Dark image after XviD export

Sereenie · Post by **Sereenie** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 7:34 pm

I've been making vids for a while now, using Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a> since the beginning. Everything works fine, but one thing still bugs me to this day: XviD seems to turn all footage darker.

In Premiere 6.5, the image is perfect. After I've exported my vid with Lagarith, I can open it in VDM and it still looks perfect. But after I finish exporting to an XviD avi, then the image will always be a couple of shades darker than it should.

Most of the time, it's not a problem--after all, the same amount of "darkening" is applied to the whole vid, so it's not that obvious. The problem comes up in darker scenes--night scenes for example--, where the image gets so dark that it's sometimes hard to even make out anything.

Mostly, I get rid of the problem by applying a gamma correction either to individual clips (if there are only a few coming out too dark) or to the whole vid. But that solution isn't really satisfactory: I lose quality and depth, especially for live action, which I don't like.

I've always thought that it might be due to colourspace conversions, but I'm not so sure anymore. Could it be an export setting I'm not using correctly? I'm using the Guide, so I expect not. Or is there an Avisynth filter I can apply to force VDM to keep everything as bright as it originally was?

It's not a huge problem, but it's annoying me nonetheless and I'd like to know once and for all whether or not I can do something to help it. I tried searching here before posting this, but haven't really found anything about it--though I don't know if it's because the subject wasn't mentioned before or simply because I wasn't able to find the right thread.

Thanks for your help!

S.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 8:02 pm

Where does it appear darker? If you load the xvid file into virtualdubmod, if you watch it in your media player, or everywhere?

Sereenie · Post by **Sereenie** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 8:22 pm

Oops, sorry! I thought that was clear: when I play the XviD avi file in VLC or mplayer2 is when it's dark. In other words, everything looks fine at all times until I do the final encode of the project.

S.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 9:52 pm

But if you open the final encode in virtualdub is it still dark? This could just be your display settings on your player...

Minion · Post by **Minion** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 12:11 am

did you have any scripts of filters included in the final encode?
i would check this second though. zarx's suggestion is more likely to be the culprit, since you probably would have thought of removing filters already

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 1:10 am

you could adjust the brightness with AviSynth...

Code: Select all

tweak(bright=1)

where bright is an integer between -255 and 255...adjust to your liking

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 1:58 am

Methinks that XviD's decoder configuration has it set on lower brightness. That would seem to me to be the problem if XviD encodes are the only thing suffering from this. And it's easily fixed if this is what the problem is - just go into the decoder configuration and correct it.

Sereenie · Post by **Sereenie** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 9:07 am

Zarxrax wrote:But if you open the final encode in virtualdub is it still dark?

Yes.

Minion wrote:did you have any scripts of filters included in the final encode?

Yes and no. I always export three versions, including one that's fullsize, with no filters. The problem happens with all of them.

Kariudo wrote:you could adjust the brightness with AviSynth...

I'll try that if nothing else suggested works.

Qyot27 wrote:And it's easily fixed if this is what the problem is - just go into the decoder configuration and correct it.

Ah!! You could be onto something! But how do I do that? When I go in Configure Decoder, there's nothing about brightness. All the boxes are unchecked except for the three applying to FourCC support, and Output Colourspace is set to No Force.

Thanks everyone for your help!

S.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:22 pm

At the top, underneath the logo:

Note: I'm using version 1.1.2 from Koepi.

Sereenie · Post by **Sereenie** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:39 pm

Oh! I'm using the old version from the AMVApp which, out of these options, only has the Postprocessing, Output and FourCC support boxes.

If I want to update it to this more recent version, should I uninstall the older one first (and if so, do I need to uninstall the whole AMVApp?), or do I just overwrite it?

S.