Video slightly too bright on mac client

[jimbobuk]

Having tested the client out i noticed that the pictures of the video seemed to look a bit washed out.. I've altered the source settings to compensate a little which seemed to help, but i'm now watching recordings made on my main PC and the colour looks fine before any changes, so i worry that my source alterations will be applied to the capture and so will make it too dark on other displays.

Are there any client display settings anywhere, even just in the properties file.. that way i can tweak the output without altering the input. Or is this what the source setup on a client is doing anyway?

Cheers

Jim

[mcbrems]

I have reported a similar issue elsewhere, and I have some info that might help.

Before I switched to SageTV I had EyeTV. I noticed that when I did color calibration (using the OSX system display prefs) on my Mac Mini thru my Sony SXRD, the settings that made the desktop and other apps look good unfortunately made my EyeTV and VLC playback look too dark. So I raised the blacks in the color profile to compensate so the EyeTV and VLC playback looked good, but then my desktop looked too bright. "Oh well," I thought.

So when I later installed SageTV, I immediately noticed that live video and recording playback looked kind of washed-out, pale, and too bright. I immediately sent a Beta bug report to SageTV Support, without remembering that my global display profile black levels were erroneously higher to compensate for the darker EyeTV playback.

I recently had a chance to reset my OSX color profile from scratch when I upgraded to a Core 2 Duo mini. To my chagrin, the OSX color profile settings that make the desktop and other apps look good also make the SageTV playback look perfect. Black levels are great. It never occurred to me that maybe the EyeTV and VLC playback black levels were too low, and that SageTV seems to have a closer parity with the OSX display color settings.

I'm pretty happy with the way my SageTV playback looks now. I'm hoping the next build will fix the hiccups (I'll hold my breath).

MB

[jimbobuk]

Thanks.. I'd rather not change the colour profile as i watch a lot more things on there than just sage recordings and they all look great and correct at the moment.

I just want to know if the changes i've done effect only the client or the actual recording of the files.. i expect (and don't want) the latter.

[sandor]

Are you dealing with HD or SD?

[iconic]

Originally Posted by jimbobuk

I just want to know if the changes i've done effect only the client or the actual recording of the files.. i expect (and don't want) the latter.

You would have to re-encode the files for that to happen.

VLC allows you to adjust the image parameters in it's preferences, I would recommend adjusting the gamma so that the image looks correct there, and leave the color calibration settings in System Preferences correct for everything else.

[jimbobuk]

only SD recording. In this country we've barely got HDTV (aside from the new disc formats) and i doubt we'll ever get recordable HD like you americans have had for so long!!!

iconic, i know there are some options that you used to be able to tweak that are encoding options. This is what i'm asking about whether the controls are affecting it. So yes of course old recordings are not going to change but all future recordings could be affected if the controls on the client are alterning the colour/brightness etc. at the capture stage on the server.