The VideoLAN Forums

Watch these two screen shots comparing dark scenes in Sherlock Holmes with Apple Quicktime, VLC (x264) and YouTube:
Dark scene:
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/3603/sherlockj.jpg
Black screen:
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/2695/sherlock2.jpg

The Apple Quicktime video looks absolutely awful, VLC (x264) a little bit better and Youtube looks a black as I want it. Any intelligent person here who knows why it is like this?
Can you in any way get the YouTube picture in VLC?
Not much use in buying screens for thousands of € if the signal you send to it looks like this.

Are you using an nVidia card?

Yes, an 8800 GTS 512.

I have exactly the same issue with an NVidia 9800 GT- it looks like it's been a problem with VLC for a while since at least Feb 2009 (see this thread viewtopic.php?f=14&t=56336&p=186836&hil ... ut#p186836 )

you can fix it by disabling hardware YUV>RGB conversions in Tools>Preferences>Video

The Windows 7 Microsoft decoder and ffdshow do not have this issue.