Bright video issues...

Ok, I've run out of patience after looking everywhere I could for the solution to this problem. I play videos on my system using a variety of software players, but mostly Media Player Classic. When I play videos on my system, they would look very bright, and I would have to play with the contrast and brightness to fix the issue. Well, a while back I realized that if I set the Directshow filter properties in MPC to VMR9 instead of the system default, that my videos played properly. This is great, except when I am on the net and there are embedded Windows Media Players, which still play the videos with the weird brightness. Can I see what my system default directshow filter/renderer settings are, and see why this is occuring in videos viewed without forcing VMR9 to be used? Or can I change my system default directshow filter? Please help :) Arden *** EDIT *** Ok, I think I may have found something which may help... I downloaded SMPlayer (an mplayer frontend) and in the options, it gives two options for video output, directx and directx:noaccel. When I switch to the directx:noaccel, the video plays fine, whereas with the regular directx, the video is again too bright. Also, as an FYI for anyone with insight, when I adjust video properties for brightness and contast, the video settings get 'out-of-whack', as in the settings I make (brightness -2 or -20) instead make the video look brighter than it did before my change. Changing back to 0 now makes the video look completely different than it did before I changed it.

You are correct. Most Video drivers allow you to set brightness, contrast, color and tint for 'overlay' mode (Display Properties -> Settings -> Advanced-> Overlay on my ATI). Alternately you can disable acceleration in DXDiag.

If you force decoders to output to RGB, they'll generally do it correctly. That way you don't have to rely on the renderer's broken conversion.

Ah... and here lies my confusion... Why does Media Player Classic do the video displaying correctly when it uses VRM9, but not the system default? Can I tell what my system uses as default, or can I assume it's the standard Directshow filter with video acceleration which is causing some overlay issues? I checked Windows Media Player for Video Acceleration, and it has an option for using overlay or not, once I de-select the overlay option, now Windows Media Player plays videos correctly again... I'm confused!!! BTW, my desktop overlay settings (from control panel/display/advanced/nvidia control panel) are defaulted correctly... so it isn't the overlay issues from that... I think!?!? Arden

In XP and Vista, the default is VMR7 Windowed, which is just a wrapper for Overlay. (In 2K, it's Overlay, and in 9x it was Video Renderer and sometimes GDI.) The reason they look different is just broken drivers, because the actual YUV to RGB conversion is done on the graphics card with the graphic drivers, each rendering mode has its own codepath in the drivers. It's a bit odd, since almost everyone has the opposite problem: Overlay has good colors and VMR9 is washed out. If you want to use overlay, you'll have to customize the controls, or upgrade the driver and pray it doesn't break color altogether.

Well, I am running Windows 2k, and unless I'm looking in the wrong spot, overlay settings in control panel seem correct, and my video looks fine otherwise (as in, for non-videos)... Sigh... so the drivers I need to update are my video drivers, and see if that works? I don't think it will change anything, as I *thought* my video card drivers are up-to-date... but anything is worth a try. Thanks, Arden

This is driving me insane! How can it be so hard!! :P My case: Vista, nVidia 6600Gt with newest whql-drivers. When playing videos in windowed-mode with WMP11 everythings fine, when switching to full screen->colors washed out. Overlay problem i think, well haven't found a single way to disable overlays with my setup..don't find it in WMP11, not int DXDiag, not int nVidia control center. Please Help! Thank You!

In WMP it should be: Tools/Options/Performance/Advanced/Use Overlays At least that's where it is for me. Arden

You're using WMP11? Mine is v. 11.0.6000.6324 and theres no 'advanced' under the performance tab :/

No, not using WMP11, but figured Microsoft wouldn't change their tools menu much... There must be something similar for Video Performance, as advanced settings button somewhere, like there is for earlier versions of WMP. Take a quick look again. Mine is in the section that allows you to change how much video acceleration is used. Arden