Use of Luminance and Contrast [Archive]

chainsaw135

15th July 2002, 05:10

I use the Lum. contrast and the lum Brightness on every movie
My dvd player plays dvd's a little dark so i leave my settings
at Contrast:13 and Brightness:20 but its all preference.
btw i have an "Apex 5131"

Bigbucks1959

15th July 2002, 05:12

Thanks.

I will give it a try next svcd.

Phil K.

Originally posted by chainsaw135
I use the Lum. contrast and the lum Brightness on every movie
My dvd player plays dvd's a little dark so i leave my settings
at Contrast:13 and Brightness:20 but its all preference.
btw i have an "Apex 5131"

Bigbucks1959

17th July 2002, 04:43

These controls def make a diff.
I just did Blade CBR with the luminance and contrast u recommend..Did a side by side a/b comparison to the dvd...harddd to tell the diff.

Thx,
PK

chainsaw135

17th July 2002, 06:16

Well i can tell the difference as a matter of fact when i did my testing, i had a pioneer that played dvd's the way i liked them as in the darkness/brightness of the movie. What i did was try to mirror the look of it to that player.

I did the testing a little over a month and now i just looked in the preview windows supplied by dvd2svcd and changed the lunimance settings both back to 0. Then i previewed the picture, then i changed the luminance back to my settings and i can totally tell the difference. As a matter of fact i have 2 dvd2svcd preview windows open, one has my settings the other is the default 0 for both settings. I say to anyone reading here to take a look at what i'm talking about i see a difference.

SiliconSoul

17th July 2002, 09:51

so if u played that same svcd in the apex in the pioneer... the pioneer would now be too bright?

chainsaw135

17th July 2002, 09:53

Yes the pioneer it would be bright but not to much as it looked fine just brighter, thats why i keep the luminance #'s low. So the facts are on other players it would be a bit bright. But i kept it low because it looks fine on other players, and looks real good on the apex 5131.

SiliconSoul

17th July 2002, 09:55

ill have to try that cause im always adjusting the brightness :P

Bigbucks1959

17th July 2002, 10:14

What I meant was that the BLADE SVCD with the settings u recommend..looked great....Compared to original dvd.

Thx,
Phil K.
PS Gonna lower the settings a little in other movies though..to get some flesh tones back....Wondering why the dvds are always made so dark...

Originally posted by chainsaw135
Well i can tell the difference as a matter of fact when i did my testing, i had a pioneer that played dvd's the way i liked them as in the darkness/brightness of the movie. What i did was try to mirror the look of it to that player.

I did the testing a little over a month and now i just looked in the preview windows supplied by dvd2svcd and changed the lunimance settings both back to 0. Then i previewed the picture, then i changed the luminance back to my settings and i can totally tell the difference. As a matter of fact i have 2 dvd2svcd preview windows open, one has my settings the other is the default 0 for both settings. I say to anyone reading here to take a look at what i'm talking about i see a difference.

chainsaw135

17th July 2002, 10:27

@Bigbucks1959 Yeah i've left my settings the way they are because, if i buy another dvd player. I do not want it to bright, i feel at these settings i'm able to watch it on my apex and my pioneer even tho the apex plays movies darker i've used those settings and have had great results.

Bob01605

19th July 2002, 00:27

@Chainsaw135

I had an Apex 5131 but I found that the color level and brightness was just the opposite of what you have mentioned. The 5131 had a great picture but the color level and brightness were too HIGH as compared to my Pioneer 525. It was also too high compared to what I got over the cable as a reference. The 5131 broke after 3 weeks and I picked up a Pioneer 503 changer to replace it. The color level and brightness of the newer 503 was right on target as compared to cable or my older 525.

Bob

chainsaw135

19th July 2002, 00:53

@bob01605 Are you saying that when you put in a dvd movie or rented a movie and watched it on the apex 5131 it was to bright and the color was dull? There is a menu option that needs to be selected or the color will be dull on the 5131 So you need to go in and go to the general menu, then select s-video as, the default is yuv video and that will make the picture dull and bright. This of course assuming you have S-Video cord plugged in as markrb and i have. If you have the S-Video cord plugged in and you dont go in and manually change the YUV-Video to S-Video you'll get the problem you just said.

Bob01605

19th July 2002, 13:07

Chainsaw,

I was using the component outputs - The picture was both too bright and had too much color - I never used the S-video output at all and never really got the chance to experiment with it much because as I said above it broke down in 3 weeks. I brought it back and went and bought the Pioneer 503 ..

