Getting the best out of CCE: "gray background"?

[RB]

I'm having troubles understanding the "Getting the best out of CCE" guide where the author talks about the "gray background" in the Advanced VBR Settings. Note that my native language is not English so may this is the problem. I'd be thankful for any help.

OK, specifically, the sentences


The background has also been colored in a way to show you the relative quality. If the background is green it means good quality, gray parts mean standard image quality and red background means serious image distortion.

...

Keep watching the graph. If you got a gray background like this you will want to change it:


confuse me. What exactly is the "background" and how is it coloured gray in that particular screenshot? All I seem to see is an all black backround... And why do we need to modify the bitrate if the background is gray when actually red background means serious image distortion?

Thanks.

[Sp33d]

You need to change the setting that's on the side of the graph. It's on the right-side of the graph. It's called Q scale.
From the guide:

"The first thing you must do is check Q.scale (on the top right of the screen) and you'll get to see something like in the screenshot"

[RB]

Of course I did that. Still asking the same question :) Where in the screenshots am I supposed to see an either green, red or gray background? All I see are green, red, white/gray and yellow lines.

[Calypso]

His picture _barely_ shows the grey tinted background- probably because of gif compression. If you look very closely, you will notice the 'tallest' GOP has a slightly different shade above the red and below the green. In otherwords, that particular GOP is indicating a Q factor greater than 10.

http://doom9.org/mpg/images/cce-grayarea.gif

[RB]

OK, I zoomed into the picture and now I see it. Thanks!