Why does brightness, contrast etc need to be adjusted per capture

[McQuaid]

I've gotten used to this and have found good settings per show, but damn it's annoying.

For example, I was capturing some family guy eps recently and got perfect settings for this show. If the brightness/contrast are just a little too high, the capture can look washed out especially as one of the characters is all white with just the black outlines giving him detail.

Now just as a test, I tried these 'perfect' settings on a live action tv show and the results were horrible. Way too dark.

Why is it an actual television can be just right for any channel, but for cap cards settings have to be fine tuned for each type of show?
Do the newer 10bit cards alleviate this problem?

I've always done this by eye and never really used a histogram. It sounds kinda clunky to have to find an image that has roughly equal amounts of black and white in the picture for adjustments. And most guides recommend using a vcr and recording the material and pausing it at an appropriate black/white source for adjustments.

There must be a better way than recording, finding a good spot, setting the levels, test a cap, and repeat until finding a good setting.

I also remember reading someone said that you should only have to do this once for your hardware and initally that made sense to me, but from my tests I've found that not to be true.

Any info or any tips on peoples adjustment techniques would be appreciated.

[Ookami]

Don't forget that the picture shown on your monitor will look different on your TV, so don't tweak the setting for your monitor if you want to look it on a TV ;) .

http://www.lukesvideo.com/videotuning.html

[McQuaid]

Yes, I am aware that their is a colour difference from tv to computer. Thats why I never adjust the colour. But just getting the right brightness,contrast setting is a frustrating cycle of trial and error til its just right. And that's on a per show basis.

Or type of show anyways. For example, the perfect settings I was referring to for the family guy, are also prefect for simpsons and south park. As they are all 'bright shows'. I say these are perfect because if I go even alittle higher, over saturated colours become apparent. But again these same perfect settings are no good for say, beast machines, which I capped this morning. Just had a quick look at my results, I don't think I got the settings quite right for this show. I've also found trying to adjust the capture after the fact is for the most part a futile effort. I feel I almost have to record any new show to tape to get a few cracks at the right settings for capture.

This is why I wanted to know how a TV or vcr can show/record something with just the right settings, whereas capture cards are so sensitive to this. I also wanted to know are cards based on newer tech (those 10 bit cards like msi tv@nywhere) more adaptive in these situations.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>It sounds kinda clunky to have to find an image that has roughly equal amounts of black and white in the picture for adjustments. And most guides recommend using a vcr and recording the material and pausing it at an appropriate black/white source for adjustments

completely true!
and why should one had the one and only solution to record
to VHS first when he'll get better results if he captures direct
to hdd.........

try creating some universal settings PER CHANNEL,write it down,
adjust on capturing from that channel.......
guidelines (as far as i'm concerned) are not that complicated:
capture on bright/contr settings that look ok to you.....
if you get it slightly wrong you can recover it on post process,and
if you get it really wrong (too bright or too dark) then you can't
recover it..(se be carefull in initial testing/setting)

i think new cards don't have better solutions in that field....