Bob

fisix

19th July 2002, 14:29

im sure you know, but:

if the output of the pioneer is a little too bright for your mastered vcds, you can go into the setup menu and choose the cinema option in the video menu, it generally pulls everything a little.

should make it a little closer to how you discribe the apex

-fisix

chainsaw135

19th July 2002, 18:06

@bob01605, well that would explain why me and others using the s-video selection is getting a different picture then what you found. As you weren't using the s-video plug in or the selection in the main menu. Btw sorry to hear it broke on you, as i've had mine and i love it plays everything and it was priced just right also:)

Bigbucks1959

19th July 2002, 18:59

Are you referring to the APEX 5131 as the dvd player you love?

Just curious I need to buy another one for another tv room.
Main purpose would be to play svcds..

Thx,
Phil K

Originally posted by chainsaw135
@bob01605, well that would explain why me and others using the s-video selection is getting a different picture then what you found. As you weren't using the s-video plug in or the selection in the main menu. Btw sorry to hear it broke on you, as i've had mine and i love it plays everything and it was priced just right also:)

chainsaw135

19th July 2002, 19:25

@bigbucks Yeah i really like mine, for not only the price but it can handle 5000kb/s i paid only 129.00 for mine and another thing if you didnt know its a 3 disk changer.

Bigbucks1959

19th July 2002, 19:36

REALLLLLLLLLYYY

IT CAN HANDLE 5OOOKB/S...bitrate on SVCDS???

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTTTT

I have been making some large bitrate SVCDs recently...2500..CBRs..But wanted to go even larger on the bitrate.

Is it sold retail? Or only online...

It would be great to play my svcds on.

Thx,
PK

Originally posted by chainsaw135
@bigbucks Yeah i really like mine, for not only the price but it can handle 5000kb/s i paid only 129.00 for mine and another thing if you didnt know its a 3 disk changer.

chainsaw135

19th July 2002, 19:41

Its sold retail/online, you can find them at Circuit City Or you can go to their website http://r1.us.rmi.yahoo.com/rmi/http://www.circuitcity.com/ewebIMa/frame1.jsp/rmivars%3ftarget%3D_top?BV_SessionID=@@@@1587590885.1027103966@@@@&BV_EngineID=cceiadcfkdkhedfcfngcfkmdffhdffl.0&upper=head.jsp&lower=frame2.jsp&left=leftchildcat.jsp&department=TV+Video+and+Camcorders&category=DVD&right=productsearch.jsp its selling for only 119.00:)

Bigbucks1959

19th July 2002, 23:06

Question,
ALot of people are saying it will not change cdrs or dvds or whatever...They call it a 3 disc holder..Can u change to the next svcd disk via the remote.

Thx,
Phil K.

Originally posted by chainsaw135
@bigbucks Yeah i really like mine, for not only the price but it can handle 5000kb/s i paid only 129.00 for mine and another thing if you didnt know its a 3 disk changer.

chainsaw135

20th July 2002, 01:22

Yes, what i do is put in the "2 disks"eg i always make 2 disks not 3. Then hit the remote button on which disk you want to load.. as disk 1,2, or 3 can be accessed via remote.

Bigbucks1959

20th July 2002, 10:26

Just made a sample of fast and furious at 4000 bitrate....very sluggish/skippy play.

If this apex can play 5000 bitrate..we will be in business for some awesome video quality. (Quality is the name of the game, not real concerned about 3 or 4 cds for my 2 hour movies....or 5 cds for that matter.

Gonna grab 1 today at circuit city.

Thx,

Phil K.

Originally posted by chainsaw135
Yes, what i do is put in the "2 disks"eg i always make 2 disks not 3. Then hit the remote button on which disk you want to load.. as disk 1,2, or 3 can be accessed via remote.

SiliconSoul

21st July 2002, 00:21

pioneer dv-c503 5 DISC PLAYER! can be programmed to goto the next disc without touching the REMOTE! the Ultimate Lazy mans DVD vcd svcd player! :D :D :D

Once i get the money im getting one! they run about $100-200

ebay has some new ones going for under 150 + S&H

i might even just says screw it and put it on the cc for now

:D :D :D :D

ohh the 5131 is my parents.... i have a apex ad-1000

:-)

ps. pioneer only plays svcd that are in spec... so that might not be what u want... but having 2 movies in at once will be great for me!

Bigbucks1959

21st July 2002, 00:38

Picked up a 5131 today..It plays my 4000 bitrate svcd perfectly...Unbelievable

PK

Originally posted by SiliconSoul
pioneer dv-c503 5 DISC PLAYER! can be programmed to goto the next disc without touching the REMOTE! the Ultimate Lazy mans DVD vcd svcd player! :D :D :D

Once i get the money im getting one! they run about $100-200

ebay has some new ones going for under 150 + S&H

i might even just says screw it and put it on the cc for now

:D :D :D :D

ohh the 5131 is my parents.... i have a apex ad-1000

:-)

ps. pioneer only plays svcd that are in spec... so that might not be what u want... but having 2 movies in at once will be great for me!

