Vegas to Windows Media Player!

jgastelb

jgastelb

Well-known member
Hello,
I just rendered a color bar clip in both mpeg-2 and wmv out of Vegas. The mpeg-2 plays very dark and the wmv plays washed out. What the hay is going on? I see that you can adjust the brightness and contrast in windows media but you'll have to adjust everytime you open up the program since you can't save the settings. Anyone noticed this issue too?
Jgastelb
 
All I did was try a clean color bar clip in both formats - wmv and mpeg-2 and they play with different exposures in my windows media player. My CRT is calibrated so that's not the issue. Quicktime plays mov and avi files correctly. The funny thing is that windows plays avis correctly as well so my question is why is there a difference between the mepg-2 and wmv files in terms of brightness and contrast?
Jgastelb
 
Last edited:
Hey jgastelb, I just checked into this myself as I do a lot of rendering to both mpg and wmv. Here’s what I found doing a screen capture from 3 formats (Uncompressed AVI, WMV, and Mpeg2). The RGB values of the Uncompressed AVI and the WMV were exactly the same for all values. The Mpeg was slightly brighter than both the AVI and WMV. Here are the r,g,b values I measured on the bars from left to right:

AVI/WMV White: 180, 180, 180
Mpeg White: 189, 189, 189

AVI/WMV Yellow: 180, 180, 16
Mpeg Yellow: 189, 189, 0

AVI/WMV Light Blue: 16, 180, 180
Mpeg Light Blue: 0, 191, 191

AVI/WMV Green: 16, 180, 16
Mpeg Green: 0, 191, 0

AVI/WMV Purple: 180, 16, 180
Mpeg Purple: 193, 0, 193

AVI/WMV Red: 180, 16, 16
Mpeg Red: 193, 0, 0

AVI/WMV Blue: 16, 16, 180
Mpeg Blue: 0, 0, 195
 
I'm guessing it has something to do with the encoder. Just as a side note, I have noticed that my WMV's look better to me than my MPEG renders. Maybe this explains why I have felt this way all this time...because they are ;)

Strange that your MPEG's are coming out darker while mine seem brighter.
 
Gotcha! I just think that Windows Media Player needs to step up to the plate and let us create settings that are calibrated and can be saved even if it means a different setting for different formats. Otherwise what we may like may be off. Of course, that's why it's more important to have your NLE giving accurate colors but I would love to see those other formats be able to work accurately in Windows Media.
Jgastelb
 
Staino said:
Settings... Settings, can do a lot for .wmv and .mpg
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the settings when you render or the settings in Windows Media Player? Which settings do you use for rendering the wmv and mpeg-2 if you don't mind me asking? Talking about bit rate and all that jazz.
Jgastelb
 
Have you tried the smpte color bars that are included in the vegas program instead? I believe it is under media generator button/test pattern and output it using that file on the timeline to see if works.
 
Hi smithy, if you look at my post earlier in this thread you'll see the results of that exact test. Strangely enough, the results do vary based on the render format. Seems to me that should not be happening.
 
The color bars I used for the tests were generated from Vegas. AVIs work fine though so maybe it does have to do with the render settings.
Jgastelb
 
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