Windows desktop appears to have a different color space than video players?

[mdchaser]

Hi, I have an HTPC hooked up to a Samsung LCD via HDMI. I had it calibrated last night and we came across an interesting problem that I can't explain. The panel looks great on the Windows 7 desktop however playing a video in various players (powerDVD, media player) gives odd results. I can go into the nvidia control panel while a video is playing and the desktop is visible and adjust say the contrast. The entire desktop including the players frame will adjust however the video that is playing doesn't change at all. It's as if the desktop and video stream have two separate color spaces, am I even close? VLC has some built in controls for contrast, brightness, hue, etc however I would MUCH rather have video play back using the desktop color space as that is calibrated perfectly.

I apologize if I'm rambling, I'm having a hard time figuring out what is going on and how to explain it. I did just hack/install the latest nvidia drivers to allow the full rgb 0-255 color space but it only seems to affect the desktop... Could it be that videos are playing back in say the cmyk color space (probably making this up)?

[CruNcher]

Video (Overlay) and Desktop are rendered apart from each other there are specific controls in the Nvidia control panel for the video surface (also the 16-235 TV scale,or 0-255 modes PC Scale) else use the Application provided ones or use a renderer with specific color calibration capabilities like MadVR https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228 though you wont be able to use that with PowerDVD only a few players support it so far.
You can also use it commercially for no license fee so presentation systems would be allowed in the public (show rooms,conferences, CES, NAB, Emmys, Oscars, TED, your monthly town hall meetings with it

[mdchaser]

Originally Posted by CruNcher

Video (Overlay) and Desktop are rendered apart from each other there are specific controls in the Nvidia control panel for the video surface (also the 16-235 TV scale,or 0-255 modes PC Scale) else use the Application provided ones or use a renderer with specific color calibration capabilities like MadVR https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228 though you wont be able to use that with PowerDVD only a few players support it so far.
You can also use it commercially for no license fee so presentation systems would be allowed in the public (show rooms,conferences, CES, NAB, Emmys, Oscars, TED, your monthly town hall meetings with it

Thanks for the info! So there are multiple render paths, that explains a lot. Is there a way to "synchronize" them so that they both display the same? I'm trying to avoid calibrating individual software packages, the desktop render is perfect and I don't have the benefit of a professional anymore.