Video Capture

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:52 pm

I was playing aroud with the Video Capture tonight after finally deciding to look at it. I noticed that while I am playing what I captured in EQ back, that the picture comes out kinda dark. I am wondering if thats just because I have WinEQ still running EQ at the time or if there is a setting for gamma on the video capture function I just don't know about.

Post by **Lax** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 1:14 am

Are you taking videos at night time in the game?

There isn't a setting for gamma, it should actually use the same gamma the game is because it captures the window exactly. You can try turning off Pre-Shrink and seeing if that helps with the darkness. In my testing, the video gamma was just fine, but this may be dependent on your video card

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 1:18 am

It's day-time in PoK... and Im using a Geforce 5200... and like I said, I replayed what i captured while EQ was still running so that may affect it somehow maybe.... but no, its not at nighttime.

Post by **Lax** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 9:08 am

Yeah, playback while playing EQ could affect it. I'm not positive there of course, but it would make sense considering the game does mess with gamma. How dark are we talking here? Without a video to look at I cant really tell if it's abnormally dark

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:48 am

I emailed a SS and VC taken one right after the other to you. Playback of the VC is using Windows Media Player

Post by **Lax** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 12:45 pm

Side by side, the brightness of the video and the screen capture are identical. Compare the spell bar and buff window, and it should be fairly clear this is the case. The game itself does appear dark in both the video and the screenshot, while the UI looks normal. This is probably due to the way DirectX is instructed to render the scene by the game. You should definitely try turning on dynamic lighting -- this slightly decreases the game perofrmance, BUT does wonders for image quality and richness in comparison with the vertex lighting (different from vertex shaders) that I assume is used when this option is disabled. Also, I believe the ScreenshotType=jpg should go in the [Defaults] section of eqclient.ini

Let me know if this helps

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 7:15 pm

well, I turned dynamic lighting on, and it did get a little brighter, but still darker then being blinded by a Black Reaver in CoM... is there a prefered DirectX that might be needed? I think I currently have DirectX9.0b

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 7:18 pm

NM, I guess I do have DirectX 9.0c

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 7:23 pm

tried with Dynamic Lighting always updating and vertex shaders tuened on, yet no change for me. So if your stummped, then Im not sure what else to do.

Post by **Lax** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 2:28 am

Really not sure. You can definitely ask on the EQ tech support forums why your screenshots have the world so dark but the UI is perfectly normal.

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 2:54 pm

Not sure if this matters or not... I've noticed when I log on a 2nd toon, WinEQ 2.07 will go dark on me for both windows until I start connecting to the server I want at which point it gets bright again. It also seems to do it when I log one of my characters off. and gets brighter wither when I log onto a different account or log off all the way. The video from the VC seems to be in that dark mode, so not sure what all is going on there. Maybe they are related somehow. Just a thought... haven't had time to talk to eq tech support yet, but plan on doing it as soon as I can.

Post by **Lax** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 6:00 pm

EQ has this bad habit of always changing the gamma setting. Which reminds me, another thing you can try is turning on the "Lock Gamma" option, in the General settings for EverQuest in WinEQ preferences.

I'm going to see about adding an actual gamma setting to WinEQ and/or Inner Space

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 1:32 am

Well, upon turning on the "Lock Gamma" option, EQ now shows as dark as the VC was showing. Used the NVidia desktop manager to increase Gamma for all of windows until EQ was bright again for me, tried the VC and Windows Media Player shows the VC playing as if no gamma correction of any kind was made. I don't mean to be a pain in the rear or anything, but getting the VC to work how I think it should be can help me enjoy those kills like my guild's first RZ kill.

As a side note, if VC is set to a smaller display then how I run the game (I run in 1600x1172 but VC is saved in 800x600) the video also is a little blurry.

Tis still a great product even if we can't figure out whats wrong with my VC ability... hehehe

Post by **Lax** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 8:49 am

Nothing at all is wrong with your video capture; the video capture is working perfectly... just like your screenshot, which has the exact same colors as the video. NVIDIA's desktop manager might set the gamma correction somewhere in the pipeline closer to the video card, after windows is already done with the image. Screenshots and subsequently the video capture use the image that Windows has and is being passed to the video card, so any 2D processing that the video card does after rendering and sending the final image to the video card, but before the actual display probably doesn't get shown in screenshots or video capture.

You may have to wait for my gamma setting

Any time you scale the picture to a different display ratio the video is going to be blurry. 800x600 is going to distort the image, because 1600/2 = 800, but 1172/2 = 586. If you try 800x586 for the video size, it will look much better.

eolewis · Post by **eolewis** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:51 pm

Just out of curiosity, is the VC of WinEQ 2.07 supposed tocapture screens outside of itself? I've noticed on a few VC I have from accidents where it also captures what I'm doing when I switch over to IE to surf the web.

As far as the SS and VC being dark, it does look like it's Window's Gamma setting that is being used and not the one in EQ or the NVidia desktop manager. Wish I knew a way to change it, though if your gamma setting will fix it, that would be kewl too.

I know, you probably getting tired of this poor fool, but hey, I'm not asking you to change the world... just help me see if I can change my world to make it a better place for me