@Henrique-GomesCoe

You're singing my tune. It's a #$%^ nuisance not having a clearer delineation between the video area and the edging.

I put in a request to Magix earlier on in the year to adjust the edging colour a bit.

@AAProds @johnebaker @Henrique-GomesCoe

While I would not dispute anyone's claims on this as every experience is personal, partly it must also come down to monitor differences and viewing lighting conditions, even eyesight.

If on the other hand you are talking about what is visible within the frame due to a shadowed area matching the surround, then I can concur that can be a pain.

Then again, as John has demonstrated, the colour may have to change depending on the colour that needs to be kept an eye on. It would also be a distraction for me personally if it was visible all the time. Would it also be present when using a Pip? An option to be able to switch such a thing on or off would be good.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . it must also come down to monitor differences and viewing lighting conditions, even eyesight . . . .

I agree with this statement, my monitors are colour recalibrated regularly (monthly) and I can see a significant difference between the active and inactive areas of the preview monitor.

How this looks on your monitor may be different, however if you download the image and measure the top/bottom bands and compare to the black background of the active area you see a difference in the values

. . . . the colour may have to change depending on the colour that needs to be kept an eye on.  . . . .

I would suggest you play with the colour background as I demonstrated, any distinctive colour will do, yellow, magenta, red etc.

I chose yellow as this is not a common colour in nature for the ground or sky.

. . . . . An option to be able to switch such a thing on or off would be good . . . . .

I suspect what you mean is, that this should be a preview monitor option rather than based on the image/video object, ie you can set the whole track baclground colour of a track to be displayed in the preview monitor in one easy step - a feature request!

The closest you can get to this is to use a solid colour image on track 1 extended to the length necessary and remove this after all editing is done.

John EB

Greetings,

I use this feature quite often; I find it especially useful with slideshows. I'm not sure if I've read all this post and answers correctly but ...

. . . . . An option to be able to switch such a thing on or off would be good . . . . .

I suspect what you mean is, that this should be a preview monitor option rather than based on the image/video object, ie you can set the whole track baclground colour of a track to be displayed in the preview monitor in one easy step

... there is already a "pseudo" option to turn the whole timeline background colour / image on or off ...

It is Christmas after all and I'm self inflictingly not firing on all cylinders so as I say, I may not be understanding this topic correctly so apologies if that's the case.

AndyW

ps - I can't really comment on the monitor situation as mine is somewhat ancient and I only have one of them. The only thing I can say is the preview screen when in the full working screen mode is nothing like when the preview screen in made full screen - if you see what I mean.

It took me ages to realise why some of my videos were too bright or over sharpened or both when played on my TV. I now check all my important edits on full screen preview, which is time consuming but ultimately satisfying.

If only I had room for 2 monitors, or should that be if only I was allowed to have 2 monitors 😊.

@johnebaker

Hi John.

I get pretty much the same outcome. The contrast is quite stark to my eyes. Then there are the boundary markers on the video clip itself. Even on my non HDR monitor, a change of two steps in the contrast ratio is visible until one gets quite close to 255 on all channels when dealing with black to white.

I calibrate about every three months or sooner if one screen seems to be off to the other. I know colour casts can creep in but my ability to spot those is not as good and I don't print stills that often. Viewing angle and type of monitor may also play apart. So many settings on a modern monitor. I turn things like Magic Angle off and have the monitor controls set to as neutral as I can get them. My identical monitors are angled at a slight V so turning my head from a central seating position keeps me at a tangent to them. The centre of the screens are at eye height. Ceiling lights point directly down and are either well away from the front of the screens or behind them. I have no windows or extraneous light sources hitting them. Yellow would be too distracting a background for me. I would prefer purple if I needed it but unsure if I could add a custom colour. I'm equally uncomfortable with the red boarder one gets with some screen recording apps.

I do sympathise with those that have problems and there should be an adjustment available for those that need it.

Ray.

The way I see it, it's got nothing to do with monitor settings/calibration. The problem is the outside/edging area just too similar to the jet-black of the video "window". You cannot selectively brighten the edging.

Andy, that works, after a fashion.

I did do a calibration and while it improved the edging slightly, it could be more. To see the edge reasonably clearly, I've got my screen brightness at max.

@me_again, @AAProds

Hi Andy

As Al.commented, 'that works, after a fashion'. If you add more items to the timeline after the 'apply to all', the new items do not automatically get the background colour.

I did some more digging to try and find what the original purpose of this 'effect' was supposed to be for, however there is no more information than - 'These options allow you to design the background of an image using a simple editor. You can use a color or an image or video file'.

