I'm curious if anyone has had this problem in the past.

For the past month or so whenever I go to play a movie, it seems to be extremely dark. However if I go to watch an anime, it looks perfectly fine. It's not monitor specific, I've tried three, they all have the problem. It's not OS specific, I dual boot ubuntu and vista, happens on both.

I can mostly fix the video by manually adjusting the contrast/brightness on vlc, but it's so annoying. Anyone have an idea here?

 

Did you try a different video player?, Media player classic is a good alternative to VLC. Also it may have something to do with your default display configs, try tweaking it with your video card control panel like the Nvidia one.

 

I use VLC as well and I've never had a problem, like the one your describing. Maybe uninstall and reinstall VLC or even try deinstalling and reinstalling the video drivers. If not I would agree with Xiph0.

 

It won't be a video driver, because Linux and Windows use different drivers.

What is the common link between every occurence? If it's not the OS, the software, or the monitors, then I've got four more suspects. If you can rule some of them out for us, it'd narrow down the problem.

Are you using the same video card every time? Possible culprit.

If you're using analog video output, are you using the same video cable every time, or is the cable very long?

Are you playing the same video files? Have you tried older files and DVD movies that you know play corrrectly?

Are you watching them in the same place every time? Has the lighting, or you and your computers position to the lighting changed?

Edit: ForsakenOne has some good suggestions. My money is on some low level video card setting. Try that video card control panel.

 

yes same vid card.

Same port, different cables. They are not very long, standard length I suppose.

I've played over 50 vid files. It's interesting, because the same thing seems to happen to youtube, however it never seems to effect anime.

Same place, I sometimes move my monitor to watch from a different angle, but I make sure the room is dark so I can see everything well enough.


@Forsakenone

I'll take a look at the controls. As to the players I've used everything from WMP, WMP classic, VLC, mplayer, realplayer, and divx standard player. They all seem to have the same problem unless it's anime.


I've heard that anime seems to have a lower frame rate than TV episodes/movies, could that possibly be a clue?


EDIT:I've fooled around with the nvidia control panel, with a bit of tooling it really hasn't 'fixed' the situation so much as made the changes I did to vlc blanket to all video playback (including youtube/online videos.) Seems to work alright. Thanks.

 

Doubtful. It's far more likely that the bright animated colours were less affected than the darker, more natural colours of the real world.

It was probably affecting everything, not just videos. It's just that non-animated video was where the problem was most evident. Brightness, contrast, saturation, or something similar is probably what was messed up.

Oh, and check your video card temp just to double check that nothing is wrong on that front. If you don't already have a program that can do it, then use System Information for Windows. It's Hardware --> Temperatures --> GPU. SIW is very handy to have around.