The VideoLAN Forums

Nvidia has vlc display washed out images by default, its a known issue that nvidia addressed a long time ago by giving the user the option to choose nvidia to handle the video player colors instead of the video player managing it itself; the settings are for dynamic range between limited 16-235 and full range 0-255. limited is used by tv and full is by PC. So one would normally opt for full if they are using PC however i also noticed unchecking hardware YUV -> RGB in VLC settings with nvidia settings unchanged achieves the same result. The caveat being that unchecking it displays a slight color difference when compared to other players, like a very slight blue tint in some videos. But regardless I prefer that method to the nvidia full range because that one is too dark and intense contrast, while turning off YUV conversion appears more balanced. What is the correct thing to do here though? Other players like WMP and MPC play the video accurately without any tampering and with same looking colors, how to make VLC have the same colors as them without the blue tint and without nvidia in charge of full range since that pushes dark levels too high?

Did you try other video output modules? (and do snapshots taken with VLC show wrong colors)

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem. My video card is nVidia 275 GTX. I can see proper colours when playing videos via Windows Media Player but VLC playing with washed up colours. However, I have to admit I also tried Media Player 6 as well and there is the same problem. It looks like when video was coded with black bars (for instance to match computer screen resolution) the black bars in the video becomes grey.

Can anybody please provide ay sensible solution on that? I cannot understand why Windows Media Player play videos correctly whereas other player do not :/

Regards

Hi Lotesdelere and thanks for the answer.

I kind of expected this answer. I found this solution and Nvidia settings before coming here. It was actually first thing I did when I realised VLC plays videos with wrong colours. Nvidia setting corrects VLC and Media Player 6 but youtube starts making troubles; colours are sometimes washed out and sometimes not while starting the same video! Youtube uses Adobe Flash Player AFAIK. There is another video player: Zoom Player. It plays everything correctly which is even weirder to me. Why is that? Why VLC has a problem with Nvidia while the other players not?

I am not a coder and I don't know how all these works but from my understanding it is not exactly Nvidia problem if there are players that can play videos with correct colours.

EDIT: I have unchecked "Dynamic contrast enhancement" and things seem to work correctly now, although the question remains regarding differences between video players.