Adjust the brightness on Video playback

Video playback is too dark on some files
Adjust the brightness. There are several ways to do that:

Graphics card

Most graphics card drivers allow you to adjust various picture properties such as Brightness, Contrast, Gamma and saturation.

You can access your graphics card control panel via:
Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced

Decoding filter

Most video decoding filters have an option to adjust the brightness. For example DivX, Xvid and ffdshow have such an option.

In Media Player Classic the properties of a filter can be accessed via:
MPC menu -> Play -> Filters -> [name of decoder]

In BSplayer the properties of a filter can be accessed via:
Right-click menu -> Options -> Filters -> [name of decoder]

In Windows Media Player it is not possible to access the properties of a filter.

In ZoomPlayer the properties of a filter can be accessed via:
Right-click menu -> Filter Properties -> [name of decoder]

Windows Media Player

1. In WMP, right-click on the title bar of the window or the Now Playing tab
2. In the context menu, select: View -> Enhancements -> Video Settings

Note: If you can't adjust the sliders in Video Settings, then you need to enable the option in WMP to use the video mixing rendering (VMR). To turn on VMR in WMP, do the following:

1. In WMP, right-click on the title bar of the window or the Now Playing tab
2. In the context menu, select: Tools -> Options
3. Click on the Performance tab.
4. Click on the Advanced button.
5. In the Video Acceleration area, enable Use video mixing renderer.
Q: Video playback is too bright or too dark on almost all files or the colors are all messed up
A:

This is probably caused by incorrect settings of your graphics card drivers. Some versions of the nVidia drivers are notorious for messing up their own settings.

You can access the graphics card control panel via: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced

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Go to your graphics card control panel. Reset all settings to their default values. Important settings are Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Gamma. You can access the control panel via: Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced.
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Go to your graphics card control panel. Select the "Color Correction" page. Select "All" in the dropdown box called "Apply color changes to:". Then click on the button called "Restore Defaults".
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Go to your graphics card control panel. Open the "video and television" options. (You need to be in the advanced view). Select "adjust video colour settings", then select "correction". Hit "do not use colour temperature correction".
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If resetting the settings does not help, then find a newer or an older version of the graphics drivers. Uninstall your current drivers, reboot, and install the older ones.

Another solution (read: workaround) is too change the output renderer in Media Player Classic. By default it uses the Overlay Mixer. If that gives you troubles, then change it to either VMR-7 or VMR-9 (renderless). You can find this option via: MPC Options -> Playback -> Output -> DirectShow Video

In Windows Media Player there also is an option that influences the renderer that is used. In the WMP menu go to Tools -> Options -> Performance -> Advanced. This brings up the video acceleration settings. There you can choose between 'Use overlays' and 'Use high quality mode' (VMR).

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