"Try shifting you blacks down to absolute black and see if that fixes your problem."

Where - in Vegas or Windows OS or WMV? As mentioned above, no-event (or fade-in) black is also dark gray/not real black...t'is hard to shift down on nothing :)

I've also noticed that when I play a DVD movie with Windows Media Player or VLC, blacks ain't black there either even when I adjust the Samsung monitors to "Cinema" (most black setting), be it in the movie or the letterbox. But elsewhere, i.e. my black Firefox theme or viewing events in Vegas preview or even the VP10 splashscreen, things look fine.

first, buy a spyder
then calibrate monitor
then panic ;-)

btw adjusting your monitor to ANYTHING but calibrated (or at least neutral) is going to have you running round in circles....

Ah,
maybe your problem is how your video card is setup.
Your nVidia control panel lets you adjust video to use 0-255 or 16-235. If that gets applied depends on how the player talks to the video card, just to further confound.
For certain that has no effect on how video looks in the Vegas Preview Window but it may affect how the video looks in most players.

That's why you should use the waveform monitor and not the preview monitor.
If you've got a calibrated monitor as your secondary display device use that as well as the waveform monitor. One things for sure, the Preview monitor in Vegas does not display video correctly by default.

Bob.

Ushere,

Someone mentioned Spyder to me before, but I just can't afford it so I'll have to work around this udderwise :)

Bob,

By neutral, I assume you mean default factory setting for monitors? I'll check my video card (nVidia GT430) for settings you described. I usually have my twin monitors at identical settings for I move stuff around them. That said...

I still have my older nVidia card (GeForce 6800XT) and I have room in my PCI Express for one more card, so... lemme ask you this:

Can I hook up a third monitor, either my remaining older 19" LCD or perhaps better yet, the 19" Sony CRT that's been in my closet for years -- yet still have my dual desktop-stretched-over-twin-monitors... and use the third only for Vegas editing? That is, fire it up when needed only.

While not some expensive pro editing one--just a decent consumer model from 2002 or so, the CRT would be more color accurate but being so bulky, I'd have to build something for it to sit on. (Tooltime Phil will have to put his thinkin' cap on...)

"Bob,

Try as I might I cannot find anywhere that I used the word "neutral", so I'm not certain if I'm addressing the right thing here or not.


By default all computer monitors display white from 255 and black from 0.
You can on some recalibrate that but then all your graphics will be out of whack.
Becuase video is normally displayed via a special function on the video card the drivers can intercept that data and remap values in the range 16 to 235 to 0 to 255.
The problem is video players may or may not do the same thing as well and then your blacks can be crushed.



Bob.

think sonic got confused - i said neutral - in ref to setting the actual monitors to the closest setting they might have to standard srgb. ie. no cinema tone, vivid, oversat, etc.,

Yup, me's got confused, Bob.
I quoted Ushere.

Anyone wish to venture some feedback on the third monitor and Vegas, etc. question I posed in my post before this one?
Thanks.

Bob,

Well, I set the nVidia card to 0-255 RGB (it was set at 16-235) and no other card enhancements or adjustments added and that fixed the blacks.. Yoo-hoo! Thanks for the input.

no problem with using your spare monitor the way you want.