Color saturation change using VLC
April 9, 2018 6:09 PM   Subscribe

Why does the color saturation change when playing certain videos using VLC?

When this happens the entire display goes blank and blinks a few times, then comes back with quite different color. Colors look more intense and generally brighter. Has also happened with a couple different streaming videos but much more often with VLC. The color change affects the entire computer not just the video window.

Generally dislike the effect as it usually looks blown out and cartoonish. Using the latest version of VLC on Windows 10. Been happening for maybe a year.
posted by aerotive to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)
 
Response by poster: Also, when the program is closed the display does the same blinking/blanking and colors go back to normal. Happens with maybe 20% of videos and that percentage is increasing.
posted by aerotive at 6:11 PM on April 9, 2018


Do you use any other software that manages your screen color settings, e.g. flux, to reduce eyestrain at night?
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 1:23 AM on April 10, 2018


I'd be concerned about your hardware or monitor being on the verge of failing, not VLC.
posted by kuanes at 4:43 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


the entire display goes blank and blinks a few times, then comes back with quite different color.

That sounds like behaviour I've seen when a graphics driver crashes and restarts, which Windows has allowed them to do without bringing down Windows itself since (iirc) Vista.

If it's happening more often when you're using VLC, that's plausibly because as a video player, VLC needs to push fairly extreme quantities of raw information through the graphics driver at a fairly high rate.

Happens with maybe 20% of videos and that percentage is increasing.

"That percentage is increasing" suggests some progressively worsening hardware effect to me. Is the heatsink on your graphics card perhaps getting choked with dust?
posted by flabdablet at 9:43 AM on April 10, 2018


Are you sure it's saturation being changed and not overall brightness? The latter might be gamma correction, the most common source of visual changes like you describe.

Is it only VLC or does it happen with other video sources too? Worth trying Windows' built in player, also maybe Youtube full screen.

VLC does have the ability to alter video while it's playing. I believe it all defaults to off, but you can check it yourself. The main dialog to check is Tools / Effects and Filters. Click to the Video Effects tab, then check all the subtabs for things like "Essential / Image adjust" and "Colors". You want every single effect and filter turned off.

You may also want to check Preferences / Video. Mine has "Accelerated video output" and "Use hardware YUV->RGB conversions" turned on. Those are good things, but you could try turning them off (or on) and see if it changes things.

(This advice based on me looking at VLC 2.2.4 on Windows 10.)
posted by Nelson at 10:36 AM on April 10, 2018


Windows graphics drivers (AMD and Nvidia and Intel, certainly) often have fancy settings for altering video saturation and etc. during video playback. If those settings are active, then they might “enhance” video saturation. Check the appropriate tool - usually hiding under right-click desktop or a taskbar tray icon for those settings.

VLC can alter saturation this way as well, but the full resolution switch implies that it’s likely the driver saying “video player detected, writing new LUT saturation levels”, since VLC just passes those saturation options to the video decoder rather than doing a full resolution change.
posted by crysflame at 6:04 PM on April 10, 2018


Best answer: You may also be seeing VLC 3.0+ on Windows 10 Fall Creator Update or later realizing that it’s playing back an HDR video, in which case somewhere in the Direct3d output plugin settings there should be a switch to turn off HDR playback. This is more likely to be the problem rather than my above driver thing, if the resolution changeover happens when you play or switch between certain videos rather than when *any* video is played. Try downloading VLC 2.2.5 “Weatherwax” and using it instead of VLC 3.x; if that sole step makes it stop, this is almost certainly the cause.
posted by crysflame at 6:07 PM on April 10, 2018


Response by poster: The HDR thing makes sense. Not sure it should be doing that as the TV that computer is connected is most definitely not an HDR one, it's over ten years old.
posted by aerotive at 3:07 PM on April 11, 2018


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