I'm setting up a 64-bit F13; mplayer is from rpmfusion. Box is a core2 duo multiboot.
F12, 32-bit, is on another partition and mplayer works fine there. The F13 mplayer is configured identically to the one in F12, but in F13 the audio slides won't move; the video slides initially are set at full scale and moving them produces no change. In F12 the brightness and contrast are initially set at midscale - I usually increase brightness by about 10 for dark videos.
Mplayer is set to use the Xv driver in both cases. In ~/.mplayer config file, vo=xv, ao=alsa, vf=eq2. Tried vf=hue=0.0:1.0,eq2=1.0:1.0:0.1:1.0:1.0:1.0:1.0:1.0, but changes to the 3rd eq2 field (brightness) had no effect. Also, pressing keys 3 or 4 have no effect.
Nouveau is installed on both F12 and F13. GPU is 9800GT.
Any ideas?
Regards, Doug Wyatt
On 10/26/2010 11:53 PM, D Wyatt wrote:
I'm setting up a 64-bit F13; mplayer is from rpmfusion. Box is a core2 duo multiboot.
F12, 32-bit, is on another partition and mplayer works fine there. The F13 mplayer is configured identically to the one in F12, but in F13 the audio slides won't move; the video slides initially are set at full scale and moving them produces no change. In F12 the brightness and contrast are initially set at midscale - I usually increase brightness by about 10 for dark videos.
Mplayer is set to use the Xv driver in both cases. In ~/.mplayer config file, vo=xv, ao=alsa, vf=eq2. Tried vf=hue=0.0:1.0,eq2=1.0:1.0:0.1:1.0:1.0:1.0:1.0:1.0, but changes to the 3rd eq2 field (brightness) had no effect. Also, pressing keys 3 or 4 have no effect.
Nouveau is installed on both F12 and F13. GPU is 9800GT.
Any ideas?
Regards, Doug Wyatt
I run mplayer - but I can never get the slides to show. What do you to make the slides appear? Is it a different gui app? I would like to try what you're doing.
On 10/27/2010 2:06 AM, JD wrote:
On 10/26/2010 11:53 PM, D Wyatt wrote:
I'm setting up a 64-bit F13; mplayer is from rpmfusion. Box is a core2 duo multiboot.
F12, 32-bit, is on another partition and mplayer works fine there. The F13 mplayer is configured identically to the one in F12, but in F13 the audio slides won't move; the video slides initially are set at full scale and moving them produces no change. In F12 the brightness and contrast are initially set at midscale - I usually increase brightness by about 10 for dark videos.
Mplayer is set to use the Xv driver in both cases. In ~/.mplayer config file, vo=xv, ao=alsa, vf=eq2. Tried vf=hue=0.0:1.0,eq2=1.0:1.0:0.1:1.0:1.0:1.0:1.0:1.0, but changes to the 3rd eq2 field (brightness) had no effect. Also, pressing keys 3 or 4 have no effect.
Nouveau is installed on both F12 and F13. GPU is 9800GT.
Any ideas?
Regards, Doug Wyatt
I run mplayer - but I can never get the slides to show. What do you to make the slides appear? Is it a different gui app? I would like to try what you're doing.
In ~/.mplayer/config, vo=xv, ao=alsa, vf=eq2 were what got it working in F12 (32-bit). I am just using the std mplayer from the rpmfusion repository.
On 10/27/2010 12:21 AM, D Wyatt wrote:
In ~/.mplayer/config, vo=xv, ao=alsa, vf=eq2
I have mplayer-1.0-0.117.20100703svn.fc13.i686 and I have the seame settings in ~/.mplayer/config and yet, mplayer does not show any of the slides you mention. Are you sure the slides you are talking about are not part of some other GUI tool?
One equalizer that works well is the pulseaudio-equalizer-2.7-3.fc13.noarch
Install it and run it. In the gui, you have to enable it and then set your equalizer slides On older cpus like mine, it is a kludgey interface because it has a considerable lag time between setting and taking the effect. Try it.
On 10/27/2010 12:25 PM, JD wrote:
On 10/27/2010 12:21 AM, D Wyatt wrote:
In ~/.mplayer/config, vo=xv, ao=alsa, vf=eq2
I have mplayer-1.0-0.117.20100703svn.fc13.i686 and I have the seame settings in ~/.mplayer/config and yet, mplayer does not show any of the slides you mention. Are you sure the slides you are talking about are not part of some other GUI tool?
