Bad picture when played back on TV

[mdshullaw]

After burning a DVD video slideshow with VideoStudio 11 plus, and playing it back on a TV, the picture is too bright, and the color very faded. The strange thing is that the same DVD plays back fine on any of my computers. When I play back a comercial DVD on my TV, the picture is great, so I'm stumped. I burned it in standard DVD NTSC mpeg-2 mode. Is there a setting in VideoStudio that might be causing an incompatibilty issue? Thanks for any advice on this subject.

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums,

Without some more information, it is difficult to determine what the cause may be. For example what did you do to the video before burning? Do you apply any filters/effects to the video clips, and if so what were they? Since they appear fine on different computers, you may have a problem with your TV. Without the additional information, specified in the link provided below we could be sometime guessing at this..

Please read this post, and return with as much of the information as possible.
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=8959

[mdshullaw]

Welcome to the forums,

Without some more information, it is difficult to determine what the cause may be. For example what did you do to the video before burning? Do you apply any filters/effects to the video clips, and if so what were they? Since they appear fine on different computers, you may have a problem with your TV. Without the additional information, specified in the link provided below we could be sometime guessing at this..

Please read this post, and return with as much of the information as possible.
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=8959

I'll try to give more info on this subject then. The video is made up mostly of jpeg photos, put together as a slideshow in VideoStudio 11. I rendered it as an mpeg 2 video in VideoStudio, using the preset NTSC DVD 4:3 settings. Then I used VideoStudio to burn it to a DVD. It plays fine in any computer/monitor I have tried it in. When I play it back on a TV, using a progressive scan Pioneer DVD player, or a Pioneer progressive scan DVD player, it it very bright, and the colors are very faded. A standard commercial DVD played back in these same DVD players, on the same TVs, look fine. It's a strange problem I cannot find an answer for. I've been a self-employed electronic technician for the past 30 years, so I have an idea about what I am doing, and it has me stumped. I am wondering if there is a setting in VideoStudio's rendering, that would cause it to look fine on a computer monitor, but not on a TV. I am using the component video outputs on the DVD players to connect to the TVs. The TVs both then upscale the signal to 1080. The resulting video signal is superb on normal DVDs, but poor on the VideoStudio rendered ones. I know the picture is good on the same DVD when played back on a computer, so it seems it has to be a mismatched setting somewhere for use on a DVD player connected to a TV. Thanks for taking time to help.

[Ken Berry]

The only thing that I can think of -- and its a verrrrrry long shot -- would be to change the default settings when you convert your slideshow to DVD compatible mpeg-2. Leave all the other default settings alone, but change the Field Order to Frame Based. I find that is best for slideshows anyway. But in this case, you are also playing back the DVD on a progressive scan TV which, as you would know better than I, uses a system not dissimilar to the concept of Frame Based video...

As I say, it's a long shot, and I can't really think why that would change the luminance or whatever of your slideshow, but it might at least be worth a try, if nothing else just to be able to say you ruled it out!

[Ron P.]

This is something very unusual, especially if you have not applied any filters, and that they appear fine on PCs but not on your TV.

The only settings in VS that affect brightness, contrast are;
1. In File>Preferences, on the Edit tab, Apply Color Filter NTSC or PAL However that tends to tone down the harshness of colors like red, that TV does not handle well.
2. On the Image or Video Tab (to the left of the Attribute tab), is the Color Correction options. Opening this up, there is a setting at the bottom called Auto Tone. If that was inadvertently set, it seems to brighten images and clips. But that should be obvious when playing them on a PC too.

I'm stumped..

[mdshullaw]

The only thing that I can think of -- and its a verrrrrry long shot -- would be to change the default settings when you convert your slideshow to DVD compatible mpeg-2. Leave all the other default settings alone, but change the Field Order to Frame Based. I find that is best for slideshows anyway. But in this case, you are also playing back the DVD on a progressive scan TV which, as you would know better than I, uses a system not dissimilar to the concept of Frame Based video...

Well I gave that a try, and it greatly improved the picture. Brightness was closer to normal, and the saturation was dead on. Thank you for that suggestion. I wondered about it, but wasn't sure if it had anything to do with the problem. So your hunch was a good one. Thanks!

[mdshullaw]

This is something very unusual, especially if you have not applied any filters, and that they appear fine on PCs but not on your TV.

The only settings in VS that affect brightness, contrast are;
1. In File>Preferences, on the Edit tab, Apply Color Filter NTSC or PAL However that tends to tone down the harshness of colors like red, that TV does not handle well.
2. On the Image or Video Tab (to the left of the Attribute tab), is the Color Correction options. Opening this up, there is a setting at the bottom called Auto Tone. If that was inadvertently set, it seems to brighten images and clips. But that should be obvious when playing them on a PC too.

I'm stumped..

Thanks for the suggestions. Ken's suggestion of changing the rendering to frame-based fixed the problem. I really wasn't holding out much hope it would fix it, so I was a little surprised when it did.

[Ken Berry]

Well, I am please it sort of worked! Now that you know that is a principal factor, you could even think about applying one of the filters to tone down the brightness a fraction in the editor, so that in the final DVD it might then appear even closer to the brightness you want...