Washed-out video overlay -- Anyone seen this?

[shanehi]

Have any Radeon owners noticed that RealVideo videos are washed out? (I just installed this card, which replaced a Matrox G200.) Here's my info:

Radeon drivers version: 4.12.3056
Display Settings: 1024x768x32
DirectX 7.0a
Windows 98 SE
RealPlayer 8 Basic

When I play a .rm video, the colors are very washed out or muted. Areas that should be bright white are just grey.

Here's the weird part:

If I drag the RealPlayer window around, the colors revert to full brightness, but as soon as I stop moving the window, the colors dim! As long as the window is being moved around, it looks good. The moment I stop moving the window, it washes out.

I have played around with the brightness settings on the Color tab under Advanced Controls for the ATI drivers. Both the Desktop and Overlay brightness sliders are in the middle, default position. If I crank up the Overlay brightness slider, the video gets brighter, but it is still washed out -- blacks aren't black anymore, they are grey instead. Again, moving the RealPlayer window around makes the video look perfect, but it goes bad as soon as the window stops moving.

Has anyone else seen this? Could some of you Radeon owners please try this test and let me know if your video changes intensities if you move the RealPlayer window around?

Thanks in advance!

 

[jpprod]

Moving realplayer window disables overlay, it's re-enabled when you stop dragging the window. Sounds like you need to adjust contrast up or brightness down from overlay color controls.

 

[shanehi]

That's exactly what it looks like: when the window is being dragged, the Radeon's overlay settings are disabled or bypassed. The problem is that I have played with those brightness controls till my eyes ached, and none of the combinations of settings looks as good as when the window is dragged! I have tried adjusting the monitor, the Radeon and the brightness control in RealPlayer. The fact is that it looks better when the window is dragged!

Is there any way to permanently disable the Radeon's overlay filter? I looked at some registry settings (I don't remember the path, and I'm on my laptop right now), but they were long hex-looking monsters, and I became afraid, very afraid.

I'm disappointed to learn that the overlay video looks so poor. I was under the impression that the Radeon was one of the best in terms of video quality. I don't have a vid-in or an AIW card and I haven't tried a DVD yet (I bought it mainly for cheap 3D), but I do like to watch Computer Stew, and it looked better on my old Matrox G200!!

 

[jpprod]

Yep, Radeon is supposed to be among the best in overlay video quality, I believe it has higer-tap filtering than most other video cards. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any way to disable the overlay picture controls alltogether.

For realplayer, you can of course disable overlay by un-checking "use optimized video display" (or something like that) on Realplayer's preferences.

 

[shanehi]

jpprod,

Thanks for the tip on turning off the "optimized" video in RealPlayer. That does fix the washed out colors, but then of course the video picture is appears more pixelated when viewed at > 100%.

So I get to choose: washed out colors but smoother edges when magnified -OR- vibrant colors but pixelated video when magnified.

Of course, having vibrant colors with the optimized video would be nice. Maybe they'll fix it in a future driver release. If there is one...