One equalizer that works well is the pulseaudio-equalizer-2.7-3.fc13.noarch
Install it and run it. In the gui, you have to enable it and then set your equalizer slides On older cpus like mine, it is a kludgey interface because it has a considerable lag time between setting and taking the effect. Try it.
Fwiw, I have mplayer-1.0-0.117.20100703svn.fc13.x86_64.
I usually invoke it by right-clicking on a filename in Konqueror and selecting mplayer from the drop-down menu.
Perhaps you are referring to the non-gui, command line invocation of mplayer. I generally use the gui unless I need specific options such as diagnostic output. In the gui vrsn, right click brings up a drop-down menu, where you can select the equalizer; mouse clicks in the video display invoked from the cmdline produce an error, if I recall correctly. As I thought I emphasized, it is the brightness control I am most interested in, not audio. However, I am aware of the pulse mixer.
I have been using mplayer since at least as far back as F7, maybe F4 (I can't remember for sure). It is my primary video viewer on linux and I use it a lot. The majority of videos play a little too dark, so I usually bump up the brightness about 10 points.
Regards, D Wyatt
On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 14:09 -0500, D Wyatt wrote:
The majority of videos play a little too dark, so I usually bump up the brightness about 10 points.
If the majority are bad, perhaps the real issue's outside of mplayer (monitor set up, or all video output).
Usually, video's look too bright (or at least the darker portions of the video signal), as they're prepared for television sets, which have a different gamma than computer monitors.
On 10/28/2010 8:39 AM, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 14:09 -0500, D Wyatt wrote:
The majority of videos play a little too dark, so I usually bump up the brightness about 10 points.
If the majority are bad, perhaps the real issue's outside of mplayer (monitor set up, or all video output).
Usually, video's look too bright (or at least the darker portions of the video signal), as they're prepared for television sets, which have a different gamma than computer monitors.
If I wanted everything brighter, then the monitor level would obviously be the place to change settings. If anything, I would be more likely to *lower* the monitor's brightness. Generally, the whole video is acceptable but when there are, for example, nighttime scenes that just look black, increasing the brightness reveals details so you have some clue as to what is going on.
I tend to be a multi-tasker - I never do anything full-screen. I have been noticing a slight growth in the tendency on linux to configure tools with the expectation that they will be the only thing in use until their use is completed. For example, another minor complaint w/resp to gmplayer is that between F12 and F13 the ability to minimize the control console of the gui has been eliminated. The video window can be minimized, but not the control console. In F12, both could be individually minimized.
Oh, and btw, I have not noticed any tendency for videos to be too bright. I have never lowered the brightness on any video, be it Anime, TV show or movie. Even youtube clips are sometimes so dark that i have to download the .flv or .mp4 and view it in gmplayer with increased brightness.
Regards, D Wyatt
On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 21:06 -0500, D Wyatt wrote:
If I wanted everything brighter, then the monitor level would obviously be the place to change settings. If anything, I would be more likely to *lower* the monitor's brightness. Generally, the whole video is acceptable but when there are, for example, nighttime scenes that just look black, increasing the brightness reveals details so you have some clue as to what is going on.
You did mention the majority of videos were too dark, which (going by averages) suggests that your brightness is too low to start with, and only looks okay when watching something that's already too bright.
Though, to use a computer for two wildly different things (watching videos, and other computing tasks), really calls for adjusting something else - "gamma" (more about that below).
I tend to be a multi-tasker - I never do anything full-screen. I have been noticing a slight growth in the tendency on linux to configure tools with the expectation that they will be the only thing in use until their use is completed.
Yes... Menus that take up a third of the desktop space, likewise with other programs where a huge GUI means you end up with a keyhole to look at what YOU were interested in... And (not) sharing sound hardware...
For example, another minor complaint w/resp to gmplayer is that between F12 and F13 the ability to minimize the control console of the gui has been eliminated. The video window can be minimized, but not the control console. In F12, both could be individually minimized.
I haven't used gmplayer for ages, I can't recall all the reasons, but smplayer seemed better. It works in a window, or fullscreen, and in fullscreen with or without navigation controls (depending on if you moved the mouse to the bottom of the screen, to make the controls appear).
Oh, and btw, I have not noticed any tendency for videos to be too bright. I have never lowered the brightness on any video, be it Anime, TV show or movie. Even youtube clips are sometimes so dark that i have to download the .flv or .mp4 and view it in gmplayer with increased brightness.
