Hello People,

I just reformatted my WinXP Pro SP3 Box, due to a virus (I really need to make the move to some unix based os ).

Before the reformat/reinstall I had installed various codecs (CCCP, Matroska and XP Codec Pack, I think I only ended up keeping the XP Codec Pack though), and the video was noticeably darkened.

After doing a search on how to fix the issue, I found some advice (which I can't seem to find now ) I managed to brighten it up quite a bit, however, I never really got the same quality as I had when, say I played mpg, or wmv files before the Codec installation.

Anyway, I was able to live with it, it was bearable.

Now I needed to find the codecs to play my Xvid files once more.

I installed them one by one, after seeing that the videos this time, exponentially darkened!

No matter which codec I install, the videos look really dark! So dark in fact, that I can barely make out the images in the videos. The only things I can see the clearest (and not even fully clear then), were the credits, which were light colours.

Everything else shows perfectly normal! Pictures, videos embedded in internet browsers, such as YouTube and whatnot.

Now I need to know, how to bring the contrast up a bit, and increase the brightness (without touching the monitor's settings), so I can view videos from my media player with the codecs installed.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

PS: After writing all of this, I remembered that it may be through the graphics card settings that I can correct the issue. If it works, I will let you know.

OK, I did it, and it worked!

How's that!

I opened up the Color Correction tab in my graphic card's settings window and changed it from "Desktop" to "Overlay" [See top left quarter of image]. (There was the third option, "All")



Where it says "Color profile", beneath the black square, beneath the "Apply color changes to:" section, I switched the mode from "Standard mode" to "Advanced mode".

Then in the black square bit, there was a 45 degree angle white line (from top right to bottom left).

I dragged the centre of the line (which had a circle on it), to as far as I could to the top left. If I dragged it too much, it would reset to a straight 45 degree angle line.

Then I hit the Apply button, and when I tried watching an Xvid file, I was able to view it better than what it showed before!

I am sooo

Hmmm. Graphic Card manager? Not on my computer!

I was having the same problem, and having dorked about in Control Panel and getting nowhere, I finally did turn up the brightness on my monitor. Worked really well. I don't understand why you don't want to do that.

Thank you for your input Sir James.

The matter with turning up the brightness would unfortunately affect all other things on my monitor.

Whereas I have no issues whatsoever with the quality of anything else except for my video players, that play videos with the .avi, .mkv, .rm, .rmvb and anything else with a non-standard extension, needing a codec to play it in.

I can view pictures fine, watch YouTube videos, read docs, use any software on my computer, watch wmv, mpg video files, all in perfect quality... So upping the brightness of my monitor would mean that I would have these things at an unnecessarily annoying, bright level, necessitating me to turn down the brightness after watching a video that needs a codec.

Sorry for the long post, but I needed to make it clear that it was ONLY my 'codec necessitating videos' that required the 'brightening'.

But all in all, if it works for you, then that is great


Take Care
isa