John EB

@Henrique-GomesCoe @me_again @johnebaker @AAProds

Hi Al.

The way I see it, it's got nothing to do with monitor settings/calibration.

I don't disagree with that but it could be a difference in your physical monitors panel type or ambient light on the screen, eyesight, any number of things. We all know however much effort we put into our editing, the end viewer will never see what we see. I believe that to also be true about what we all see when editing on our own machines.

A long time ago (older than the file currently indicates) I made myself a tiff image in Photoshop with stepped increments from black to roughly mid grey. I made it to evaluate the amount of compression when converting to jpeg.

Not all the steps are equal, but instead are ones I can see a defined edge to between the one I am looking at and it's neighbour either side. So sometimes the increments are small and other times the steps starting at 000 and working their way upward are larger. The bands are also not always the same width. Just because I found that difficult to achieve. I don't get up as far as white as I run out of available space in the centre. Watch the colour channel numbers change as I move the cursor.

The file has to be opened in an image editor that can track the step changes as the cursor is moved closer to the centre. You can see whether the band is visible to each side of the screen. This was not a perfect solution but a rough guide to the ability of my monitors to produce graduation changes I could see. The file can also be opened in Snip and Sketch to almost full size.

As far as I can measure the difference between the outside of the preview monitor and the back of the frame is about here.

The file if you want to try it yourself, is here.

Ray.

@AAProds, @CubeAce

Hi Al, Ray

While doing some digging for this topic, I found this in the manual that would suggest HDR/16bit

16-BIT DEEP COLOR SUPPORT
The color depth support in Movie Studio expands available color depth in internal editing from 8-bit to 16-bit per color channel and can theoretically reach over 281 billion color nuances.

In order to display and transmit color depth correctly, all devices (TV, Blu-ray player) as well as the connection cable must support deep color.

Supported formats with deep color support in Movie Studio

Import

Video: AVC, HEVC

Photo: TGA, PSD, TIFF and RAW up to 16-bit

Export

Video: HEVC

John EB

@AAProds @Henrique-GomesCoe

@johnebaker

Hi John.

I read and understood that some time back. I think that section of the manual has not been updated for some time as I would think AV1 would also be capable as an export format if it is to compete with HEVC. Certainly nothing I have in my chain of components should be capable of acting on any of that although I can see differences when watching different content types if the website I view has the capability of streaming better images or video.

To answer your earlier question which I forgot to do.

I suspect what you mean is, that this should be a preview monitor option rather than based on the image/video object, i.e, you can set the whole track background colour of a track to be displayed in the preview monitor in one easy step - a feature request!

Not exactly because there are times if one is using any Pip content, there is a small chance of any of the edges at any point matching the image behind, making the Pip edge undefined and possibly blending in and out. I think the plug-in 'ink outline' which was really meant to make text more defined might work or some form of lined boarder or shadow in those instances would be useful.

@me_again

Hi Andy.

It took me ages to realise why some of my videos were too bright or over sharpened or both when played on my TV. I now check all my important edits on full screen preview, which is time consuming but ultimately satisfying.

Different makes and models of TVs can have a lot of additional processing applied. Some of which can be accessed and altered and some that cannot. Again, depending on the make and model. Pixel density is also often less on a TV than a lot of monitors as viewing distances tend to be further away. Peak nit brightness between the two devices may also be a factor.

Our TVs are too far away from my computer to calibrate them (different floors) and I have had to do the best I can by eye which because of the different ambient light situations in each room I have tended to do at night with room lights switched off. Whether that is a good strategy or not is debatable but the TVs tend to get used more at night than daytime and there is no lighting directed toward either TV in either room. The lounge tends to get the wall downlights used and the kitchen uses directed spot lights.

It is possible the TV is doing an amount of noise reduction and added sharpening after to make up for terrestrial transmission deficiencies on top of the controls that can be accessed. There was/is/maybe, a whole section on the Samsung site about what some of their TVs do or did do. I haven't visited that site for a long time.

Our Lounge TV is an old Sony 43" unit that is still going strong and since our service provider has started streaming, the majority of the available channels in proper HD it has been like we have bought a newer TV set. I don't think the resolution has changed that much from before but the compression is certainly a lot less.

The whole problem of use of colour and contrast is not one constrained to just this problem but use of our devices in general.

For me, seeing the the editable visible lines for volume, pan, transparency etc. is a more important issue. While such lines can have their colour changed, I then have to remember which control I switched to what colour. And you get two lines for volume, both of which work. I'm not sure if other curves have similar options as I don't often deal with those. Changing the background colour of clips on a given track can help.

Ray.