How to boost color saturation when playing videos?

Hi,

I have a w500 15.4" sxga+ screen. I see these options to increase color vibrance and flesh tones in the ATI graphics, but they don't work. I also see similar options and profiles in the Intel clear video control panel, and I increase the brightness and saturation, but they have no effect.

Can someone tell me if they are successful in doing this? I want the colors to pop a little more when watching videos and the gamma to increase.

Thanks

 

Check your decoder. A lot of the times you can adjust settings in the decoder, but you will have to be more specific with your playback setup.

 

Intel clear video? Is that for all intel graphics cards? Is it available for download at their site?

 

It sounds like you are using Overlay as the video render. Those color settings in the control panel will not affect Overlay. You have to look for options that say "adjust tv colors" or something similar in your video player or graphics control panel.

You should read up on video renders like Overlay, VMR9, Haali, and EVR. There are better renders beside Overlay. Your W500 should be fast enough to run EVR.

 

Thanks for the advice, but I'm still not successful.
Can you guys tell me what players you use to boost the saturation when playing videos alone?

I have the klite codec pack full version, and media player classic, as well as VLC.

I can adjust the saturation for the 'regular notebook's screen' when browsing websites and such, but that looks fine. But when playing videos, I'd like the gamma to increase and the saturation to increase, and the contrast to increase, but only when playing videos.

It appears that in media player classic, my rendere is vmr9, not overlay.

 

Klite is a horrible codec pack...and Im not a huge fan of VLC (it has subtitle overlay issues).

I usually use CCCP ( http://cccp-project.net) with media player classic (and coreavc for x264 stuff) as the player. I normally use Haali as my render. The reason you can play with settings normally is because it isn't the same in a video with the various rendering methods can be used as pacman mentioned.

 

If you want the consistently best color levels while playing videos, choose the Haali renderer. The only problem with Haali is that it does support hardware acceleration like VMR9 (renderless) and EVR.

On my desktop with ATI Catalyst 8.11 driver, I get the following colors for SD quality movies in Media Player Classic (MPC).

Haali (SD):


VMR9 (SD):


VMR9 + 16-235->0-255 MPC Shader (SD):


From the images, Haali and VMR9 + MPC Shader have correct color levels for SD videos. VMR9 has incorrect color levels for SD videos.

However, does this hold true for HD (H.264) videos? Lets find out.

Haali (HD):


VMR9 (HD):


VMR9 + 16-235->0-255 MPC Shader (HD):


Interestingly, Haali and VMR9 have correct color levels for HD videos. VMR9 + MPC Shader results in an over-corrected image.

Apparently, VMR9 outputs different color levels for SD and HD videos. VMR9 outputs 16-235 color levels for SD videos; contrastingly, VMR9 outputs an expended 0-255 color levels for HD videos. ffdshow and Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 H.264 decoders showed no difference in color levels.

If you want to use VMR9, you should use the MPC Shader with SD videos and no MPC Shader with HD videos for the best color (at least with ATI Catalyst 8.11).

I have not tested this out on an NVIDIA video card in my T61 yet. I will see if I get similar results on my T61 (and perhaps T400).

 

cool, now i'm color blind. xD

 

By all means continue this discussion, but installing the CCCP and then rebooting fixed my woes. I am not very content watching videos on the W500.

Pretty nice laptop. Thank you for your help, and I hope it helps someone else who seeks to boost color saturation just when playing videos.