Sounds like you have settings all over the place, then. What you've described is the classic case seen from turning one thing up in one place, and the same thing down, elsewhere (once destroyed, it can't be restored, later). e.g. Brightness down on the monitor, brightness up on the video player. It also sounds like a mixing up of terminology (contrast and brightness, and playing with the wrong ones). Not to mention the usual computer defaults being inappropriate (jet black text on full white background, is like staring at texta writing on a fluorescent tube; and with a low res LCD, like staring at a fluorescent light through flyscreen).
When you set up a computer monitor properly, so that the full range from black to white is shown as actually black to white, with everything in between. You get a proper computer display, suitable for real work (such as photo editing), or, at the very least, you get to see everything; as well as it being suitable for play. Though, with the usability problem I mentioned a moment ago - thanks to the the usual page colouring defaults. The real solution (for that) would be to use not-white pages, though the usual fix is turn the CONTRAST down (reduce the range), not the brightness (make everything blacker, including making things blacker than black).
Video, meant for watching on TV (whether that be a movie on DVD, tape, or from your home video camera), on the other hand, has a different gamma than a computer monitor screen. The gamma boosts the dark end of the range, lightening up the dark portions, without affecting (much) the lighter portions. Gamma correction was originally done to compensate for the original television picture tubes - the camera was tweaked in the opposite direction, rather than correct the TV set. And we've been stuck with it ever since, even when the display technology changed (they've either done opposing gamma correction, on top of the gamma correction, in the display; or left you to look at a malformed picture). Now we have TV sets with a plethora of user adjustments, trying to make something good out of something inadequate (all those cinema viewing mode presets on your brand spanking new plasmas).
Video has more gamma than computing. For some reason, the computing fraternity decided to be different (still have gamma correction, but use a different factor, even while still using the same CRT technology). Hence, why, in most cases, watching a DVD on a computer looks awful (you never get blacks, everything is above black - grey). This doesn't happen in the few cases where hardware processing of video decoding, or software players, compensate for it.
If you haven't noticed it, it's usually because either you're using things that compensate for it, or you've probably turned your brightness down too far, most of the time; or you're using a CRT with a similar gamma.
Having said all that. I find that on a properly set up monitor, or well set up (even if not precisely set up). Most YouTube clips do look fine. A bit grey instead of black, but not very bad. Dark clips would be down to bad clips, or your monitor being malset in the first place.
A YouTube clip I just picked at random, for an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbt9pQUr71I Shows someone demonstrating glamour lighting for photography. Around the girl is near dark, just slightly brighter than the complete black border around the image. Around 15" (seconds) to 20" in, you should only be able to determine that's a silhouette of a photographer, not really see any details of them. About 45" in, the photographer's standing behind the girl yakking about something (I had the sound off), he's moderately dark, but should be clearly visible with good detail, other than the shadow across his shirt. If that one's too dark, your monitor is mal-set.
Picking on another clip by the same person, but a bit brighter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaebMg4oSeI It starts off nicely lit, about 55" in is a bit less than usual video illumination of people, but still well exposed. If that, or any other part of the whole clip is too dark for you to see well, you have your monitor really badly mal-set.
Of course, if you're talking about trying to see detail in deliberately underexposed shots (such as the classic horror movie scenes where a girl walks into a room, doesn't turn the lights on, and gets attacked), then that's deliberately maladjusting the monitor to try and see something they're trying to keep hard to see.
Covering the basics:
Brightness - the bias that everything rides on. It sets the black level, that everything is on top of. On anything but bad hardware, the brightness is the first thing to set, with the contrast turned all the way down. Set to see a black level just above no illumination. Set too low, and everything darker than a certain level will all become black, too high, and you wash everything out.
Contrast - the dynamic range, how big the difference is between black (no illumination, none blacker) and white (100%, none whiter). On anything but bad hardware, you're adjusting the range above black. You set contrast for how bright you want white to be above black. Turned too low, and you get low contrast, up too high, and you may be trying to make white whiter than white, which just isn't possible.
(This is very different from photography, where things tend to centre around the middle - contrast centred around grey.)
Gamma - deliberate non-linearity of the dynamic range. Dark portions of the video signal are increased, as a compensation for the CRT having the opposite response. Comparatively speaking, other non-CRT technologies are linear, so video created with gamma boosting for a CRT looks washed out.
