Strange Colors in Video Playback

After attempting to play back some MPEG and DivX videos, I was getting strange colors in every program I was using, including VLC, Windows Media Player and mplayer.  Even tweaking the gamma, constrast, hue, brightness and every other setting I could find, the video still looked washed out and dark.  The only thing affected was video playback.  The desktop, web browsing and games all looked fine.

Finally, I figured out that in the NVidia control panel, there are seperate settings for video playback.  Somehow they had all been changed to bizzare values.  All it took was to return them to the default to fix the problem.  Very strange, as I know I didn’t touch any of these values and I had just reinstalled this system from scratch.  Anyway, hope this helps someone Googling this problem as I wasn’t able to find any useful information.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 7:27 pmand is filed under troubleshooting, windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Andy
    Cheers for this, I couldn't work out why DivX was fine but every other video program was weird colours!
  • hb.smiley
    Thanks, mmichie and npr! Would never had known where to look without your help. Unchecking overlays worked great.
  • rozon
    Thanks mate! It helped me straightaway fix weird colors in my video!
    Cheers!
  • zoetnet
    thnx - was driving me round the bend
  • Vlad
    My solution was while in the Windows Media Player, Go to Tools> Options...> Preferences, then uncheck the Use media mixing renderer. That completely fixed it.
  • Martin
    Thank you so much!
    That's a huge relief.
    It was driving me mad as well.
  • npr
    I found this while googling. My problem was that the email attachments with videos would bring out strange colors, but regular videos already stored on the computer would work ok.

    So, the basic idea is to solve the "overlay" problem. In Windows Media Player, Tools > Options > Performance > Advanced > Uncheck "Use video mixing render" and "use overlays". That should do it.
  • Pi
    Thanks a lot, this saved me a lot time!
  • I have no idea why the setting for videos changed suddenly, but thanks for the Googleness!
  • Jamie
    Thanks, it just changed all of the sudden and could not figure out what was going on. It was driving me nuts and it was great to find this before I started really messing around with the drivers etc.
  • Chris
    nice of you to think of others
  • videonaut
    ...also try turning off all graphics card acceleration...click apply....then turn it on again. worked for me! cheers
  • Steve
    I've got the same problem described in response #15 and I've found the only solution for me (I have a 6800GT with latest farceware drivers) is to right click desktop - settings - advanced - then simply click the nvidia tab. Everything goes back to normal then until I reboot and play another game. Very strange, I'm thinking it has to do with directshow not playing nice with ffdshow's latest build. I'm gonna check the overlay settings since some of you reported it helped. for those of you it doesn't, just try my trick... it might work.
  • Species
    I got exactly the same problem, I hate it allways having to restart my pc for just wanting to watch a video...

    I tried to fix it with the overlay thing, but most of the times it has no effect (depends if I have played a game or not). I allready tried several things (like downloading too many drivers) but I cant fix this, if someone finds a solution post here ;).
  • heliosxx
    So I've seen a similar problem, but I'm not sure it is fixed in the control panel.
    Basically if I play a full screen game (all 3d these days), if I then try to play a video it'll be super dark with only the brightest of red/orange showing through. It'll stay that way until reboot. I thought perhaps it was drivers, nope, or perhaps a game that didn't set the pallette back, but several games do this (I don't mean there are some that don't, I mean that I've tried several and all do the same)
    Any ideas?
  • eclps98
    u rock, thanks soo much, all my vids were looking horrible, everything is perfect now
  • Mike
    The porblem is not fixed on Vista 32 because they removed the Color Temperature from Control Panel so the video playback is still red for me. Anyone having the same issue (8600 GTS, Forceware 158.24)
  • Martin2
    Thanks! That really helped, couldn't NVIDIA fix this? How unprofessionnal...
  • heidbanger
    yep....thanks alot..solved a problem i`ve had for ages...
  • Sherwin
    Totally helped.
  • Erik
    Thanks a lot, really helped
  • Adrian
    Your the man. I was going insane trying to figure it out.
    Its under Video Overlay. I just set it to default. Thanks again bro.
  • Kenny60
    Thx alot for the help, was really nice of you to make this article the problem was driving me nuts, and I was happy to find a quick and easy solution to the problem.
  • porcho
    Thank you a lot! I had to format my PC, and the last driver for NVIDIA FX 5200 in XFX website comes with that problem. When googling for "nvidia strange colors", this post appears at the head of the list. :-)
    BTW, too bad the driver comes with such a dumb error...
  • haha
    holy crap thank you this was driving me insane...why would nvidia default to such a wacked out setting?!
  • Daniel
    Thanks alot! I couldn't figure out what I did wrong and was starting to rollback all my windows media thing...

    For people that need help... it should be in desktop properties > Setting > Advanced > overlay
  • Kyle
    So glad I found this - fixed the problem I've been having since I installed a new 7600GS a few days ago.

    Now videos don't have the washed-out, dark look.

    Thanks
  • Thanks, it did help me while googling :)
  • dave
    thanks for the solution, it was driving me crazy.
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