[eric.exe]

I recently upgraded from a Radeon X850XT to a GeForce 8800 GTS. Before the upgrade blacks in HD video file would be perfectly black, matching the darkness of the bars on widescreen movies. However, after the upgrade, the blacks are a dark gray. You can see were the black of a movie ends and the bars start.


Anyone know what's up? I did not reformat during the switch. I did correct driver install though, with drivercleaner etc.

 

[eric.exe]

anyone know?

 

[Mrkazador]

In the media player you are using switch to overlay. Using a VMR9 video renderer shows blacks as dark gray.

In ati drivers they map vmr9 levels to overlay which is horrible imo. Thats why it seemed fine before the upgrade.

 

[eric.exe]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrkazador /forum/post/0


In the media player you are using switch to overlay. Using a VMR9 video renderer shows blacks as dark gray.

In ati drivers they map vmr9 levels to overlay which is horrible imo. Thats why it seemed fine before the upgrade.

but vmr9 is supposed to have better quality.

 

[Mrkazador]

Your videocard is showing proper levels. You need to calibrate your display for vmr9.

 

[eric.exe]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrkazador /forum/post/0


Your videocard is showing proper levels. You need to calibrate your display for vmr9.

I think I got the general gist of what's going on. The levels are accurate, for TV use, but I run my computer monitor a bit bright, so the blacks are washed out. I did notice with FFDshow's mpeg decoder I can change the levels to PC or TV levels, which is nice.


While messing with the video renderers I tried Hali's video renderer, which gets me the darker black levels for all sources. I guess I should use mode when watching stuff on my PC, and VMR9 for TV?

 

[Mrkazador]

Yeah, just use overlay for pc use and vmr9 for tv use.

Whats the point of using Vmr9 if your going to map them to pc levels

 

[Charles Black]

eric,


Ffdshow outputs TV levels if you choose YUY2 for ffdshows's output. Ffdshow expands the output to PC levels if your use RGB32 for ffdshow's output. Just use VMR9 with ffdshow set to output RGB32 and the output levels should be good for a PC monitor. A big advantage of this method is that your standard desktop will appear normal as well.


Charlie

 

[arfster]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Black /forum/post/0


Ffdshow expands the output to PC levels if your use RGB32 for ffdshow's output. Just use VMR9 with ffdshow set to output RGB32 and the output levels should be good for a PC monitor. A big advantage of this method is that your standard desktop will appear normal as well.

It also does a much better job of the TV>PC conversion than using overlay, or using the ffdshow levels filter.

 

[Charles Black]

Arfster,

Quote:
Originally Posted by arfster /forum/post/0


It also does a much better job of the TV>PC conversion than using overlay, or using the ffdshow levels filter.

I've never used overlay for video but I do use ffdshow's levels for expansion sometimes with good results. The gray-scale is not quite as good as with YUY2 out and doing the expansion in the nVidia driver though. I have neglected to compare the ffdshow levels vs. the RGB32 out recently so I need to get busy and do the comparison.


Charlie

 

[Master_Shake]

This is good info. I had the exact same problem after building a new computer and switching from ATI to Nvidia. I was still having problems as i couldn't get anything to darken CoreAVC playback but I'll give this a try.