vegas preview window is darker than actual footage?

M

matt9b

Well-known member
When I edit a video in vegas 9, it looks different to the actual rendered footage as seen in windows media player, VLC player, quicktime player, youtube, and vimeo.

I've tried all rendering formats, from WMV, to mov, to MPG to completely uncompressed formats.. the result is the same, which tells me this must be a setting in Vegas preview thats making it appear more saturated than it actually is? I've tried Vegas on a number of PCs here, including a core 2 duo, an intel i7 920, and a Mac Pro running in windows mode. They all have different hardware and graphics cards, so it seems very unlikely to be a hardware issue.

Does anyone else experience this with Vegas?

Attached is an image from vegas preview, and an image from the actual rendered footage. I don't know how to give captions on here, but the Vegas preview window has darker blacks, is more saturated and has more contrast. After rendering the footage, it has weaker blacks, less contrast, and is less saturated.

I'm hoping other people on here have experienced the same issue and might have insight... or is it just an accepted known quirk?

Thanks!
 

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its less obvious if your editing in 8-bit, but it really depends on what format your encoding to. I edit in 32 and when encoding to h.264, there's a significant difference in brightness and contrast. the trick is to compensate before the render. if I'm encoding to a mpeg2, there isn't a noticeable difference.

I also consider that most people don't use $600 production LCD's at home nor do TV's display as many colors as to see a real difference, at least I haven't experienced it myself.
 
Yeah, I guess it is a normal thing. I haven't quite got the hang of how much to "over compensate" but you have to especially when rendering to h.264
I always seem to go to far! Practice makes perfect
 
It's not the preview that's darker, it's the media players that have their own mind regarding gamma values. There's nothing to do about it, every player, and every TV, has its own mind. You will just have to get used to the idea I am afraid that no one wants to play with rules.
 
cheers all.. does FCP do this? or is it just a vegas quirk? I'm thinking about changing NLE if its just a Vegas quirk.
 
"Yeah, I guess it is a normal thing. I haven't quite got the hang of how much to "over compensate" but you have to especially when rendering to h.264
I always seem to go to far! Practice makes perfect"

I´ve just loaded a h.264 video (720p) to youtube and it was darker than the original.
Do you overcompensate by rising gamma, contrast or both?
I use Vegas 9.0b
/Aje
 
When rendering to most web-formats like wmv, mov, flv etc., be sure to apply the "studio RGB to computer RGB" preset through either the levels or color corrector plugin. This will compensate for the washed out look you get in the preview window. This is due to the YUV - RGB conversion and how Vegas "sees" many YUV formats like for instance DV, HDV and XCCAM. However - when rendering to DV or MPG2 for DVD it's important to remove those presets BEFORE rendering because Vegas "sees" those codecs as Studio RGB. Alternatively use a secondary monitor and check "Use studio RGB" - this will compensate for this issue as well - just remember to ignore the small preview window's washed out colours.

Here is a very useful article dealing with it: http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/colorspaces/colorspaces.html
 
Hi guys,

I'm still having this problem, months on.. I was wondering if there are any more suggestions?

The studio -> computer RGB just destroys the image completely, it makes anything that is grey completely black. I'm getting extremely different renders to previews. The Preview is so much darker than the render. I'm editing in 32bit full range. Switched to Cineform, but still same issue.
 
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i had that issue as well....while it is normal that the preview window is slightly darker, i was able to make a change in my graphics card settings. I have a nVidia card and there's a preference in the nVidia control panel to either have nVidia control all apps' display, OR to let each app use its own settings to display footage. Having nVidia control all my player/NLE display settings, all my footage was washed out...disabling that preference suddenly made my footage look right. strange problem, and a very specific solution, but only if you have a nVidia card i suppose. Different cards, different set of prefs...hopefully somewhere on your system, you have something like this?
 
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