DVD Architect lightens up footage?

Eddie B

Eddie B

Active member
Does anyone know why when I export as MPEG2 in Vegas and burn a DVD from DVD Architect, the footage is more washed out and lighter than it was in preview mode?

I used the same televisions as external monitors and the footage was much darker prior to rendering. Anyone know what I could be doing wrong?
 
The problem may be your DVD player.

I have a TV connected to my editing PC via a MiniDV camcorder. I also have a cheapo DVD player connected to the same TV. My footage would look great played from Vegas or Premiere through the MiniDV cam to the TV. But I'd burn a DVD and put it on the DVD player, and it looked washed out. I was befuddled.

Then I discovered if I took the same DVD to my living room and played it on a much better DVD player there, it looked a lot better. Apparently the cheapo DVD player is just crap.

That doesn't mean there isn't some difference in contrast in the burned DVD, because there is. What I do is juice the contrast up just a bit more, and the DVD looks great.
 
Eddie B said:
Does anyone know why when I export as MPEG2 in Vegas and burn a DVD from DVD Architect, the footage is more washed out and lighter than it was in preview mode?

I used the same televisions as external monitors and the footage was much darker prior to rendering. Anyone know what I could be doing wrong?
Click to expand...


Pull your mpeg2 file back into Vegas and see what the scopes tell you. If the are different than your preview (which I suspect) then the codec is cleaning up color space mistakes from editing. If it's the same on the scopes, then it's the DVD/TV causing your problem.
 
If you exported a DVD-compliant MPEG-2, DVD Architect will not change it at all. If you feed it something else, like a DV AVI, then it will, because it will have to be recompressed to DVD compliance.
 
Dont know how much a diff. we are talking about here. However..the preview screen is known to be a bit darker in Vegas than the actual rendered video.
 
I have not found that to be the case, unless the codec being rendered to ups the gamma on its own (like WMV, for example). Should not happen with an MPEG-2 render.
 
Really,
I have seen several posts here with people complaining about it. Personally I cant tell a differance..but others say they do..lol
 
Computer RGB vs. Studio RGB

Computer RGB vs. Studio RGB

It could be an issue with Computer RGB vs. Studio RGB. I'm still a bit on the ignorant side of this issue, but I've learned a lot about it over the past couple of days. In particular this article (and the accompanying specific articles on Vegas 8 and/or 9):

http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/colorspaces/colorspaces.html

I learned of that article from Dave Newman of CineForm. I was confused as to why my GH1 footage looked washed out after using Neo Scene to convert it to CineForm.

So one possible reason for the OP's "problem" is that he's editing and previewing footage that is in Computer RGB, but his project settings are set to either 8-bit or 32-bit (video levels). Both of which would render to Studio RGB regardless of the footage. (I may be completely wrong here, as I'm not sure you can even get Computer RGB footage to appear as such in an 8-bit or 32-bit (video levels) project ... hmm ... something else to add to my tests).

I've been doing some testing, but haven't gotten this far yet, but it seems like Vegas 9 is pretty strict about rendering to Studio RGB. See table about half-way down here:

http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/v8color/vegas-9-levels.htm

It says that setting the project to 32-bit (full range) will cause MainConcept to render to Computer RGB. But I'd want to test it ... to be sure.

And of course, DVDA may only do Studio RGB...? I need to test that as well... But since Computer RGB would produce illegal blacks and whites, I could see this being the case.

Or, of course, it could just be the DVD player as others have mentioned. :-)
 
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mine doesn't get brighter with mpeg2, but it definitely gets darker with mpeg4. Trapped got super dark in certain parts. couldnt see what was going on in some of the night shots.
 
I read somewhere that DVD players will output a broadcast ready picture. Meaning if you have it set to 0-255 when you render out, once it is played back in the DVD player it will conform it to 16-235 instead of what you rendered at prob 0-255
 
Here's some more information on this matter, which is still a problem.

So, I recently recolor corrected a music video I did for a friend. Now, I got the blacks in one shot to be crushed blacks the way I wanted them. In DVDArchitect's preview, all the shadow detail is still there, however: in Sony Vegas preview, the black is crushed as it's supposed to be even on the same mpeg2.

Does anyone know what could possibly be going on here?
 
Wadro said:
I read somewhere that DVD players will output a broadcast ready picture. Meaning if you have it set to 0-255 when you render out, once it is played back in the DVD player it will conform it to 16-235 instead of what you rendered at prob 0-255
Click to expand...

No, they don't do that; you can see for yourself if you output 0 IRE black and burn it to a DVD. Do it in widescreen; watch it on a standard 4:3 TV. The grey above and below will be 7.5 IRE (North American broadcast standard). The black will still be 0.
 
I believe I'm on to my problem. It seems to me that the Vegas preview window is simply too dark. I'm not the only one who's had this problem (see here at another forum).

Is anyone here familiar with this issue? I color corrected a music video for the web and relied on the Vegas preview window but when rendered, it came out less contrasty than my correction as I saw it in the Vegas preview. I put the rendered file back in Vegas and it looks as it should on the preview window, so I know this wasn't an issue of some rendering settings error.

Another possible problem is that it's not Vegas which is set up incorrectly but my media players themselves. I know that VLC, one of the players I watched the file in, allows you to change the settings for different pictures. The same material was also less contrasty and less visually appealing on Quicktime as well. I played the same file on some other players, but they all looked the same. The consistency of this leads me to believe it MUST be an issue with the Vegas preview. Thoughts and advice, anyone?
 
I'll tell you what the problem is....

1. Not understanding color space
2. No calibrated computer monitor
3. No broadcast reference monitor
4. Not using or paying attention to scopes

Any combination of the above will lead to very poor results like you are seeing.
 
and
5. Graphics card settings
6. Behaviour of vegas with different input formats

When using video players that use overlay mixer, it will use the graphics card settings for overlay (which are different that graphics card settings for desktop display settings)

VLC (and most windows software players) will use overlay mixer for the renderer in default mode (as opposed to other renderers like VMR9 , VMR7, EVR etc...) - so it will be dependent on how that individual system has it's graphic overlay settings set.

Flash and QT use GDI interface, which rely on a different system (not on overlay mixer)

It was touched on already, and those Glenn Chan articles describe it as well - what format you use changes the behaviour of how vegas interprets the file. IF you have a YV12 colorspace file it will decompress to either studio RGB or computer RGB, depending on what kind of input file.
 
Very interesting, PDR. It sounds like you've probably identified my problem. I'll reread those articles and see if I can do anything about this situation.

If anyone else has advice to offer on this, I'd be delighted to hear it. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this.
 
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