I have seen many use the pillarbox black for a reference but take a look at this photo.
I would not doubt this black changes from title to title.


http://img01.picoodle.com/img/img01/9/9/24/f_LHm_afc3330.jpg

It looks like the brightness needs to be tuned down a smidge. I've noticed that too before. 3 possibilties I know of:

1. The video was encoded that way. Not much you can do, you could correct the colors but you will want to undo changes when finished or else other movies will have improper color settings.
2. Video card needs color correction. Look for overlay settings in Video card driver controls.
3. decoder needs color adjustment. If its MPEG2, Divx, Xvid, x264, etc... the codec should have color controls too.

It looks like the brightness needs to be tuned down a smidge. I've noticed that too before. 3 possibilties I know of:

1. The video was encoded that way. Not much you can do, you could correct the colors but you will want to undo changes when finished or else other movies will have improper color settings.
2. Video card needs color correction. Look for overlay settings in Video card driver controls.
3. decoder needs color adjustment. If its MPEG2, Divx, Xvid, x264, etc... the codec should have color controls too.

My point is that the black from the Windows media player is much darker than the pillarboxes.
Maybe this is correctable like you say but it is interesting that the pillarboxes don't default to the same black as the player. :eek:
Maybe this is just a video overlay gamma setting but I thought it was interesting to get some input about it.

is that monitor calibrated? if not, maybe those bars would be blacker if it was. what happens if you just turn the brightness down until the light black matches the dark black, does the picture turn to crap?

Video black is not RGB 0,0,0. You need to check an option in your media player to expand dynamic range or adjust the levels to RGB 0,0,0 black or to use black/white point compensation (look for something like one of those in the options)... or adjust the video drivers for the color overlay settings for a system wide effect.

TVs are calibrated to show video black as pure black, but the source is actually always above RGB 0,0,0... and video white is less than 255,255,255 too. So when you show a video without black and white point compensation enabled on a PC, you'll see the bars.

is that monitor calibrated? if not, maybe those bars would be blacker if it was. what happens if you just turn the brightness down until the light black matches the dark black, does the picture turn to crap?

Well....I wouldn't say it is but that's really not the point I am making.
Turning down the brightness does not change this black level difference.
That would be not addressing the issue anyway.
Why is the black of the pillarboxing not nearly as dark as media player? :D

Media player has its own picture controls, the brightness is to high on yours. The image is washed out too. I can do the same thing on my TV but if I set the brightness/contrast correctly the bars are black, as they should be.

Media player has its own picture controls, the brightness is to high on yours.
that's what I meant to say

Media player has its own picture controls, the brightness is to high on yours. The image is washed out too. I can do the same thing on my TV but if I set the brightness/contrast correctly the bars are black, as they should be.

Hmm... used the nVidia CP to lower the brightness and was able to even it out but sure looks like I lost some shadow detail. :confused:
WMP video settings will not change, btw.

Lemme take a crack at explaining the reason that the Letterboxing is not as dark a the masking bars in WMP.

this is by design and you are seeing grey letterboxing because you have your display set for computer levels not video levels


As said above video is mastered at studio levels(16-235,240) where as all videocards output computer level(0-255).

What ths means is that the "black" on a video is not black on a computer display because 16 is not zero its 16, a dark grey.

The masking bars in WMP are 0 as in black, as in the darkest possible the display can be.

there are two ways to fix this, 1. turn down the brightness( might not work on a lcd monitor) or 2. use the software to "Expand" video black so it looks as dark as 0 computer black.

the first has the downside that everything gets crushed down to video black and the desktop and web look too dark.

the second affects only the videos brightness but can loose detail because it throws out any "below" black data (0-16) and some video detail can be lost.

check out http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=523614

that thread contains all of the info you need to fix it