SiliconSoul

21st July 2002, 01:00

i wonder how many cds a 6-9 pass vbr min at 755 and max at 5000 avg at 3000 ... the quality would be great... and i wonder how many mins would fit on each cd...

chainsaw135

21st July 2002, 08:50

Well i'm not mathematical wiz, but i'd like to see bigbucks1959 come back with some results, as he'll be using those high bitrates:)

Bigbucks1959

21st July 2002, 10:15

Well, I have been using cbr recently....VBR at 4 passes should be sufficient...is what I keep on reading...

Let me do some more testing..

1 problem is that I share my SVCDs with others..so I have to be careful about the bitrate on shared svcds.

But I want to see 5000 bitrate on this apex player.

Thx

Phil K.

Originally posted by SiliconSoul
i wonder how many cds a 6-9 pass vbr min at 755 and max at 5000 avg at 3000 ... the quality would be great... and i wonder how many mins would fit on each cd...

Labersack

21st July 2002, 11:27

i wonder how many cds a 6-9 pass vbr min at 755 and max at 5000 avg at 3000 ... the quality would be great... and i wonder how many mins would fit on each cd...

With 128Kb sound about 36min will fit on a CDR80.

SiliconSoul

21st July 2002, 20:44

yeah i also share my svcd sometimes... so i make sure they are all close as possible to the SVCD spec... i even downsample the sound to 44.1 ...

yeah but a personal backup of the matrix or somrthing like that would be nice with crazy bitrates :-)

@Labersack with the apex 5131 we could still use 224 bit sound just take away from the video... and if we are trying to make the video looks so nice why not have great audio too :-)

waldok

22nd July 2002, 10:06

Don't take it bad, I enjoy reading your posts and following the never ending quest for best quality cause you guys sometimes bring out very interesting points. But it seems to me you guys start forgetting about the essential : the MOVIE. Guys, the ultimate goal is to watch a good movie, in good conditions. Considering the time you probably spend tweaking stuff and all, do you still have time to watch the movies at all ? I don't mean to be rude here, because I had the same behavior before. But I one day realized I was always dealing with bitrate, trying out new CDRs, experimenting with settings and all that stuff and I hadn't watched a single movie in weeks !!!

Now I stick with my "standard" 2 or 3 cds per movie. OK, the quality may not be the same as a 4Mbits/s 5 discs encoding but I enjoy the film and if the plot is good, I don't even notice quality after a few minutes time. Don't you remember the feeling of being so caught in the movie plot that you don't even remeber where you are ?

You don't invite your friends home for a 2h session of macroblocks artifacts hunting do you ? It's the movie man, the movie !

HAve fun.

Waldok

Labersack

22nd July 2002, 11:02

@ SiliconSoul
@Labersack with the apex 5131 we could still use 224 bit sound just take away from the video... and if we are trying to make the video looks so nice why not have great audio too :-)

I don't get your point. You can even go higher than 224 with the audio, only the VCD specs limit the audio-bitrate to 224, with SVCD you can go up to 384. This is no special feauture of your player, every player wo claims to handle SVCD have to hande audio up to 384 kb/s
But 128 was just an example, because you have to chose ONE bitrate to answer the question how many minutes will fit on an CDR80 with video avg 5000.

chainsaw135

22nd July 2002, 22:26

@waldok LAUGh, i can't help but laughing because you are so true. Sometimes i dont get time to watch the movies to be honest:) And this saturday i'm finally taking a long awaited vacation. So at this time i'll get to relax not that i'll be watching and dvd movies or svcd movies but atleast i get to relax;)

SiliconSoul

23rd July 2002, 00:15

yeah i need to jsut chill out and watch a movie or 50 this week! i have enough encoded now to prob watch movies non stop for over 2 weeks... :P

waldok

23rd July 2002, 09:15

despite all the hours spent on tweaking the smallest bit...
I was afraid you might take my post as "mind your own business". I'm pleased to see you guys have some sense of humor !

Chainsaw, have fun while relaxing ! And hope you'll appreciate every "bit" of it (couldn't resist) !

Silicon, well, 50 movies, let's say 1h40 average length, this leaves you in front of 83 hours and 20 minutes non stop watching. I'll give you the address of my eye-doctor...

Cya guys.

:D

Waldok.

SiliconSoul

23rd July 2002, 09:21

wow thats almost 4 days without sleep ;P

WildHorse

30th July 2002, 07:34

Everyone with APEX 5131 please read.

Are you able to use the subtitle for SVCD? I've backed up a few DVD to SVCD using DVD2SVCD with SVCD sub but never worked on APEX 5131. I downloaded the sample from DVD2SCVD still nothing. I finally had to use perm sub which is not a good solution. DVD sub is OK. Anybody has this SVCD sub problem?