Darkened Screen from Doing Screen Captures?

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All Forums > Tech Talk > Tech Talk Forum Page 44 > Darkened Screen from Doing Screen Captures?

Author	Post
Pontus Maximus Senior Member Man of Steel, meet your match. 1346 Posts 9/02	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 5:05AM Hi, I'm having a technical problem that I hope someone can help me fix. I recently started making screenshots from DVD movies using Windows Media Player 10. Since then, I have noticed that when I view movies (regardless of which media player I use--I have a few--and regardless of which movie I'm watching), the movie picture quality has greatly reduced brightness (sometimes so dark, I almost can't see the image on the screen). This also means that when I do a screen capture under these conditions, the screenshot also comes out equally dark. Yet, if I play any of these movies in my traditional DVD player, the picture quality is fine (normal brightness). This problem is unique to viewing movies (and doing movie screen captures) on my computer. Otherwise, my computer screen is of normal brightness for all other applications. I'm assuming that my doing a large amount of screen captures has caused this problem (since the problem only started once I started doing screen captures). Does anybody know of a solution to this problem (and equally importantly) how to prevent this problem from ever recurring once it has been fixed? PM Computer Stats: Windows XP Version 2002 Service Pack 1 (including some of Service Pack 2) Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.53 GHz 1.00 GB of RAM [Link]
PL Senior Member God hates us all, you know it's true, God hates this place. - Slayer 1726 Posts 10/03	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 10:27AM I use WinDVD to do my screen shots, and I have used Power DVD in the past - both do the job and convey the right brightness and all as far as I can see. You should have gotten one of these apps when you got your computer/DVD drive. Later on today I'll be watching a movie and I'll try to play with it and see what I can find. Outside of that, for now you could look for some editing tool that would allow you to brighten your pics or if you have one of the two aforementioned apps, use those. [Link]
Pontus Maximus Senior Member Man of Steel, meet your match. 1346 Posts 9/02	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 12:10PM PL, thanks for the reply. PL wrote: I use WinDVD to do my screen shots, and I have used Power DVD in the past - both do the job and convey the right brightness and all as far as I can see. You should have gotten one of these apps when you got your computer/DVD drive. Click to expand In addition to Windows Media Player, I'm also currently using an XPACK Mini DVD Player and an InterActual Player. The same problem (darkened screen during DVD playback) occurs with all three media players. This makes me think that the problem is not in any of the media players (though I could be wrong). Coincidentally, I had been thinking of buying either PowerDVD 6 Deluxe or WinDVD 7 Platinum, but I don't think that would solve the problem, since the problem doesn't seem to be with any of my current media players (again, I could be wrong). Outside of that, for now you could look for some editing tool that would allow you to brighten your pics or if you have one of the two aforementioned apps, use those. Click to expand PL, I've tried brightening the screenshots with an editing tool. Sometimes that works okay, but when the screen within the media player is very dark (which is typical), the editor brightening effect is unacceptable. Anyway, that still doesn't solve the problem of my movies appearing darkened during playback (which is the root of the problem). PM [Link]
Kperv The Cuddler *struck (She slipped) 1818 Posts 1/04	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 1:13PM Have you looked in the video card's driver settings? NVIDIA's drivers for the penguin OS have different brightness/contrast/gamma settings for the accelerated video playback mode. The media players usually have controls to manipulate those settings too. Might be the same for Windows. [Link]
BigBobxxx Senior Member 2681 Posts 5/04	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 1:22PM First, update to Service Pack 2. Get PowerDVD, it's great. When installing PowerDVD, let it become the default application for the media types it asks for. [Link]

PL Senior Member God hates us all, you know it's true, God hates this place. - Slayer 1726 Posts 10/03	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 1:24PM Sorry for that last part, I misread your post. Hmmm after testing, I don't see any problems outside of WMP seems to play a little faster than WinDVD... Odd... Anyway, all the caps I tried, worked fine - Example. What kind of video are you working with? On board video or a actual AGP/PCIe video card. One way to tell (normally) is if the way you plug your monitor into you computer is horizontal, good chance you have a card vs., built in video. Did you try playing with the brightness settings? Click on the View menu, point to Enhancements, and then click Video Settings. Then in the Enhancements pane, move the Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast sliders to the settings that you want to use. I'll check back to see how things are going [Link]
BigBobxxx Senior Member 2681 Posts 5/04	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 2:19PM PL wrote: Then in the Enhancements pane, move the Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast sliders to the settings that you want to use. Click to expand First thing I'd suggest is to try re-setting the "default" levels to see if that cures your problem before moving the settings around. [Link]
de25ge Member yes I'm virilis 954 Posts 11/05	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 3:52PM PL wrote: Anyway, all the caps I tried, worked fine - Example. Click to expand Nice windows! [Link]
PL Senior Member God hates us all, you know it's true, God hates this place. - Slayer 1726 Posts 10/03	Posted - Feb 15 2006 : 3:55PM BigBobxxx wrote: First thing I'd suggest is to try re-setting the "default" levels to see if that cures your problem before moving the settings around. Click to expand All I did was copy and paste from WMP 10 Help de25ge, those are nice huh? Personally I'm fond of the color of the walls [Link]
Pontus Maximus Senior Member Man of Steel, meet your match. 1346 Posts 9/02	Posted - Feb 16 2006 : 3:47AM Hey, guys, I appreciate all of the helpful advice. After mulling the problem over for a while, I decided that I would hold off on doing any troubleshooting until I purchased a new media player (something I was planning on doing anyway). I decided to take BigBobxxx's advice and I bought a PowerDVD player. I opted for the PowerDVD PowerUser Combo (PowerDVD 6 Deluxe + InterActual Pack + MPEG-4 AVC Pack + MPEG-2/4 AAC Pack). And before installing the PowerDVD software, per the instructions of CyberLink (manufacturer of PowerDVD), I upgraded my system with Microsoft's DirectX 9c software. All of this seems to have solved the problem (knock on wood). Movie playback is now bright and beautiful, as are the screen captures. I agree with BigBobxxx that PowerDVD is extremely impressive. This media player is going to spoil me rotten. I'll never settle for a lesser media player again. Thanks again to you all for being so helpful. PM [Link]

All Forums > Tech Talk > Tech Talk Forum Page 44Darkened Screen from Doing Screen Captures?

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