On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 21:06 -0500, D Wyatt wrote: > If I wanted everything brighter, then the monitor level would > obviously be the place to change settings. If anything, I would > be more likely to *lower* the monitor's brightness. Generally, > the whole video is acceptable but when there are, for example, > nighttime scenes that just look black, increasing the brightness > reveals details so you have some clue as to what is going on. You did mention the majority of videos were too dark, which (going by averages) suggests that your brightness is too low to start with, and only looks okay when watching something that's already too bright. Though, to use a computer for two wildly different things (watching videos, and other computing tasks), really calls for adjusting something else - "gamma" (more about that below). > I tend to be a multi-tasker - I never do anything full-screen. > I have been noticing a slight growth in the tendency on linux to > configure tools with the expectation that they will be the only > thing in use until their use is completed. Yes... Menus that take up a third of the desktop space, likewise with other programs where a huge GUI means you end up with a keyhole to look at what YOU were interested in... And (not) sharing sound hardware... > For example, another minor complaint w/resp to gmplayer is that > between F12 and F13 the ability to minimize the control console of the > gui has been eliminated. The video window can be minimized, but not > the control console. In F12, both could be individually minimized. I haven't used gmplayer for ages, I can't recall all the reasons, but smplayer seemed better. It works in a window, or fullscreen, and in fullscreen with or without navigation controls (depending on if you moved the mouse to the bottom of the screen, to make the controls appear). > Oh, and btw, I have not noticed any tendency for videos to be too > bright. I have never lowered the brightness on any video, be it > Anime, TV show or movie. Even youtube clips are sometimes so dark > that i have to download the .flv or .mp4 and view it in gmplayer > with increased brightness. Sounds like you have settings all over the place, then. What you've described is the classic case seen from turning one thing up in one place, and the same thing down, elsewhere (once destroyed, it can't be restored, later). e.g. Brightness down on the monitor, brightness up on the video player. It also sounds like a mixing up of terminology (contrast and brightness, and playing with the wrong ones). Not to mention the usual computer defaults being inappropriate (jet black text on full white background, is like staring at texta writing on a fluorescent tube; and with a low res LCD, like staring at a fluorescent light through flyscreen). When you set up a computer monitor properly, so that the full range from black to white is shown as actually black to white, with everything in between. You get a proper computer display, suitable for real work (such as photo editing), or, at the very least, you get to see everything; as well as it being suitable for play. Though, with the usability problem I mentioned a moment ago - thanks to the the usual page colouring defaults. The real solution (for that) would be to use not-white pages, though the usual fix is turn the CONTRAST down (reduce the range), not the brightness (make everything blacker, including making things blacker than black). Video, meant for watching on TV (whether that be a movie on DVD, tape, or from your home video camera), on the other hand, has a different gamma than a computer monitor screen. The gamma boosts the dark end of the range, lightening up the dark portions, without affecting (much) the lighter portions. Gamma correction was originally done to compensate for the original television picture tubes - the camera was tweaked in the opposite direction, rather than correct the TV set. And we've been stuck with it ever since, even when the display technology changed (they've either done opposing gamma correction, on top of the gamma correction, in the display; or left you to look at a malformed picture). Now we have TV sets with a plethora of user adjustments, trying to make something good out of something inadequate (all those cinema viewing mode presets on your brand spanking new plasmas). Video has more gamma than computing. For some reason, the computing fraternity decided to be different (still have gamma correction, but use a different factor, even while still using the same CRT technology). Hence, why, in most cases, watching a DVD on a computer looks awful (you never get blacks, everything is above black - grey). This doesn't happen in the few cases where hardware processing of video decoding, or software players, compensate for it. If you haven't noticed it, it's usually because either you're using things that compensate for it, or you've probably turned your brightness down too far, most of the time; or you're using a CRT with a similar gamma. Having said all that. I find that on a properly set up monitor, or well set up (even if not precisely set up). Most YouTube clips do look fine. A bit grey instead of black, but not very bad. Dark clips would be down to bad clips, or your monitor being malset in the first place. A YouTube clip I just picked at random, for an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbt9pQUr71I Shows someone demonstrating glamour lighting for photography. Around the girl is near dark, just slightly brighter than the complete black border around the image. Around 15" (seconds) to 20" in, you should only be able to determine that's a silhouette of a photographer, not really see any details of them. About 45" in, the photographer's standing behind the girl yakking about something (I had the sound off), he's moderately dark, but should be clearly visible with good detail, other than the shadow across his shirt. If that one's too dark, your monitor is mal-set. Picking on another clip by the same person, but a bit brighter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaebMg4oSeI It starts off nicely lit, about 55" in is a bit less than usual video illumination of people, but still well exposed. If that, or any other part of the whole clip is too dark for you to see well, you have your monitor really badly mal-set. Of course, if you're talking about trying to see detail in deliberately underexposed shots (such as the classic horror movie scenes where a girl walks into a room, doesn't turn the lights on, and gets attacked), then that's deliberately maladjusting the monitor to try and see something they're trying to keep hard to see. Covering the basics: Brightness - the bias that everything rides on. It sets the black level, that everything is on top of. On anything but bad hardware, the brightness is the first thing to set, with the contrast turned all the way down. Set to see a black level just above no illumination. Set too low, and everything darker than a certain level will all become black, too high, and you wash everything out. Contrast - the dynamic range, how big the difference is between black (no illumination, none blacker) and white (100%, none whiter). On anything but bad hardware, you're adjusting the range above black. You set contrast for how bright you want white to be above black. Turned too low, and you get low contrast, up too high, and you may be trying to make white whiter than white, which just isn't possible. (This is very different from photography, where things tend to centre around the middle - contrast centred around grey.) Gamma - deliberate non-linearity of the dynamic range. Dark portions of the video signal are increased, as a compensation for the CRT having the opposite response. Comparatively speaking, other non-CRT technologies are linear, so video created with gamma boosting for a CRT looks washed out. If you want to see the effects of messing with gamma, open a photo in the gimp, open up the "curves" control in the colour menu, and bend the straight line so it starts to look like the top left quadrant of a circle. That's the direction that signal is boosted by when trying to gamma correct the picture for a CRT (who's natural response is a curve in the opposite direction - with the net result of one against the other trying to get back to the straight line). When viewing such video on another with a different gamma curve (computer CRT, LCD, etc.), it looks like the curve has been pushed way too far. Tim (who works in video production, and has to deal with this all the time, and hates how computers get it so badly wrong, all the time).

If I wanted everything brighter, then the monitor level would obviously be the place to change settings. If anything, I would be more likely to *lower* the monitor's brightness. Generally, the whole video is acceptable but when there are, for example, nighttime scenes that just look black, increasing the brightness reveals details so you have some clue as to what is going on.

I tend to be a multi-tasker - I never do anything full-screen. I have been noticing a slight growth in the tendency on linux to configure tools with the expectation that they will be the only thing in use until their use is completed.

For example, another minor complaint w/resp to gmplayer is that between F12 and F13 the ability to minimize the control console of the gui has been eliminated. The video window can be minimized, but not the control console. In F12, both could be individually minimized.

Oh, and btw, I have not noticed any tendency for videos to be too bright. I have never lowered the brightness on any video, be it Anime, TV show or movie. Even youtube clips are sometimes so dark that i have to download the .flv or .mp4 and view it in gmplayer with increased brightness.

In ~/.mplayer/config, vo=xv, ao=alsa, vf=eq2

The majority of videos play a little too dark, so I usually bump up the brightness about 10 points.