Analyzing Micomsoft's Histogram Levels

I decided to look at Micomsoft's histogram using VirtualDub. I should have really done this sooner for the reviews but if I am being honest, I only really found out about how useful this could be yesterday.

In video capture terms, a histogram basically tells us how well the default driver is getting to our 16-235 levels and identifies any clipping. If we see any red, this means that the capture device is clipping those values and it's bad.

Let's start out with the basic HDMI connection. The card should be able to do this easily. The PS3 is configured to output Full range (0-255) and the driver has been configured to accept 0-255 input (shrink option). Click to enlarge all pictures.

0-255 captured at 0-255

As we can see, there is no red and the histogram is perfect. Now let's see what happens if we change the driver to accept 16-235 content (bypass).

0-255 captured at 16-235

As expected, we enter clip city. Let's now set the PS3 to Limited range and see what happens.

16-235 captured at 16-235

This just confirms that bypass is only acceptable for limited range content. There is a very slight clip in the low range but it's nothing to care about.

That was digital, we expect it to be fine. The real tests come from analog signals. I only had Component at hand via my Wii but I'll try and add others soon.

First of all we need to crop out the sides just in case we get bad 0-16 values. Here is the result for Component video set to bypass in the driver.

Don't mind the weirdness of the Wii video. It's an issue with VirtualDub as you need to select preview for the histogram to work properly. The screenshot shows what I would consider heavy clipping in the low range. Let's see what setting the driver to shrink does.

No clipping can be seen what so ever. It does look like we are no longer hitting values near 16 or 235 but it's a good start to manually adjusting the Proc Amp.

Thanks to Kadano for testing VGA: http://imgur.com/a/CfwC4#3

Current VGA recommendation is Bypass at Brightness 140, Contrast 140 and Saturation 140.