DVD Architect lightens up footage?

I suspect you have at least 2 problems, one is playback and graphics card settings for overlay proc amp and settings in various playback software; the other is colorspace and vegas behavior.

There are so many factors and multiple points of failure where the viewing experience can change and not be consistent. You have no control over how the end user has their setup managed.

I think Vegas' display uses GDI , so to get that to correlate with a certain software, you would have to calibrate both the desktop and overlay settings in the video card, as well as the monitor. It has to be calibrated to a greyscale image or video. Note: This will throw off your regular display, since most PC's display at 0-255 (white is mapped to 0, black is mapped to 255). Hence why many people make the use of an external reference monitor that displays 16-235 if it's intended for "legal" video range targets (e.g. blu-ray, DVD.)
 
Well, my plan here was to bite the bullet and do one color correction for DVD and another for the internet. I color corrected the video to a degree that I was completely thrilled with on the Vegas preview monitor; I was very, very proud of it. It's been disheartening to see that color correction I fell in love with become irrelevant outside of Vegas.

I should point out that I'm using the 32-bit space in Vegas 8. One of those articles pointed out that 9 has a much superior 32-bit workflow but sadly I'm on Windows XP and can't update to 9.

If I had the money to do those upgrades and buy a professional external monitor, I would, but the fact of the matter is I'm just a middleclass guy trying to do the best I can with what I have.

I'd like to match Vegas's preview window with my rendered results as close as possible. If anyone has any other articles to link to that could educate me on this matter, I'd greatly appreciate them.
 
Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I just did a test using Sony Solid Colors and the Pick Color from Screen eyedropper and discovered that the black bars on Quicktime which should have been R 0 G 0 B 0 somehow end up as R 22 G 22 B 22.

So the theory that it's my graphics card displaying a different range on media players sounds like it could be the main culprit.
 
As mentioned earlier, you have at least 2 issues going on here.

Quicktime uses GDI, so it uses graphics card destop settings, not graphics card overlay settings. .mov container on PC platform also uses different gamma settings (search for "gamma shift bug" or related terms, you 'll see 100's of articles on this

In Vegas 8 , for 32-bit projects using linear gamma, the preview window will be different from what you actually get. Switch to 8-bit mode temporarily, and that's closer to what you will be getting. This is because of vegas 8's behaviour: for 32-bit projects it decompresses YV12 => RGB for most input formats with full range (or computer RGB) , instead of video range (or studio RGB); but for 8-bit projects, most input formats are decompressed to video levels. I highly recommend you read this:
http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/v8color/v8color.htm

Basically you're screwed if you are using 32-bit mode. There is no way to get accurate preview unless you use external monitor. Or, you can play with your video card desktop settings (not overlay) i.e. calibrate to a grayscale video that shows levels from 0-255 in steps to make it show 16-235 (but then all your other programs will be screwed)

If this wasn't clear, this illustrates what's being discussed in that article: Below are screenshots of Vegas 8's preview (the fact that I can even take screenshots of it means it's NOT using the graphics card overlay for renderer)

1) Vegas 8-bit Project
2) Vegas 32-bit Project

i2opsi.png


The underlying video should look like (1) . (2) shows full range as black is mapped to 0, and white to 255 - this is likely why your DVD was "washed out" since you color corrected in a 32-bit project

I uploaded it so you can play with it. (It's MPEG2 in a transport stream widescreen NTSC DV 23.976 with pulldown)
http://www.mediafire.com/?oyyzhjjyyty

You can use this greyscale video to calibrate your overlay settings for your graphics card overlay for those video players that use the overlay mixer; but I wouldn't recommend changing the desktop display settings just to get more accurate display for 32-bit projects (because all your other programs will be screwed up)
 
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Okay, here's more information and an apparent resolve. The file plays as it should when the Preview window is closed. When you open and fool around with preview while the file is open, it reverts to the incorrect look. I uploaded the file to ExpsoureRoom, and it looks 100% as it should, so this seems to be an issue with the graphics card.

I'll make updates if/as they arrive in case anyone else ever faces this issue, or if some other related problem should arise. Thanks everyone who've helped me understand things better.
 
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