3 replies to this topic

[logifuse]

I was doing a little bit of tweaking over the weekend (in MediaPortal, but I think it's the same in WMC) & I struck a bit of an issue with selecting the output colour range. By default, WMC will do 16-235 (i.e. for a TV, not a monitor), but with that, TV looks a bit washed out (grey blacks, that sort of thing). You can override it to do 0-255 (via registry or via video card drivers), but I noticed that when you do that, yes TV looks much better, but then videos (mostly h.264) are overblown & too dark & grainy with excessive banding.

So, it's either 16-235 where TV looks poor & videos look good, or 0-255 where TV looks good & videos look poor.

I tried tweaking the codec for videos (FFDShow where you can set the range), but it didn't seem to do anything.

Any ideas how to reach a happy medium? I've tweaked codecs for years for things like denoise & resizing, but I've never tried to fiddle with the output colour space.

Justin

[bigdonk]

I was doing a little bit of tweaking over the weekend (in MediaPortal, but I think it's the same in WMC) & I struck a bit of an issue with selecting the output colour range. By default, WMC will do 16-235 (i.e. for a TV, not a monitor), but with that, TV looks a bit washed out (grey blacks, that sort of thing). You can override it to do 0-255 (via registry or via video card drivers), but I noticed that when you do that, yes TV looks much better, but then videos (mostly h.264) are overblown & too dark & grainy with excessive banding.

So, it's either 16-235 where TV looks poor & videos look good, or 0-255 where TV looks good & videos look poor.

I tried tweaking the codec for videos (FFDShow where you can set the range), but it didn't seem to do anything.

Any ideas how to reach a happy medium? I've tweaked codecs for years for things like denoise & resizing, but I've never tried to fiddle with the output colour space.

Justin

The PQ will be largely dependant on the display panel/TV/projector and it's ability to handle PC level ( 0-255 ) video levels.

Both my Panasonic Plasma TV, and my BenQ W6000, by far, display a better ( IMO ) PQ with video levels ( 0-255 ), i'm using the default MS foundation codec BTW, for dvb-t FTA, H.264, VC-1 and mpeg2 video codecs.

Both my display panels are designed for a good static and dynamic contrast levels, and i have zero banding issues with either dvb-t FTA TV or video's.

Most modern HDMI panels/TV/projectors also have NVRAM configuration options for the recieved video level, PC (0-255) or video (16-235). Do you have such an option on your display device ?

I'm also using the default color settings in AMD CCC, and i have all forms of AMD CCC video post processing turned off, with the exception of manual VA de-interlacing.

Edited by bigdonk, 27 May 2012 - 09:41 PM.

[logifuse]

My TV is from the "why would someone want to connect a computer/want 24Hz/want native res?" era, so very few options in that department.

I agree that 0-255 looks best for TV, but for some reason videos are just wrong on my config. Same codec, different codec, doesn't seem to matter.

I can't see anything in the MediaInfo outputs of both the TV recordings (MPEG2 TS) & videos (AVC) that suggests that they should be that different (both are YUV 4:2:0), but I don't understand this stuff enough to know for sure.

I guess I'll just keep experimenting.

Justin

[logifuse]

Further experiments confirm that the TV is the issue. When I went from a Foxtel iQ to an iQHD, I moved the HTPC from the HDMI input to the DVI one (iQHD now on HDMI). Turns out that somewhere internally, the TV has different settings for 50Hz than it does for 59/60Hz.

50Hz likes 0-255, 59/60Hz likes 16-235.

Looks like I'll just have to live with washed out TV.

Justin