Video looks different in BI UI than on camera UI

[ykket]

Hey folks,

I am sure it is just a setting that I am missing. When comparing one of my cameras at night from the Blue Iris web UI (and console) and the camera UI itself, I am noticing a difference in the quality/brightness (?). See below for a comparison. The camera is an IPC-HDW2231R-ZS. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Or if you think it's me and I am seeing things. Thanks

From Blue Iris:


From Camera (IPC-HDW2231R-ZS):

 

[hotbrass]

The BI pic to me is higher quality.... c'est la vie.

 

[ykket]

The BI pic to me is higher quality.... c'est la vie.

Really? Looks opposite to me. I used snipping tool to grab the full screen screenshots. I can barely see the shed in the BI but on the camera I can see it better. Again, it could just be me but I only noticed it today after having this set up for about a year.

 

[forzabiondo816]

It looks opposite to me too, usually the in-camera interface looks more contrasty than in Blue Iris. I always assumed it was just due to the compression and whenever I would go to playback recorded footage it looks way better than the streaming.

 

[IPcam Newb]

@ykket

I think it's a cleaner picture from BI in my opinion from the screenshots but It's crushing your blacks. Just look at the shed comparison. You can barely see it in the BI feed. Maybe that can be adjusted. Quality picture either way!

 

[bp2008]

Your camera UI is apparently outputting "RGB limited" video while Blue Iris is outputting "RGB full".

The "full" and "limited" terminology refers to the contrast range. You can read all about it online, but here are some quick details. "RGB full" uses 8-bit color channels with values in the range of 0-255 where black is 0 and white is 255. "RGB limited" uses the same 8-bit color channels, but does not use the darkest and lightest values, making it so that "black" is 16 and "white" is 235. "RGB limited" is extensively used in television and DVD/BD movie releases out of a concern that lower quality televisions would be unable to show extreme dark or light colors correctly. So the whole TV industry kind of got locked in to using "RGB limited" and trying to optimize everything for that.

Anyway, it is all a big, very complicated mess. There is almost never a setting you can flip to choose between RGB full and RGB limited to control conversion from one format to another. You are not even supposed to be aware this is a thing. Software is supposed to just always handle it correctly, but quite often it does not. It is made worse by the fact that a lot of screens are calibrated to handle "RGB full" or "RGB limited" (without any indication of which) or are miscalibrated so they are really somewhere in between. All SDR (non-HDR) PC monitors are supposed to handle "RGB full". Period. So in a way the camera's UI is simply wrong because it is outputting limited contrast on a full contrast screen. But in another way, it is doing the safe thing by making sure that even if your screen can't output the full contrast range, you will be able to visually discern the darkest and lightest parts of the video.