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Help Horrible blue aliasing/artifacts in black areas during video playback

I watched videos on my dinc every night probably for over a year. There were zero problems with the video playback. It's not like this is a problem with ALL phones out there. I don't know if it's a pentile thing or something specific to the nexus or what. All I know is my dinc did not have this problem and the video quality is much better and unfortunately it's not something I can compromise on, but that's just me. Obviously not everyone watches a lot of videos in the dark, but I happen to and it's really annoying.

I think your missing my point...:) Did you always watch videos on your Dinc at max brightness??

Not asking you to compromise.. just throwing out a potential cause:) If your unhappy return the Nex there are plenty of other good phones available:)

Could also be a defective unit... maybe try exchanging before returning? Hope it works out... no matter which route you go :)
 
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I think your missing my point...:) Did you always watch videos on your Dinc at max brightness??

Not asking you to compromise.. just throwing out a potential cause:) If your unhappy return the Nex there are plenty of other good phones available:)

Yes I did, except when my wife complained about it :) Normally she'd already be asleep so I did use max brightness. And nothing like this was apparent. I can live with not-fully-black black, but this is different. It's nowhere near black. It's not like a deep black issue, it's some sort of blue-ish artifacting when not-quite-black is on the screen and moving. Hard to describe, but once you see it, you will know what I mean.
 
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I think your missing my point...:) Did you always watch videos on your Dinc at max brightness??

Not asking you to compromise.. just throwing out a potential cause:) If your unhappy return the Nex there are plenty of other good phones available:)

Could also be a defective unit... maybe try exchanging before returning? Hope it works out... no matter which route you go :)

I stand totally corrected. It may not be a software issue, but software CAN fix it (or work around it). I found an app called screen adjuster. I set it to various brightness levels (which overrides the auto-brightness in the video) and the blue stuff is there regardless of brightness.

However, bumping up the contrast DOES make the blue blocky stuff go away! YES! The blacks aren't quite as black when I do this, but I am totally ok with that. I'd rather that then the nasty blue aliasing that is apparent with normal contrast.

Ahh, this makes me happy. I'll tweak the contrast and post the optimal setting (lowest contrast setting that makes the blue stuff go away) as soon as I find it.
 
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I stand totally corrected. It may not be a software issue, but software CAN fix it (or work around it). I found an app called screen adjuster. I set it to various brightness levels (which overrides the auto-brightness in the video) and the blue stuff is there regardless of brightness.

Thanks... you just solved my auto max brightness video gripe:p
 
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I'll post this to the "known issues and solutions" thread, but here goes:

- for those of you who watch movies/videos in a dark environment, you may notice blue/blocky artifacts in dark parts of the video
- to work around this, download the free app named screen adjuster
- optimal contrast (lowest contrast that blocks go away) for 100% brightness is a contrast of ~7%. Could go a little lower, but then the blockiness starts to manifest

Anyway, for anyone like me that noticed this, try out this free app. I am more than happy to use this workaround and keep my Nexus than go to a locked down device.

I may still file a bug with Google/Samsung on this. Seems like it MIGHT be fixable in software - even if it's just a built in way in ICS to adjust contrast.
 
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Hmm, I actually couldn't see what OP was talking about in the sample vid. Even in a dark room, his hair looked totally black to me regardless of brightness setting. No blue hues to be found :thinking:. My G-Nex is totally stock at the moment too. I've passed several color blindness tests too, so it's not that :p.

I'm glad you found a fix for your problem though.
 
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Hmm, I actually couldn't see what OP was talking about in the sample vid. Even in a dark room, his hair looked totally black to me regardless of brightness setting. No blue hues to be found :thinking:. My G-Nex is totally stock at the moment too. I've passed several color blindness tests too, so it's not that :p.

I'm glad you found a fix for your problem though.

Hmm, weird. Others can see it too. Did I get a bum screen? Others are seeing it, too, though. So if it's a bad screen then it's not an isolated thing.
 
