Question / Help Does OBS Capture In-Game Brightness Levels? Major Brightness Issue - Need Help!

[Maverik770]

I am currently recording a play through series of Resident Evil Revelations 2 on my PC. Which as you may know is a horror game and is meant to be very dark. I have an extremely bright monitor so in most games I have to turn the Brightness level down quite a bit in the in-game settings to make blacks and shadows look correct on my monitor.

Needless to say in a game like RE: Revelations 2 I have to turn the in-game brightness almost all the way down to get it looking correct on my monitor. Then I record my session using OBS and everything seems to work great. The preview window on OBS looks exactly like my in-game view - the Brightness level and colors look perfect.

However, when I play back my raw .mkv file recorded using OBS it is extremely bright and the colors are all washed out. It's as if OBS is just completely ignoring my in-game Brightness settings and capturing the game at it's default Brightness level. Blacks look grey and colors are clearly washed out. It's almost as if it's capturing in a Limited Color Range but I have triple and quadruple checked to make sure everything is rendering and recording in Full Color Range.

I understand I can apply filters during post editing to turn the brightness back down but that is not ideal and I thought shouldn't be necessary. I haven't done a ton of recording over the years but I can't ever remember running into an issue like this. I thought my recordings from OBS always appeared correct with the right color range and brightness until now.

So I've begun to wonder if OBS captures in game recordings with the game's in-game Brightness setting included or does OBS not even recognize the in-game Brightness settings and just automatically records at default game brightness levels at all times? Honestly this issue is way less noticeable on the vast majority of games I've recorded. Resident Evil being so incredibly dark makes this issue immediately noticeable during playback of my recording files.

I have loaded my raw .mkv recordings into multiple different players such as Windows Movies, Pot Player, Windows Photos and VLC Player. They all playback my recordings way too bright with the exception of VLC Player. VLC Player appears to play my raw recordings back properly with nice blacks and no washed out colors... BUT after much playing around I actually proved that VLC Player is playing back in a Limited Color Range where as all of the other players (Windows Movies, Pot Player, Windows Photos) are actually rendering the raw recordings "correctly" with Full Color Range which results in the washed out colors and being way too bright.

The recordings look as if the in-game's Brightness level is at default and never adjusted... I don't get it, I'm stumped. I'm really hoping some of you OBS gurus can help me understand how OBS handles capturing in-game Brightness settings.

Should my recordings reflect the game's brightness levels or does OBS ignore in-game Brightness levels and just records at the game's default levels leaving you to adjust Brightness levels in post editing?

Thanks for any information anyone can provide on this! :D

 

[Unconquered]

No OBS doesn't capture those changes, have you tried applying a color correction filter to your Display/Game Capture? Just right click it, press Filters, add Color Correction, it'll give you all sorts of options like gamma and brightness, and you can see the changes in the preview screen

 

[Maverik770]

No OBS doesn't capture those changes, have you tried applying a color correction filter to your Display/Game Capture? Just right click it, press Filters, add Color Correction, it'll give you all sorts of options like gamma and brightness, and you can see the changes in the preview screen

Thank you so much for your reply and information!

Yes, I did notice those filters available and assumed that using them or adjusting brightness levels in post editing would work to resolve the brightness issues. But for some reason I always thought that OBS would capture the game exactly how it was rendered, including the in-game Brightness settings.

So just to clarify, OBS does NOT capture game video with your in-game Brightness levels included? OBS will capture the game at default Brightness levels and you will need to either apply a filter to the Scene within OBS to adjust brightness or do the same during post editing in your editing software?

If that is all accurate, then in your opinion which approach is better? Applying a Color Correction filter to the scene in OBS or during post editing in your editing software?

 

[Unconquered]

No problem,

I'm no expert, so I can't definitively tell you what OBS uses as it's baseline for brightness/contrast/etc. I just know that it doesn't respond to it being changed in your PC or game settings.

I really suppose it would depend on what your post editing software is and whether you feel the results are better with the OBS settings or the editing. I've always found the color correction settings to be sufficient for me - I'll just edit it with the game open and look at the preview until I get it where I want it. Although you may have a better idea of what you want changed post recording, I don't see any reason you couldn't use both.

Again I'm no expert, just based on my personal experience and troubleshooting :)

 

[Maverik770]

Awesome! Again, thank you so much for this information. It helps tremendously. I had begun to suspect that OBS was ignoring my in-game Brightness settings but couldn't find any threads or posts actually confirming that. I will play around with both the filters in OBS as well as my editing software to find the best configuration.

:D <3

 

[Unconquered]

Awesome, good luck :)

 

[carlmmii]

Just have to ask... have you checked your global OBS settings to make sure you're set to Full instead of Partial?

 

[koala]

Instead of juggling brightness levels up and down for game, capture, postprocessing and playback to accommodate your "extremely bright monitor", I suggest you simply reduce the brightness of your monitor and keep default brightness for everything else.

If you intend to produce material to be viewed by others, your most important question is not "does look right on my monitor?" but "does it look right on the monitors of my viewers?" If you adjust levels up and down in several parts of your machine, even adjusting the video footage, you cannot be sure how that video will actually look like on the monitors of your viewers. It might look good on your "extremely bright monitor" with varying levels of adjustment, but not on the monitors of your viewers with standard brightness level and no adjustments.

So reset any brightness adjustments you made within Windows, media players, games. Then grab some monitor calibration app and calibrate your monitor to a standard brightness suited for video postproduction. With this, you perceive video the same as all your viewers.

If you need more brightness for specific games after that, increase the brightness level of these games within these games' settings.

 

[Maverik770]

Instead of juggling brightness levels up and down for game, capture, postprocessing and playback to accommodate your "extremely bright monitor", I suggest you simply reduce the brightness of your monitor and keep default brightness for everything else.

If you intend to produce material to be viewed by others, your most important question is not "does look right on my monitor?" but "does it look right on the monitors of my viewers?" If you adjust levels up and down in several parts of your machine, even adjusting the video footage, you cannot be sure how that video will actually look like on the monitors of your viewers. It might look good on your "extremely bright monitor" with varying levels of adjustment, but not on the monitors of your viewers with standard brightness level and no adjustments.

So reset any brightness adjustments you made within Windows, media players, games. Then grab some monitor calibration app and calibrate your monitor to a standard brightness suited for video postproduction. With this, you perceive video the same as all your viewers.

If you need more brightness for specific games after that, increase the brightness level of these games within these games' settings.

Yep, this was essentially the conclusion I came to as well. What matters is how others will view it on Youtube. Not how it renders or records on my monitor. So the most important step is post editing and making sure post edits are made with other people's monitors in mind.

I have been using another monitor with a much more normal brightness and calibrated it to standard brightness as best as possible. I use it to test my playback video files, edits and final Youtube videos to get an idea of what will look best for others. Great advice!