Brightness change on DVD

Rv6tc wrote on 3/19/2007, 3:23 PM
I burned my project to DVD today to see what it looked/sounded like on a TV, and was very disturbed to see that the brightness was way too high. It blew out most of the still images, and some of the video. Anything with light colors.

I rendered it to MPEG-2 on the hard drive then dropped it into DVDA (v.4). The MPEG-2 file looks fine on the computer monitor, as does the preview in DVDA. When you play the DVD, either in the computer, or on the TV, that's where the brightness comes in.

Where did this come from and how do I get rid of it?? I've never seen this before.

Thanks,

Keith

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 3/19/2007, 3:52 PM
Different players may have various gamma settings, but it shouldn't be as drastic as you describe. There could also be some 0IRE vs 0RGB stuff, and 100 IRE vs 255RGB going on, but more likely it's either your calibration or gamma settings in your player, or a combination of both.
Rv6tc wrote on 3/19/2007, 4:10 PM
Hmmmmm. Don't know what the former means, exactly. But with reference to the latter, the DVD was bright on both my computer and the TV.

I think I'll start a completly new DVDA project and see if I can make sure everything is "default" and go from there. A friend also suggested that I try to burn the MPEG-2 file with Nero, so that might help me figure this out.

Thanks.
logiquem wrote on 3/19/2007, 4:22 PM
Each time i encode something in mpeg with Vegas, i can see the notable added brightness. I think personnaly that this issue is clearly related to the mpeg codec and some gamma error induced.

winrockpost wrote on 3/19/2007, 4:40 PM
no added brightness here,, can lay a mpeg and a avi on the line and toggle back and forth,, same to the eye and scopes
farss wrote on 3/19/2007, 5:02 PM
The problem is in the PLAYER, i.e. the STB DVD player.
They clamp black at 16 and white at 235.
The encoded mpeg file will look 100% OK played back on the Vegas T/L, it will not look the same coming out most DVD players.

If you want to get a rough idea how it's going to look add the Broadcast Colours FX to the Video Master Bus, try the very conservative preset.

See here for a good example.
Bob.
riredale wrote on 3/19/2007, 5:26 PM
Is your monitor calibrated? For a few years when I first got involved in digital photography I carefully adjusted every image, only to discover later that my monitor was way off.

Go to this page and go down about halfway for a really good gamma/brightness tool.

If your monitor is properly calibrated, then there's something else you might want to do. Have you looked at your video on a TV set hooked up to Vegas via a Firewire connection? TVs and PC monitors look very different in some material.

Finally, if the video looks fine on a TV hooked up to Vegas but comes out all wrong on a DVD, then the luminance range is probably the culprit. Some MPEG2 encoders assume 0-255, others assume 16-235.

EDIT:
If your gamma is off, there are multiple ways to correct it. For my setup the simplest way is to go into the Nvidia setup screens (if you have an nVidia graphics card) and tweak the "color correction" window to make the test image mentioned earlier read a gamma of 2.2.
winrockpost wrote on 3/19/2007, 5:32 PM
they are saying the problem exists even when viewing on the puter, not just the STB DVD player.
rs170a wrote on 3/19/2007, 6:57 PM
It blew out most of the still images...

See if this works for you.
Apply the Secondary Color Corrector at the track level.
Then select the Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset.

Mike