what are your current color calibration settings?

[GbrNole]

mine are:

(a) cable tv tuner input

brightness: 130
contrast: 130
saturation: 122
hue: 128
sharpness: 162


(b) satellite tv via composite input (s-vid looks like washed out crap)

brightness: 128
contrast: 132
saturation: 124
hue: 128
sharpness: 152

it seems like you have to adjust the settings much further than with the previous 1.4.10 method to notice a difference though.

output is scaled to 960x540 through a radeon ve connected via dvi to an hitachi 51s700 hdtv. video rendered using overlay with sonic decoder.

[DFA]

I'd like to hear about a few myself. Especially those that have been dialed in more objectively with using dscaler histogram. In some other thread, I inquired if anyone had a handle on what the "neutral" (nothing added; nothing diminished) settings might be on the encoding side. In theory, there should be a set of neutral values. I would rather do any corrections on the decoded side and have encoding neutral; right or wrong.

I have not made any attempts with the beta's yet but did have to diminish things quite a bit before to get something reasonable. It seems like the number scaling is different from what I remember with 1.4.10 which also required going the Hauppauge driver in the registery and hand enter them to get them to stick.

Dane

[stanger89]

Here's mine (SageTV 2.0.13):
PVR 250 Tuner on cable
Brightness 136
Contrast 126
Saturation 130
Hue 128
Sharpness 170

I believe you were probably referring to my post about using the dscaler histogram filter to set Brightness/Contrast, and that's how I set them. That method works very well for setting those two parameters, but I haven't found an objective way to set the rest.

Here's my theory on HTPC calibration:
I try to do as little calibration on the HTPC as possible, there are just too many places to adjust things and for things to go wrong. In order to get reliable results you need to start with a known source, for me thats my Digital Video Essentials DVD.

1) I fire up SageTV with VMR9 output and calibrate my display for Brightness/Contrast/etc. That gets the display to a known state, I use VMR9 first because that way it will be correctly set for Windows and video since VMR9 settings are the same as Windows.

2) Next I fire up DVE using overlay (I can't use VMR9 in practice due to tearing) and adjust my video card's Overlay controls to the proper levels. This is necessary since the Overlay controls are independent of Windows colors. It's important not to adjust the display since I already set it in step 1. Once this is done both Windows/VMR9 and Overlay should be properly calibrated.

3) Set Sage to Default renderer so ffdshow will stick itself in and I use the histogram filter to set the Brightness/Contrast so that the histogram fills the entire graph. I usually try a few channels and aim to get the best overall settings since not all chanels are the same, and not all chanels are showing good sources all the time. I usually try and leave the rest of the settings alone mostly so long as they aren't really offensive.

Now about by "nothing added; nothing diminished," you've seen a lot of threads here and everyone has different settings. There is no one set of correct values (or all this would be moot), we're dealing with analog here so there is no one set of correct values, what you want to do is set your capture configuration to give you the most dynamic range you can get, based on what your service provider gives you.

Hope that helps.

[DFA]

Stanger89:

Thank you. That is a logical sensible approach. I concur that channel-to-channel variation and show-to-show variation within a channel makes it impossible to have "correct" settings. The best that can be achieved is something nominal.

Still, it seems like there should be "pass- through" values something equivalent to what "bass" and "treble" analog controls are when set at 12 o'clock. That is not to say that 12 o'clock "pass through" values are correct or even near it. Just a reference. Perhaps I am perceiving things in error but it seems that the luminence and chroma could be encoded unmodified and as delivered by the source.

DFA

[stanger89]

Originally posted by DFA
Still, it seems like there should be "pass- through" values something equivalent to what "bass" and "treble" analog controls are when set at 12 o'clock. That is not to say that 12 o'clock "pass through" values are correct or even near it. Just a reference. Perhaps I am perceiving things in error but it seems that the luminence and chroma could be encoded unmodified and as delivered by the source.

If there is such a set, it's probably the default settings for the card, at least that makes more sense than some secret set.

Also all the video proc amp controls are applied to the video in the TV decoder before it gets to the MPEG encoder, you can see that when you bypass the encoder in graphedit.

[DFA]

Thanks again for that insight. I was not aware that the these controls were directed to the vid proc amp since they are always referred to as "encoding controls". True enough with respect to being upstream but now understood not a direct function of the encoding process.

DFA

[stanger89]

I don't know that for sure, but I can't see it working any other way.

[kny3twalker]

using powerDVD with VMR9 and disabled 3D acceleration
audio of intervideo via spdif
for DirecTV
125
135
120
129
180
for SouthwesternBell Cable
120
140
120
129
175
in the order that the settings are

[GbrNole]

wow those sharpness settings are up there! i think i'll have to play with sharpness a bit more but my brightness and contrast is right on at this point with values similar to yours.

[Cayars]

Not to put down stanger89 setup routine, it is missing a couple of steps for a total entertainment setup. Here is what I did (as posted on SS forums) modified slightly as some items don't apply for SageTV.

Keep in mind i'm running S-Video out from an FX-5200 to a Sony SDTV. I was going to write something up much better, but here's a quick overview of what I did.