If you want to see the effects of messing with gamma, open a photo in the gimp, open up the "curves" control in the colour menu, and bend the straight line so it starts to look like the top left quadrant of a circle. That's the direction that signal is boosted by when trying to gamma correct the picture for a CRT (who's natural response is a curve in the opposite direction - with the net result of one against the other trying to get back to the straight line). When viewing such video on another with a different gamma curve (computer CRT, LCD, etc.), it looks like the curve has been pushed way too far.
Tim (who works in video production, and has to deal with this all the time, and hates how computers get it so badly wrong, all the time).
On 10/29/2010 03:26 PM, Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 21:06 -0500, D Wyatt wrote:
If I wanted everything brighter, then the monitor level would obviously be the place to change settings. If anything, I would be more likely to *lower* the monitor's brightness. Generally, the whole video is acceptable but when there are, for example, nighttime scenes that just look black, increasing the brightness reveals details so you have some clue as to what is going on.
A quick and easy check: go to http://www.dpreview.com/previews/panasonicdmcgh2/, scroll down to the bottom, and make sure you can see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and ideally A,B and C.
Andrew.
On 10/29/2010 9:26 AM, Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 21:06 -0500, D Wyatt wrote:
If I wanted everything brighter, then the monitor level would obviously be the place to change settings. If anything, I would be more likely to *lower* the monitor's brightness. Generally, the whole video is acceptable but when there are, for example, nighttime scenes that just look black, increasing the brightness reveals details so you have some clue as to what is going on.
You did mention the majority of videos were too dark, which (going by averages) suggests that your brightness is too low to start with, and only looks okay when watching something that's already too bright.
Though, to use a computer for two wildly different things (watching videos, and other computing tasks), really calls for adjusting something else - "gamma" (more about that below).
I tend to be a multi-tasker - I never do anything full-screen. I have been noticing a slight growth in the tendency on linux to configure tools with the expectation that they will be the only thing in use until their use is completed.
Yes... Menus that take up a third of the desktop space, likewise with other programs where a huge GUI means you end up with a keyhole to look at what YOU were interested in... And (not) sharing sound hardware...
For example, another minor complaint w/resp to gmplayer is that between F12 and F13 the ability to minimize the control console of the gui has been eliminated. The video window can be minimized, but not the control console. In F12, both could be individually minimized.
I haven't used gmplayer for ages, I can't recall all the reasons, but smplayer seemed better. It works in a window, or fullscreen, and in fullscreen with or without navigation controls (depending on if you moved the mouse to the bottom of the screen, to make the controls appear).
Oh, and btw, I have not noticed any tendency for videos to be too bright. I have never lowered the brightness on any video, be it Anime, TV show or movie. Even youtube clips are sometimes so dark that i have to download the .flv or .mp4 and view it in gmplayer with increased brightness.
Sounds like you have settings all over the place, then. What you've described is the classic case seen from turning one thing up in one place, and the same thing down, elsewhere (once destroyed, it can't be restored, later). e.g. Brightness down on the monitor, brightness up on the video player. It also sounds like a mixing up of terminology (contrast and brightness, and playing with the wrong ones). Not to mention the usual computer defaults being inappropriate (jet black text on full white background, is like staring at texta writing on a fluorescent tube; and with a low res LCD, like staring at a fluorescent light through flyscreen).
When you set up a computer monitor properly, so that the full range from black to white is shown as actually black to white, with everything in between. You get a proper computer display, suitable for real work (such as photo editing), or, at the very least, you get to see everything; as well as it being suitable for play. Though, with the usability problem I mentioned a moment ago - thanks to the the usual page colouring defaults. The real solution (for that) would be to use not-white pages, though the usual fix is turn the CONTRAST down (reduce the range), not the brightness (make everything blacker, including making things blacker than black).
Video, meant for watching on TV (whether that be a movie on DVD, tape, or from your home video camera), on the other hand, has a different gamma than a computer monitor screen. The gamma boosts the dark end of the range, lightening up the dark portions, without affecting (much) the lighter portions. Gamma correction was originally done to compensate for the original television picture tubes - the camera was tweaked in the opposite direction, rather than correct the TV set. And we've been stuck with it ever since, even when the display technology changed (they've either done opposing gamma correction, on top of the gamma correction, in the display; or left you to look at a malformed picture). Now we have TV sets with a plethora of user adjustments, trying to make something good out of something inadequate (all those cinema viewing mode presets on your brand spanking new plasmas).
