Jason Dunn
09-18-2008, 08:05 PM
<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1221746524.usr1.jpg" border="1" /></p><p>I've been doing some encoding experiments lately (with some phenomenal software that I'm writing a review of), and I noticed something interesting: when I encoded to h.264 and WMV, I saw significant differences in the black levels between the two - but what I didn't realize what that the differences I was seeing were from the <span style="font-style: italic;">players</span>, not the files themselves. I'm a huge fan of <a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/" target="_blank">VLC Media Player</a>, but it has trouble with WMV files, so I view WMV files with Windows Media Player 11. Initially it looked like the WMV file had deeper black levels, and the h.264 file had lighter black levels, but once I played back the WMV file and the h2.64 file in VLC, I saw that it was really VLC. So what's the point here? If you want rich, deep black levels, use Windows Media Player whenever possible. VLC seems to maintain shadow details a bit better, so if you prefer that look, use VLC.</p>