Handbrake 2 Dark as well

[Gagoots]

Well, I have encoded 500 gigs worth of movie backups in a few weeks, and haven't done any a-b'ing yet. I am about to purchase an ATV.

Now that my drive is full, and I am taking a breather until I get another, I have been comparing screen shots, and EVERY ONE is at least 30%darker than the original. I mean I am no videophile, but there are things that you JUST CAN'T SEE!

So I feel screwed, and I can't believe there aren't more people freaking about this.

I never upggraded to 3, and am using the stock ATV setting.

HELLLLPPPPP. I've spend weeks and months encoding.

ARRHGGGH!

 

[bucksaddle]

Well, I have encoded 500 gigs worth of movie backups in a few weeks...

So I feel screwed, and I can't believe there aren't more people freaking about this.

So, you didn't just do one encode to check it out before you did 500Gb's worth, and now you feel screwed? Perhaps you should ask for your money back from the HandBrake guy's

It's all about testing and see what works for you. Plenty of people think the stock Apple TV preset is fine (and also when it is played back on the Apple TV itself, which looks like you are not), but it obviously doesn't work for you. Play around with the settings and test.
Oh, and when i mean test - just do one movie

I never upggraded to 3, and am using the stock ATV setting.

Perhaps you should upgrade to 0.93 because the presets have been updated in that version

 

[Gagoots]

Thanks for your reply, it was very helpful. It has been stated here that people are having issues with 3 being too dark, so I don't think I'll go that way.

Do you think Handbrake rips are darker than the original on the ATV setting?

 

[bucksaddle]

I don't use the stock ATV preset, I have tweaked my own over the years I have been using it and I don't have any issues with it being dark. That may be just down to my old tired eyes, but both my DVD & Blu ray rips look great - DVD's comparable to the originals to me.

 

[spice weasel]

Thanks for your reply, it was very helpful. It has been stated here that people are having issues with 3 being too dark, so I don't think I'll go that way.

Do you think Handbrake rips are darker than the original on the ATV setting?

I think that the ATV preset in HB 0.9.3 produces much brighter picture quality than the previous version. Give it a try.

 

[dynaflash]

I think that the ATV preset in HB 0.9.3 produces much brighter picture quality than the previous version. Give it a try.

1. The colr atom was (I believe) changed for 0.9.3, which *should* make the movies brighter than 0.9.2 iirc.

2. Depending on what you are comparing the brightness to in terms of what your playing the source dvd on will make a huge difference. Apple dvdplayer.app is well known for being too bright to the point of possibly washing out colors. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1089428��

3. This is all discussed in a bit more depth at the HB forums.
http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10171

4. There is no "brightness" setting per se in hb so different settings will not make the movie darker or brighter. Though it stands to reason that on the extreme ranges of bitrate the color might appear sharper. Though as I said brightness will not be affected.

 

[Gagoots]

Well I downloaded 3 and am encoding my copy of Hannibal to A/B.

Will post results. Thanks for the helpful posts.

 

[Gagoots]

OK. So here's my copy of Hannibal. The left encode is Handbrake 2, the right is 3. The are not at the EXACT frame, but close enough.

3 wins hands down. Well, at least for brightness.

Thoughts?

 

[dynaflash]

OK. So here's my copy of Hannibal. The left encode is Handbrake 2, the right is 3. The are not at the EXACT frame, but close enough.

3 wins hands down. Well, at least for brightness.

Thoughts?

yep

1. The colr atom was (I believe) changed for 0.9.3, which *should* make the movies brighter than 0.9.2 iirc.

 

[Rich1963]

This might be an ideal time to ask another question. What does everyone do to calibrate their HDTVs (besides the standard $300 technician home visit)?

And also, is there a standard that the Handbrake devs use to calibrate their viewing devices to have accurate comparisons across the board?

Inquiring minds want to know...

 

[spice weasel]

This might be an ideal time to ask another question. What does everyone do to calibrate their HDTVs (besides the standard $300 technician home visit)?

Being the cheapskate and DIY'er that I am, I just play with the settings until I get something I like. Voila! But I only have a 37" LCD TV, not a 10" screen and projector system. I suppose that if I had dropped tens of thousands of dollars on creating an incredible home theater, the $300 for calibration might not seem like a big expense.

 

[Rich1963]

One of my issues that got me thinking about this (as well as this post) was viewing Aliens vs Predator 2 the other night (i know, i know, but I had to at least see it once) and, while the movie has the reputation for being dark, it was nearly unwatchable on my 50" plasma. It got me thinking about performing some sort of calibration on it. But, like spiceweasel, I'm not dropping the coin to have someone come out and do it.

I've seen some alternatives out there on the net, but I was wondering if the Handbrake devs have some common calibration they use so they are all viewing things relatively the same as they work with handbrake...

 

[roidy]

When I got my new 37" samsung lcd I spend weeks playing around with the brightness, contrast, color and gray scale controls and could never get a picture I was happy with. So in the end I purchased a second hand EyeOne LT color calibrator from ebay that cost me about £50 and a test pattern disk and did it myself and man what a difference it made. I`ve never had a picture look so good and it just shows you how crappy the settings are out of the box. Plus once I calibrated it a resold the EyeOne on ebay for more than I payed for it

 

[spice weasel]

You can also use the THX optimizer that comes on many DVDs. I know most if not all of the Pixar discs have it, and I think the Star Wars discs do as well.

 

[iTwitch]

This might be an ideal time to ask another question. What does everyone do to calibrate their HDTVs (besides the standard $300 technician home visit)?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Digital Video Essentials.