ATI Radeon Darkness

[japentz]

Hello everyone,

I have a Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870 video card. 1GB vram

I have adjusted the video settings in the ATI CCC software

I installed this card at its rated very well, here at Toms. I wished to capture in game screen shots and video of starwars galaxies (however my problem is any game)

I use several types of software. I tried each one. XFire, Fraps and Replay

All have the same result. The video I record is much darker than what I am seeing in game and its not as crisp in quality.

What is up with this card? The picture does not look bad when I am in game?

I have brightness and contrast up.

I wish to record nice video. why cant I do so with a supposedly good card with 1GB of video RAM?

Thanks,
japentz

 

[flyinfinni]

If you are happy with the way it looks when you are playing, then the Card itself is doing things correctly. What you may need to do is adjust settings the the software, or even in windows, or possibly in-game settings. If things look proper to you when you are playing the game, then its the way the video is being captured, not the card I don't think.

 

[Dekasav]

Yup. If it looks right in-game, but looks wrong in a recording, it's definitely the software you're using.

 

[japentz]

I guess my question then is, why then if doing Alt PrintScrn is the picture dark as well. That is 4 different sofwares just to do a screen shot. So that makes it include Windows itself.

It's extremely weird. It is software somewhere . .but where?

for example, I turn up the bright ness and contrast in game. I will turn it up in game ridiculously high so it looks bad . .I will see if that helps.

Softwares used again are XFire Fraps Replay. (and just plain windows xp prof for screen shots) So that is 4 different softwares . all with the same result

Thing is i had a lousy Nvidia card and was able to record just as it looked on my screen. I could do a screen shot and it was not dark at all, nor was video.

the nvidia card was not as crisp so i "upgraded" the the highly rated ATI Radeon 4800 series.

What do you think on this? my video on another video card using the same software record, looked just like what I saw in game.

 

[flyinfinni]

Have you checked that you haven't turned your Monitor settings up really high so that your CCC and in-game settings are artificially low to give the same on screen view?

 

[japentz]

I did have them up a bit high, however, I lowered the monitor settings with the same result.

I brought the brightness down and did auto contrast. I reset the settings to default in game for graphics options.

Is there a way to better calibrate this?

thanks Flyin

 

[flyinfinni]

could it be the program you are using to view the images? it just seems really strange to me that they would look any different than the screen it was a picture of!

 

[japentz]

I am using Windows Media Player and also photo shop. Another friend of mine did some gorgeous pictures in the game . .I got the video card because of her. She said however, she had to brighten them up in photo shop. that the pictures always came out much darker than she saw them

Also, I have viewed them in Adobe Premier. Same result. I can demonstrate that the Radeon 4800 series and then I will do the same video, on another computer using an older NVidia Geforce and much older processor.

I have more ram in this current pc which is an AMD athlon 64 x2 Dual core 4600. I believe it runs at 2.4 gigahertz. I have 4 gig of ram in this one.

I have an older Athlon XP2600 with 2 gig of RAM and an older Geforce card. I will post a link to videos of the same scene between the two of them.

i will have to capture this in a bit. but I will post links with screen shots.

In fact, I still have old screen shots with the Geforce 8800 i replaced I will post the comparison here.

The darkness happend when I upgraded to the Radion 4800. It was odd.

 

[flyinfinni]

Interesting. Maybe its just gonna have to be a photoshop fix. Could be the programs don't like to play nice with the 4800 output.

 

[japentz]

Ok here is an example. Note the Older PC with GeForce 8400GS is darker but at least it is consistent.


Computer with problem
Athlon x64 x2 4600

ATI RADEON 4800 (I captured this using the in game screenshot function)

ATI RADEON 4800 (I captured this one with Ctrl PrintScrn and pasted to Photoshop, saved as jpg)

Computer (old) with GeForce8400GS (512 Vram)
AMD Athlon XP2600 1.5 Ghz, 2048 RAM

NVIDEA GEFORCE 8400GS (using in game screenshot function)

NVIDEA GEFORCE 8400GS (I captured this one with Ctrl PrintScrn and pasted to Photoshop, saved as jpg)

 

[flyinfinni]

Well, looks to me like the only one that is lighter is the In-game one with the 4800. Maybe its the in-game settings that are different?

 

[japentz]

i am trying to figure this one out. In game you can just hit PrintScrn and the picture in the screen shots folder looks as it does when I am in game.

Radeon 4780
If you do the ctrl printscrn/windows. it saves as darker.
if you do a screenshot in Xfire or Fraps it is also darker (F9) key takes it in game in those.

It is not consistent.


The older computer it is darker, but consistent. geforce
if I do screenshot in game, xfire, fraps or Ctrl Prinscrn they are the same.


I could make the in game settings darker . . . on the Radeon. I am not sure that would help.

Maybe will also check the SoE forums on this. I am not sure what I can do to compensate. I will keep you updated.

thanks for your help,
Judy

 

[flyinfinni]

One more question- what OS are you running on the computers? Are they both running with the same OS or different ones? Is it possible its got something to do with Win7 vs. WinXP or something of that sort? I'll try and take some screen caps both ways in a couple of games on my 5750's later and see what that gives me.

 

[japentz]

Both are running Windows XP professional SP3.

I posted a message in the soe forums. Again, my other friend has the same problem.

maybe it is game specific.

 

[flyinfinni]

it may be- which would just be the way that the game handles the ATI drivers/display output. Still strange though

 

[japentz]

All right . . . another thing i did not try is resetting both in game graphics to the default and the ATI CCC (settings) to their default. So it has to be a balance of settings I think. One thing I did not do is reset the ingame settings after swapping out for the new card.


Resetting both the CCC ATI software settings to the default and the in game graphic options to default; This evened up the brightness of the pictures. Both are the same brightness now . or much closer.


This is Ctrl Printscrn (windows)

This is from the Ingame screen shot capture

The game is STILL dark to me. So I wonder if when doing video I should just adjust the CCC software. I am going to experiment with that.

Thanks for helping so much to hash this out with me.


Judy

PS I will let you know what works. Its weird. I have never had such issues before.

 

[flyinfinni]

Sweet- those look much better to me (both look pretty much the same). That means, what was probably happening is that the screen capture program and Windows were looking at slightly different settings. Whatever the case- glad you could get it figured out.

 

[japentz]

Hey there, I have a setting in the CCC ATI software/control center that says brightness and contrast controlled by the application. However, i do not think that the ATI software IS working with the application.

If I turn up the settings in the game, no matter what video capture software I use, the image or video becomse dark again.

So I do not think the ATI driver and software are adapting to the in game SWG settings.

I need to figure out a work around for this. If I turn up the brightness in CCC, and uncheck use application settings, the in game picture does not brighten nor record a brighter screen shot or video.

I honestly do not think that ALL screen capture programs I have tried would do the exact same thing.

I think its a problem between SWG and the ATI software. Now to figure out how to compensate.

I need a work around for this or to write to ATI about their driver perhaps?

 

[flyinfinni]

What you probably need to do is adjust the brightness both places- keeping them as even as possible. Kinda odd, but yeah. Could be the application just doesn't interact with CCC like its supposed to.