more screenshots)

http://pic.phyrefile.com/r/ri/rider/2011/05/20/Untitled.png (http://www.phyrefile.com/image/view/ihECsi8skTfzSIoM)

[JanWillem32]

I searched around a bit and it might be that a "default" color profile is installed on your system. Windows Photo Gallery will try to use a monitor color profile if it's installed.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/windows-vista-photo-gallery-yellow-tint-background-problem/ There are quite a lot of articles on that item.
Note that I don't advise anyone to use that default sRGB profile, unless you really have to. Normal color profiles are made specifically for one monitor with the help of a hardware calibration device and expire after about a month.

[Arshad07]

Thank you very much JanWillem32! Appreciate all the help! It works fine now. Thanks again. Page Bookmarked!

[JanWillem32]

You're very welcome, glad that this was easy to fix (and not caused by MPC-HC itself).