Video has more gamma than computing. For some reason, the computing fraternity decided to be different (still have gamma correction, but use a different factor, even while still using the same CRT technology). Hence, why, in most cases, watching a DVD on a computer looks awful (you never get blacks, everything is above black - grey). This doesn't happen in the few cases where hardware processing of video decoding, or software players, compensate for it.
If you haven't noticed it, it's usually because either you're using things that compensate for it, or you've probably turned your brightness down too far, most of the time; or you're using a CRT with a similar gamma.
Having said all that. I find that on a properly set up monitor, or well set up (even if not precisely set up). Most YouTube clips do look fine. A bit grey instead of black, but not very bad. Dark clips would be down to bad clips, or your monitor being malset in the first place.
A YouTube clip I just picked at random, for an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbt9pQUr71I Shows someone demonstrating glamour lighting for photography. Around the girl is near dark, just slightly brighter than the complete black border around the image. Around 15" (seconds) to 20" in, you should only be able to determine that's a silhouette of a photographer, not really see any details of them. About 45" in, the photographer's standing behind the girl yakking about something (I had the sound off), he's moderately dark, but should be clearly visible with good detail, other than the shadow across his shirt. If that one's too dark, your monitor is mal-set.
Picking on another clip by the same person, but a bit brighter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaebMg4oSeI It starts off nicely lit, about 55" in is a bit less than usual video illumination of people, but still well exposed. If that, or any other part of the whole clip is too dark for you to see well, you have your monitor really badly mal-set.
Of course, if you're talking about trying to see detail in deliberately underexposed shots (such as the classic horror movie scenes where a girl walks into a room, doesn't turn the lights on, and gets attacked), then that's deliberately maladjusting the monitor to try and see something they're trying to keep hard to see.
Covering the basics:
Brightness - the bias that everything rides on. It sets the black level, that everything is on top of. On anything but bad hardware, the brightness is the first thing to set, with the contrast turned all the way down. Set to see a black level just above no illumination. Set too low, and everything darker than a certain level will all become black, too high, and you wash everything out.
Contrast - the dynamic range, how big the difference is between black (no illumination, none blacker) and white (100%, none whiter). On anything but bad hardware, you're adjusting the range above black. You set contrast for how bright you want white to be above black. Turned too low, and you get low contrast, up too high, and you may be trying to make white whiter than white, which just isn't possible.
(This is very different from photography, where things tend to centre around the middle - contrast centred around grey.)
Gamma - deliberate non-linearity of the dynamic range. Dark portions of the video signal are increased, as a compensation for the CRT having the opposite response. Comparatively speaking, other non-CRT technologies are linear, so video created with gamma boosting for a CRT looks washed out.
If you want to see the effects of messing with gamma, open a photo in the gimp, open up the "curves" control in the colour menu, and bend the straight line so it starts to look like the top left quadrant of a circle. That's the direction that signal is boosted by when trying to gamma correct the picture for a CRT (who's natural response is a curve in the opposite direction - with the net result of one against the other trying to get back to the straight line). When viewing such video on another with a different gamma curve (computer CRT, LCD, etc.), it looks like the curve has been pushed way too far.
Tim (who works in video production, and has to deal with this all the time, and hates how computers get it so badly wrong, all the time).
Lol, Wow, just wow! Tim, thanks for the tutorial - and I'm serious about that.
I will try out the smplayer frontend, though I'm pretty sure that won't address my problem with mplayer.
One small detail that I neglected to mention is that I use my VX2000 monitor for two PC's through a KVM switch. The box running F13 also boots into F12 and WinXP Home; the other box runs WinXP Pro. I'm in the process of building a third box (initially running Win7) which will also connect to the KVM for the short term until I get a 2nd monitor. Fwiw, I spend most of my time on F13.
So, monitor config has to make a balance between multiple PC's and OS's, which it does pretty well, at the moment. I'll soon see how it works for Win7 on the new box.
Andrew Haley Suggested a link to check out the greyscale @ the site, http://www.dpreview.com/previews/panasonicdmcgh2/. I checked it from both XP and F13, and in both cases I can distinguish ABC and XYZ, though XYZ could be better in both. I will look into the gamma issue to see if that can be improved globally on both systems. The overall brightness and contrast settings for the monitor were settled long ago.
I'm a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned the graphics driver as a possible source of mplayer's inability to adjust graphics parameters, though clearly that wouldn't address the lack of audio equalizer control from mplayer. I may try the nvidia driver in the near future to see if that makes any difference.
Thanks for everyone's comments, D Wyatt
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Andrew Haley -
Doug Wyatt -
JD -
Tim