VIDEO CARD SETUP:
1) Do not use multiple monitors or any type of clone mode.
2) Only have the TV set connected to the video card and don't have a monitor connected (even if turned off).
3) Set the refresh rate of the video card to 60Htz
4) Setup the screen resolution to 720x480.
Steps 3 and 4 are important.

BTV SETUP:
1) I run the "InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder" with hardware excel. reg. update.
2) Deinterlace is set to Harware.
3) Modify the registry to set BobWeave to 1

TUNING THE SYSTEM:
1) I purchased a copy of the new "Digital Video Essentials" DVD. I then ran through the whole setup running it from a normal hardware based DVD player. This step calibrated my TV and DVD player. I didn't skimp here but ran though it 3 or 4 times making little changes here and there until my TV was perfect with the DVD player.
2) Next, I then put the DVE DVD in my computer's DVD player and made only adjustments to the nVidia drivers and not the TV until I was satisfied that the output from WINDVD & PowerDVD was just as good as from my Onkyo DVD player which it was.
3) Next I attached my Onkyo DVD player's S-Video output directly into my PVR-250 and played with GraphEdit (live preview) and adjusted the different InterVideo registry settings until I got the output to look perfect on the TV. (You can do this directly inside of SageTV 2.x if you are running the beta). These registry settings are the same ones that are checked and used before all recordings. So this step was actually tuning the capture card.
4) Next I connected my Onkyo DVD player directly to the PVR-250 with S-video and sound cables and captured the DVD to an MPG file.

After doing this your TV should be calibrated perfectly to your DVD player. Your SageTV machine should then also be tuned perfectly for playback and recording also.

Hope this helps,
Carlo

[edmc]

It is important to state which version of SageTV we are talking about given the change in the scale (i.e. number range) [and order, incidently] between SageTV 1.x and 2.0. And, of course, which tuner/encoder. It appears every poster was, in fact, using 2.0.x and PVR-250s.

That said, I use the following settings for my PVR-250s under SageTV 2.0.13 receiveing a very strong signal from SF Bay Area (Pleasanton) Comcast Analog Cable:

Brightness: 100
Contrast: 100
Saturation: 124
Hue: 118
Sharpness: 90

It should be noted that these settings are highly dependent on the settings of other devices/adjustments in the "chain". After calibrating my TV using a Panasonic RP-56 with both DVE and Avia, these settings resulted in the correct color/image in SageTV when compared with other tuning sources.

However, if I go playback these files in, say, Windows Media Player, they are very dark indeed.

Finally, the biggest benefit I've found for adjusting particularly Contrast, Saturation, and to a lesser extent Brightness, is the quality of the MPEG-2 encoding. I've found that higher settings for any of these three significantly degrade the quality of the MPEG-2 encoding performed by either my -15 or -16 PVR-250s.

[salsbst]

...the biggest benefit I've found for adjusting particularly Contrast, Saturation, and to a lesser extent Brightness, is the quality of the MPEG-2 encoding. I've found that higher settings for any of these three significantly degrade the quality of the MPEG-2 encoding performed by either my -15 or -16 PVR-250s.

This is a very interesting point.

I happen to have been playing with the VMR gamma settings on my HTPC in order to find a way to flatten out the gamma curve that my TV imparts (in its default state, the TV is too dark in the blacks and too bright in the whites). The project is ongoing, but at the moment I have the TV/Radeon settings calibrated in a rather muted manner. I ended up with brightness and contrast for SageTV up in the 120s and 130s.

I've noticed a significant reduction in the quality of the MPEGs, as well. This quality problem is most evident in dark or light scenes, where macroblocking in very evident. I suspect I'm seeing the result of MPEG2 encoding of crushed blacks and whites.

[stanger89]

Carlo, what play controls are you talking about.

[DFA]

I think I have to agree with the "quality of MPEG encoding" theory with regard to these control settings. When I first got my PVR-250 and Sage, I was very unhappy with the PQ. I initially thought decoding was the problem but ultimatly decided it was on the encoding side. I posted some comments on this forum and it was suggested I lower some of these values. The PQ improved a lot with just working with these controls and the improvements were beyond just color and white and black levels.

The importance of having the right values and the right procedure to obtain these values can not be understated. Further complicating the issue is to have a common reference point for all sources.

With so many controls at so many points, I have had difficulty deciding where to make the reference. For example, I have color controls for the XCard player, DScaler, the video card and, ofcourse, at the TV. If I pop Aiwa into the DVD player, what should I leave at default and what should I adjust? It has always baffled me as to how I should approach all these controls in a logical manner.

DFA

[Cayars]

Originally posted by stanger89
Carlo, what play controls are you talking about.

My bad. Like I said I originally posted this in the SS forums and I actually tuned the system up for their software. Works just fine with SageTV and I haven't had to re-do it.

I "tried" to edited it to match the steps one would take in SageTV but blew it on that line since this isn't a step to do in SageTV as there is no seperate output control (just do it via the display driver, i.e. nVidea). I'll edit the post.

Carlo