DVD burning software that makes picture too dark?

[gastrof]

My computer came with Power Producer 3, and while it (along with some freeware I've found along the way) allows me to do a lot in the way of making DVDs, I've noticed that the resulting discs tend to play with a darker picture than the original recording had.

How common is this with DVD burning software? Is it just some quirk with PP3, or is this something you find with other home-level burning software too?

 

[Trekker4747]

I can't imagine how the burning software would have any effect on anything to do with the picture, considering everything that is being burned/copied is 1's an 0's. The only thing I can think of is some-kind-of copy protection to make the copied product's picture too shitty to view.

 

[gastrof]

No. These are things that have no copy protection. And I'm not so sure it's just copying 1s and 0s, since it's actually converting file formats for burning. AVIs or Mpegs, for example, ending up on the discs as VOBs. We're not talking .vob to .vob.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

See what you can do about the conversion process. It's possible they're using a lousy conversion method that's screwing up the picture.

If at all possible, find a way to convert your videos to DVD format before you try to burn them. In other words, bypass PP3's conversion process.

 

[Jadzia]

If you're using several bits of software, the problem is that each program doesn't know what the other programs have done to the picture before it. So if you're not keeping track of what settings have been applied, they may be being applied double.

One thing you might check for is the white/black level threshold (or something like that), which crops the lighter and darker parts of the colour spectrum to make the video agree with some video standard.

 

[gastrof]

I'm afraid PP3 doesn't seem to have much in the way of controls. It just imports the video file, then burns it. You can combine files and split or edit in other ways, but you can't change the color/brightness settings.This is the only DVD burning software I've ever used, so that's why I asked if it's a common problem or not. Would other programs give better results?

 

[Lindley]

The lightness would be controls during the import process, in which presumably the video is converted to MPEG-2. The actual burn shouldn't be able to affect the lightness at all.

One possible solution, then, would be to convert the video to MPEG-2 with some other software, so that the import would essentially be a no-op.

 

[LitmusDragon]

I have quite a bit of experience in authoring DVDs-

Are you simply opening one DVD and burning it onto another disc?

Or, are you sourcing these from PC media files like AVIs or what have you?

This may sound obvious, but unless you are doing an apples to apples comparison the difference might be between the calibration of your monitor versus that of your TV set. It could be your monitor is calibrated better, which is drawing attention to flaws in the calibration of your TV set that you might not have otherwise noticed.

Unless you mean you can play the source DVD and the destination DVD on the same monitor and see the difference, then it's probably a video conversion issue.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I don't know if it's related, but with my Mother's & Sister's DVD players, their smoking (and resulting smokey film on the optical lens) caused a darker and visually dirtier picture upon playback.

I was able to clean one of the units' lens once with good results.

 

[farmkid]

I'm afraid PP3 doesn't seem to have much in the way of controls. It just imports the video file, then burns it. You can combine files and split or edit in other ways, but you can't change the color/brightness settings.This is the only DVD burning software I've ever used, so that's why I asked if it's a common problem or not. Would other programs give better results?

Most likely, yes. I've used several video editing/DVD authoring programs over the years, and I've never seen one that has no picture adjustment features at all. You might try what Lindley suggests and find another program to convert the files to DVD-compliant MPEG-2 streams first, but that still might not work. Some programs (especially older or cheaper ones) can't recognize whether or not a video file needs to be converted and will transcode everything, whether it needs it or not. You're probably just better off getting a new program. Videohelp has a good list of programs for doing just about anything you want with video. You should be able to find something that will fit your needs there.