Rendered movie much brighter on television

dogwalker wrote on 6/6/2009, 8:14 AM

I've created a musical montage from our very old wedding video (originally vhs), and created a dvd. It's very nice - I used the Wedding Rings toolkit from Digital Juice.

However, one thing bothers me, and I'm not sure of the best way to fix it. In a few places - the dvd menu, and in the movie in one place - I use an overlay (with alpha) from the Digital Juice kit, and it's very blown out (almost white) on the television screen. This overlay is golden color, and looks great on my computer.

I've tried using the secondary color corrector to clip whites, and I tried computer->studio (and vice versa, because I don't really understand them) on the event, but no real difference.

Should I just go on that event and use brightness/contrast to make it darker?

Can someone explain the phenomenon behind what I'm seeing?

Thanks.

Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 6/6/2009, 8:37 AM

What were you using to visually "monitor" your work in Vegas?

dogwalker wrote on 6/6/2009, 8:40 AM

I have only the one computer monitor, a 24" LCD. And of course my television is analog, so I imagine that could be some of the problem.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 6/6/2009, 8:58 AM

In part, yes. But you can't expect to properly "grade" video on a computer monitor for viewing on a television. If nothing else, use another television (better than nothing) for grading and evaluating video.

Paulo Ribeiro wrote on 6/6/2009, 9:07 AM

Since professional video monitors are too expensive, you should highly consider using a (very cheap) small but well balanced CRT. It works for me.

Brightness, contrast, colour and pixel aspect are more trusty seen thru one of these oldies than from an LCD... unless you're working on a HD project, but that's a different storie.

dogwalker wrote on 6/6/2009, 9:17 AM

Well, ultimately, this video is just for us, so I just need to tweak it to look good on our television (a 55" Mitsubishi CRT, should have waited and bought LCD, but ah well). I will take it to her sister's house so the family can watch it, but it's mainly for us.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/6/2009, 6:56 PM

I always cheat: I keep the levels @ the max the analog source I captured was at. Then it should look the same. Anything displayed on a tube TV should be a little dark on a monitor.

[r]Evolution wrote on 6/8/2009, 12:51 PM

DVD's are cheap.
If you have the time, watch it on your TV, then go back and Tweak it, and burn another Disc.
Check it on your TV... do this till it's right.

It's rough editing without a proper monitor.
You don't know what you're gonna get.
I'm not even sure if Computer Monitor Calibration Software could compensate and set your Computer Monitors up correctly so you can use them as your NLE Monitor.

Simplest/Cheapest solution I've found is to use a DV camera from Vegas via 1394 out to a TV.
I use the Color Bars to adjust the TV for monitoring. The output is usually spot on.

Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/9/2009, 11:04 AM

It could also be that your TV color balance/contrast/brightness needs adjusting. Have you tried adjusting the TV in any way? It may very well be set just the way you want it for what you ordinarily watch but I am still curious if anything can be adjusted on there to have your wedding video look acceptable.

LarsHD wrote on 6/9/2009, 11:12 AM

0-255 / 16-235 issue

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/9/2009, 11:16 AM

if it is an out of range color issue then you would most likely get annoying buzzing during backs/whites too.

dogwalker wrote on 6/9/2009, 3:20 PM

I wound up working with the contrast, gain, gamma (and something, but I'm work, I don't recall, but I think it was all on one effects dialog) to shift the range down and darken the video. I had the waveform viewer up, and much of the video was above 110, so I changed settings on the offending effect until the video peaked around 100.

Looks much better, and looked great when I took it to my sister-in-law's house. My mother-in-law, etc, loved the video and watched it numerous times. It was a simple 5-minute movie of various clips throughout our wedding, along with some photos of my wife when she was young, and then some of me when I was young (dang, that was looong ago).

I used the Digital Juice Wedding Theme kit, and I think that added a lot to it (although the Theme kit was also the offending element which was above 100 - I probably rendered it incorrectly, since this was my first use of their stuff).

BTW, I'd definitely recommend Digital Juice, and I'm planning on buying more of their Theme Kits and revealers, as well as their music (royalty-free). If there are other sites which sell similar stuff, I'd like to look at those as well.

Thanks again for all the suggestions!