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I'm tired of different video black levels which take down the quality of the video.

Some examples, depending on your brightness level you might or might not see the difference:

enter image description here

enter image description here

If you can't see the differences in the black levels, use ColorPic and read the color values.


Dimming the full screen apparently isn't the solution, so, I'm looking for something to quickly change the brightness and contrast levels of YouTube videos on the fly. And if possible, automatically...

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    Geez, I hope somebody can answer this with a good tool.
    – Shinrai
    Feb 25, 2011 at 16:49

6 Answers 6

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I don't believe there is a way to change the brightness and contrast of YouTube videos while they are playing. Flash Player does not control the video brightness or contrast of video settings. This would first be determined when the video is produced, and after that through monitor/screen settings.

My only ideas are :

  • Uninstall and reinstall the Adobe Flash player, in the hope that something went wrong when it was updating itself.
  • Try another browser than the one you are using, to see if the Flash player implementation for your browser is broken on your computer.
  • Search for an update to your display driver on the manufacturer's website
  • Download the Youtube video and use another player than Youtube's

To adjust the monitor's brightness, DimScreen might be a freeware solution :

  • Change the brightness by selecting a `% in the tray menu.
  • Or use the hotkeys Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-.
  • Change hotkeys using Settings in the tray menu.
  • Doesn't work properly with video windows.
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  • +1 This does seems handy and let's me dim more than the built-in dimming. But apparently, this isn't the effect that I'm after so I've updated my question accordingly... Jun 16, 2011 at 14:25
  • I have added some more ideas.
    – harrymc
    Jun 16, 2011 at 18:19
  • @harrymc: This isn't a problem with my computer. Going for an offline player might be an option in the end. See this video in particular. In the first second, you can see that the borders of the video are of another black level than the surroundings, use ColorPic to see the values if your monitor is incorrectly configured. If I would download the video and correct the brightness and contrast settings I can get a much better result, but I'd rather be able to change it in place... Jun 16, 2011 at 18:43
  • As I belief it's some kind of setting that is being used for those videos, I'm also looking for a programmatic-ally solution so that I can implement a preset for these kind of videos and perhaps even detect it on-the-fly. See this article about black level differences to understand how some YouTube videos are incorrect for me. I doubt that a solution exists, but I'm just probing the community... Jun 16, 2011 at 18:52
  • @Tom Wijsman: I have downloaded your video and played it with VLC. It is full of segments where rectangular parts of the playing-area become black. This is probably just a bad recording - the video was recorded with software or hardware that were incorrectly used or unsuitable.
    – harrymc
    Jun 16, 2011 at 19:52
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I don't know if this is what you are looking for but Powerstrip maps hotkeys to change brightness. It's not free though.

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Not being able to do so directly in YouTube, I stream them through VLC player, and use the brightness control in that player.

Copy the YouTube video URL and paste into the VLC player's Media -> Open Network Stream network tab. As the video streams through VLC, you'll have all the graphics features associated with the player.

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For nVidia cards, go into nVidia Control Panel and then down to "Video".

In the sub-menu "Adjust video color settings" first, in step "1. Select the display you would like to change", if you have more than one screen, select the screen you want to adjust.

Then, in step "2. How do you make the color adjustments", select the first (topmost) radio button named "With the video player settings". Then click Apply to make the settings stick.

In most cases you can now restart your web browser and the colors will now be back to normal. In some cases you might need to restart your computer to make any running video apps "get with the program" so to speak.

I hope this can be of some help =)

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Someone could write a userscript to do something like shown below, which raises black levels but reduces contrast:

http://jsfiddle.net/fDLmK/1/ (Layering a white area upon the youtube player)

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I have had the same problem of having ultra bright video when played on YouTube especially in full screen (720/1080p resolution). Windows Media Player and VLC both had the same problem so I looked into my graphic card settings and tweaked them a bit. Since then the issue has been fixed and I no longer have that issue.

I typed nvidia in the Windows 7 search box, selected Nvidia Control Panel, and finally asked Windows 7 to play videos based on my graphic card new settings (I had chosen just before). I ran a couple of online/offline tests and the problem was gone.

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    No, because most videos are normal. Jul 5, 2011 at 9:54

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