AVI saturation problem

[jonasa]

I always thought that the inconsistencies in video playback was due to various graphics cards video overlay settings...

[jonasa]

...ever tried opening a quicktime in vlc - that is saturated too... must be a gamma setting in the quicktime player..

also... don't think the quicktime player uses the video overlay, whereas other windows based players seems to do (try and move the players during playback, you'll see the image shifting)

[DaForce]

I have just had a look at some mpeg2 steams from a TIVO which i have converted to XVID and there isnt much difference.. Other than the bluring due to lower bit rats , 700kb/s as opposed to 5800kb/s for the mpeg2.
I cant see any real color differneces???

Shall I post some examples.. maybe im not understanding what you mean or something.

[powerandrubber]

I found the major source of my problem. Seems that by default, video overlay saturation is set to 114% in my nvidia quadro fx 540 display properties. (My laptop with a nvidia geforce go and win2k has the same 114% setting but avis look fine.) I also have to change the hue to get avis to match the original tgas. It's an issue with either my video card/drivers, windows xp, or media player 9. This only affects media player, avis look fine in ram player. I will try upgrading drivers and mediaplayer. Bottom line is I can no longer trust the avi format to display correctly. Yuck!

[DaForce]

So what you saying is that AVI's are fine

[powerandrubber]

Well there could still be a problem with avis as Morbid said but not to the extreme that I was having. So yes they are fine as long as your display settings work which mine didn't by default.

[DaForce]

I think the primary problem is that AVI's are affected by the overlay settings of video card whereas quicktimes are not.

And depending on what player you view the AVI's in you will also notice a difference because some ignore the overlay.

I can certainly say that in all the recent xvid avi conversions I have done I havnt noticed any color/brightness differences.

[powerandrubber]

AVIs are actually not affected themselves, it's the way they display in windows media player. The saturation isn't burned into the avi because I can convert back to tga and the color is fine. The avi also looks fine in ram player which is not affected by video overlay settings. I never had a problem until I recently switched to my new computer. (windows/video card issue apparently) My worry now is how avis will display on a client's computer which I have no control over. Quicktime is probably the way to go since it ignores video overlay.

[DaForce]

Sorry yeah thats what i meant the play is affect by the overlay.

So in that respect yes Quicktime would be better.
But then you gotta be sure the client has it installed, but i guess that the same with say an AVI using the xvid codec.. they would need that installed.

Almost the only failsafe is either mpeg or WMV

[Da_elf]

hmm. ive never had problems with avi either, ive used divx and indeo5 mainly

[flipside]

Try this: open media player and drag 5 different video files in it. Play them. You'll notice that the first one looks dark, the second one is good, the third one is dark again and so on. At least that is what's happening here. When I play one avi, it is sometimes dark and sometimes not...

[DaForce]

I certainly havnt seen that happen before. odd.. hey download media player classic (awesome) and try that and see if you still have the same issue... D/L link below.

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/vi...er_classic.cfm

[powerandrubber]

Thanks for that link to media player classic! It still uses the f'd up video overlay settings (which can be changed for correct display) but it's simple and snappy compared to the new winxp media player which handles like a 800 pound gorilla. I wasn't able to duplicate flipside's problem with either the new media player or the classic.

[flipside]

Damn, I have this problem all the time, even a long time ago when I was still on win2000.

The classic is much better, didn't know that still existed

Oh and powerandrubber, you have the best avatar ever! I can really hear him say that!

[powerandrubber]

Thanks. Long live the Simpsons!