I'm tired of different video black levels which take down the quality of the video.

Some examples, depending on your brightness level you might or might not see the difference:

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If you can't see the differences in the black levels, use ColorPic and read the color values.

Dimming the full screen apparently isn't the solution, so, I'm looking for something to quickly change the brightness and contrast levels of YouTube videos on the fly. And if possible, automatically...

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6 Answers

I don't believe there is a way to change the brightness and contrast of YouTube videos while they are playing. Flash Player does not control the video brightness or contrast of video settings. This would first be determined when the video is produced, and after that through monitor/screen settings.

My only ideas are :

  • Uninstall and reinstall the Adobe Flash player, in the hope that something went wrong when it was updating itself.
  • Try another browser than the one you are using, to see if the Flash player implementation for your browser is broken on your computer.
  • Search for an update to your display driver on the manufacturer's website
  • Download the Youtube video and use another player than Youtube's

To adjust the monitor's brightness, DimScreen might be a freeware solution :

  • Change the brightness by selecting a `% in the tray menu.
  • Or use the hotkeys Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-.
  • Change hotkeys using Settings in the tray menu.
  • Doesn't work properly with video windows.
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I don't know if this is what you are looking for but Powerstrip maps hotkeys to change brightness. It's not free though.

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Not being able to do so directly in YouTube, I stream them through VLC player, and use the brightness control in that player.

Copy the YouTube video URL and paste into the VLC player's Media -> Open Network Stream network tab. As the video streams through VLC, you'll have all the graphics features associated with the player.

For nVidia cards, go into nVidia Control Panel and then down to "Video".

In the sub-menu "Adjust video color settings" first, in step "1. Select the display you would like to change", if you have more than one screen, select the screen you want to adjust.

Then, in step "2. How do you make the color adjustments", select the first (topmost) radio button named "With the video player settings". Then click Apply to make the settings stick.

In most cases you can now restart your web browser and the colors will now be back to normal. In some cases you might need to restart your computer to make any running video apps "get with the program" so to speak.

I hope this can be of some help =)

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Someone could write a userscript to do something like shown below, which raises black levels but reduces contrast:

(Layering a white area upon the youtube player)

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I have had the same problem of having ultra bright video when played on YouTube especially in full screen (720/1080p resolution). Windows Media Player and VLC both had the same problem so I looked into my graphic card settings and tweaked them a bit. Since then the issue has been fixed and I no longer have that issue.

I typed nvidia in the Windows 7 search box, selected Nvidia Control Panel, and finally asked Windows 7 to play videos based on my graphic card new settings (I had chosen just before). I ran a couple of online/offline tests and the problem was gone.

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