Gamma, Dynamic Range and modern digital content.

paulca

Suspended / Banned
Messages
95
Name
Paul Campbell
Edit My Images
Yes
Has anyone noticed that online media is going "dark"?

I have started to notice it more and more now that shadows are falling well below the black level of the monitor.

I used to fix this in Chrome with a video filter plug-in to lift the gamma on any videos. Chrome have now banned all such content altering plugins, probably because they violate some digital media rights or licensing rules.

Some times it's completely ridiculous, to the point where I can nearly double the gamma and still see more details in the shadows increasing it more.

Surely this comes down to many things. Digital content allows a higher dynamic range than video could, so producers are exploiting it. They do the same for sound these days too. Having to turn the TV up to hear muffled dialogue and then having pictures fall off the neighbours wall when it cuts straight to a jet fighter dropping bombs. They are doing the same with the dynamic range on the videos now and... it's a LOT more annoying having to turn the brightness up, especially as most TVs don't have "gamma" correction, only brightness.

I believe this comes down to your monitor and video card. How you set them up, their black level, etc. But very few online content providers provide you a way to change the video playback settings to more suit your display settings.

Interesting and why this is even a problem. The desktop colours are fine. It's just the video playback that needs adjusted. So pulling up the master gamma on the video card, would... blowout the highlights on the desktop.
 
Last edited:
I should mention this is tested across 3 different displays with 3 different video cards.

Acer Predator 34" ultrawide with Nvidia 1070Ti
LG 55" 4k HDR LED TV with NVidia 1030
LG 40" 1080p TV with Intel HD Gfx.

All have the same issue.
 
As these things go, you make a post, it gives you an idea, so you try it and it works.

You can actually change video playback settings separately on NVidia control panel... and it has multi-channel gamma too.
 
Back
Top