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I'll post this to the "known issues and solutions" thread, but here goes:

- for those of you who watch movies/videos in a dark environment, you may notice blue/blocky artifacts in dark parts of the video
- to work around this, download the free app named screen adjuster
- optimal contrast (lowest contrast that blocks go away) for 100% brightness is a contrast of ~7%. Could go a little lower, but then the blockiness starts to manifest

Anyway, for anyone like me that noticed this, try out this free app. I am more than happy to use this workaround and keep my Nexus than go to a locked down device.

I may still file a bug with Google/Samsung on this. Seems like it MIGHT be fixable in software - even if it's just a built in way in ICS to adjust contrast.

cool! glad you found something that fixes the symptom! tried it out and noticed no blueness.

Hmm, I actually couldn't see what OP was talking about in the sample vid. Even in a dark room, his hair looked totally black to me regardless of brightness setting. No blue hues to be found :thinking:. My G-Nex is totally stock at the moment too. I've passed several color blindness tests too, so it's not that :p.

I'm glad you found a fix for your problem though.

it's kinda subtle and you'll only see it if you really look for it. in camera-land, this is like pixel peeping to see how effective the sensor is at producing true black and not having a lot of noise.

I would kinda think that this is a minor flaw within pentile compared to true super amoled plus screens and retina displays.

see this:

Super AMOLED Plus vs Super AMOLED vs Retina Display

and this:

Galaxy S II and Galaxy S screens compared at the subpixel level (video) -- Engadget

if you look at the macro shots you can see that the blue sub-pixel actually appears to take a larger surface area than red/green, this could account for the blueness we are seeing.
 
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Ok so this is still really bothering me. the bump in contrast helps a bit for black areas with the blue splotches. but i am seeing nasty banding ( i think thats it) and what looks like slices of ghosting. its not in the same spot on the screen, and only visible in a dark room.during video playback. what IS this and what can I do about it? is.this just par for the course with amoled? :(
 
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I was going to exchange my phone tomorrow due to the horrible traveling blocks ruining videos. I thought I had a defective unit. Now at least I know I'm not alone in my irritation. Tried the screen adjuster app but it did not seen to work for me. I had other small gripes I could live with, for example going to the camera from the lock screen does not work 9 out of 10 times. I could live with that but I watch a few videos almost every evening. I can't believe after sitting on my upgrade since July waiting for the SGS2, then when that never came, the Nexus, that I have to exchange it for a Razr or Rezound. I keep tellng myself its just a phone I should not be this sad about it.
 
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Well I was ok with the other issues and would have been ok with this if I'd have had success with the contrast thing. But pretty much any dark scene is utter crap on this phone, I'm sorry to say. And it seems like out of focus areas show this line graph look to them. Is this what people refer to as banding? I honestly don't see how anyone can watch a darkish video on this phone without doing a "WTF??".

If anyone has a nexus and is in the bucks county, pa area and doesnt see this behavior in their phone, i'd live to see if people just dont notice it or if they just have a screen that works properly.
 
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I know I will get flamed by people who are in denial or who just love this device to the point of not caring about the video quality.

But folks, if you are reading this forum and you watch a lot of videos on your phone, do NOT buy it. I really hate to say it, but it's the God's honest truth. The combination of pentile and samoled do not make for a good video viewing experience.

Whether it's the nasty blue blockiness in dark scenes or the banding/artifacts evident in video playback, it's simply not a good looking display for watching videos in dark/low-light environments.

By all means, if you watch in environments with more ambient light, you may never notice or care. But I challenge any of you folks with Nexuses to watch a video (even with full brightness) in a dark room and NOT see the nasty blue blocky artifacts in dark parts of the video and general bad video quality.

