Plugin Levels

This plugin shows the normalized diagrams of distribution of levels of Y, R, G and B picture components. Plugin works in YUY2 and RGB24 formats and allows to objectively evaluate and regulate during preview and before recording such parameters of picture as brightness, contrast and levels of black and white.

For those who have a practice of work with such graphical editors as Photoshop, the meaning of what is shown on diagrams is probably obvious. But nevertheless, on horizontal axis it is placed the diagram of Y, R, G and B signal levels. Each component of each pixel may take the values from 0 to 255. At that, the vertical value shows the number of pixels having the value given on horizontal axis.

This is an example of levels distribution diagram for real picture.

And this is an example from generator of test signals. You may see on diagram that the amount of dark pixels is approximately equal to that of bright pixels (black and white areas). Nevertheless picture doesn't have true white (level «255») and black colors (level «0»).

In this case you may regulate brightness and contrast so that black become more black and white become more white.

Plugin BPP_Levels is just informative. All regulation you should do from an additional control panel of application.

Plugin doesn't use CPU resources while the dialog window is inactive but sufficiently loads CPU while preparing and showing the diagrams. That's why it is not recommended to open dialog wondow during recording. This will result in an additional CPU load and may cause drop of frames in recorded file.

Link to the plugin: BPP_Levels_v100.zip (10.4 kb)

03.06.05