I REALLY want to keep this phone. I honestly do. I am willing to deal with the bad radio signal. But I watch too much video on my phone to "live with" this. :( I love the look/feel of the phone. I love ICS. I love the other features, and honestly the battery life is GREAT compared to my dinc. I just can't live with the video quality.

I'm more than willing to accept that it's a BAD screen, but this is my 2nd gnex and plenty of other folks said they observe the same thing:

http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...ifacts-black-areas-during-video-playback.html

I want to be wrong. I want to keep this device. But I can't get past this horrible video quality. :( At this point, I'm pondering either returning the nexus (if I can to a store in PA, when I bought in CA - the CA CSR assured me I can) entirely and hoping my dinc survives until the mid-year offerings or just getting the rezound. I dislike sense, and I can't really say I love the look of the device nor the thickness. But if I can get GOOD quality video @ 720p from that sucker and I will get ICS soon, I guess I can deal. Who knows if it's going to get S-OFF. God I hope so if that's the way I go...VZW is my only carrier choice, so I have to decide if I want unlocked nexus goodness with craptastic video or a locked device like the rezound. :(

major *sigh* here. :(:(
 
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What video are you watching? I rarely ever watch videos on my phone but I'm just curious if it's something i'll notice when I do. (So what i'm saying is I want to watch the same video and see if I notice anything, i'm betting I won't)

~Skryre

Basically, anything that's set in a dark environment will show the problem (at least EVERY video I've watched has). Here's a sample video from the thread I mentioned which you can view for yourself. Again, watch in a dark/low-light room. I've observed the artifacts/issues with both full brightness as well as with the 2nd level brightness from the power app:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28717002/test.m4v

Like I said, I really want to be proven wrong, but EVERY video with dark parts I've view has this issue, and I'm just not going to sacrifice the ability to watch a movie/video/tv show without the crappy artifacts and banding/etc. But hey, for folks who don't watch much video on their phone, it's probably a non-issue. I happen to watch a lot of things in bed in a low-light situation and any dark video exhibits these problems. :cool:
 
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I see the blue blockiness that people on here are complaining about, but I don't believe it is a screen issue. It only seems to manifest when the guys head is close. When the pictures moves further away, the blacks seem perfect to me. I would think if the issue was the display itself, that blue blockiness would rear its head in other areas than just in video. I'm not an expert or anything, but it seems to me that this is a video codec issue. I'd be willing to bet that this issue can be fixed 100% through software.

This issue isn't the same as banding. Banding is basically when you can see a strip running vertically or horizontally across your screen like in this image.
banding.jpg

 
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I don't typically watch a whole lot of video on my phone. In the past I've watched replays of NHL games and the occasion Youtube video, but not much else. With this phone I've been viewing a lot more video though.

Maybe it is my eyes or something in my settings, but I just streamed about 8 minutes of Aeon Flux, Lord of the Rings The Two Towers and Limitless via NetFlix on my phone and they all played back really well. I wouldn't rank the video quality up there with my TV, but its a TV. Now I am in a dark room where the only other light is coming from my computer screens and I have the brightness set to auto, but it looked pretty nice to me. As I said, maybe it is just my eyes or that I don't really know what I am looking for (this is honestly one area I prefer to remain ignorant on personally).

Sorry it isn't living up to what you are looking for. I can say that I thought the Rezound also had an awesome screen, but that probably won't mean much from someone who still thinks the Nexus screen is really nice too. Good luck. I hope you find what you need.
 
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I've only watched some youtube HQ stuff and some videos I've made. It looks unbelieveable to me. We all see things differently and each of us has different tolerances when it comes to things like this. If you know you don't like what it is showing you and your post states you "want to like this phone" then you've already made the decision. Now follow through with it and get something you like ;)
 
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What brightness are you using? The auto brightness is a bit aggressive in putting the brightness down to practically 0, which will create banding. In dark environments it's really common for it to go down really low.

I keep mine at about half brightness and videos look great with no banding at all. It's not really noticeable at 30% or higher.
 
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