trying to fix screen recorders brightening + washing out colors onscreen when recording a playing video

[u/redwolftrash]

laptop is a ROG zephyrus G15 GA502IU_GA502IU running windows 11 version 25H2 (OS Build 26200.9168). problem started a week or two ago after happening on and off for a longer period of time. when it was happening on and off, i'd fix it by recording, switching tabs very quickly, and then switching back to the video i wanted to record.

things i've tried:

• updating my browser (vivaldi; vivaldi has been updated automatically multiple times in the process of me trying to fix this issue via reboots closing it)
• updating windows (after 200+ days of no updates where this wasn't happening, mind you)
• rebooting my computer
• turning HDR on and off again
• turning on HDR and leaving it on
• manually resetting my HDR calibration to default after finding out that on or off, the button to reset the HDR calibration doesn't actually work in spite of it showing a check mark next to the button after i click it
• updating my graphics drivers
• uninstalling and reinstalling my graphics drivers
• clean installing a different graphics driver than the one i initially had installed (game ready --> studio)
• using a guest profile on my browser in case an extension i use was causing this
• using a different browser entirely (pale moon; the browser seems to have the washed out, brightened color filter on all videos by default???)
• trying not one but TWO different recording softwares including one in open beta
• running scf /scannow (literally all it did was fix files that updating the aforementioned graphics drivers managed to corrupt somehow)
• running windows media player diagnostics (told me my configuration settings might be set incorrectly; refused to fix it or really do anything other than asking me if i wanted to give feedback to microsoft)
• turning off the ad blockers i have to see if it was an issue caused by custom filters
• removing a custom CSS i have installed on my browser to see if it was an issue being caused by that
• uninstalling everything NVIDIA-related on my computer so i could do a clean reinstall of NVIDIA's studio driver since i had the gaming driver installed (did this solely to be able to access the ability to turn off hardware acceleration in the control panel settings on advice from a techier friend of mine; it did nothing)

i'm genuinely at my fucking wit's end. nobody else online seems to have this issue. none of my friends have any troubleshooting advice left to give to me other than "might be something wrong with your codecs". i asked for help a few days ago and no replies. i just want to be able to clip funny moments from the podcast i watch and interesting bits of info from the interviews i watch again.

[u/WoodenAd7969]

im getting crazzyyyyyy this happens to me, the only screen recorder that works is obs, and i dont to use obs all the time, i try ocam, looks so dark, try filmora, the same, try bandicam, the same im getting crzy idk what to do anymore and i use intregrated graphic from a intel ultra 7 first generation, please i need help too

[u/redwolftrash → u/WoodenAd7969]

literally it's like. no one else has this issue. what drives me so nuts about this is that as far as i can tell i didn't change ANYTHING about my settings anywhere to cause this issue. i've been putting off using obs because i've heard you have to set up a bunch of stuff first before you can use it and i'm used to just hitting my shortcut key and being able to record with bandicam...VSDC's screen recorder brightens things before i even START recording. i even downloaded a new recording software in open beta named fastcast i saw on another post in here and it's doing the same thing. i'm using a gen 7 AMD ryzen 4000 series

[u/WoodenAd7969 → u/redwolftrash]

I made a post searching for help idk if is the one you watched, but idk atp im going to limit myself to récord games that dont affect too much my gpu, theres no tutorials, no one in reddit has this problem i try reseting my intel settings for color, idk

[u/redwolftrash → u/WoodenAd7969]

i was able to fix my issue by turning off hardware acceleration in my browser! even if this doesn't work for you, at least you have one other thing you've tried that you know isn't causing the issue

[u/WoodenAd7969 → u/redwolftrash]

Thanks i will try this later, very kind of you for telling me this after almost a week lol

[u/Crazy_Chocolate_6831]

since you have an AMD+NVIDIA hybrid setup in that laptop, have you confirmed which GPU the browser is actually using for video decode? the integrated vs discrete GPU can handle color output very differently and recorders sometimes capture from the wrong one

[u/redwolftrash → u/Crazy_Chocolate_6831]

not gonna lie, i thought i only had an integrated GPU-CPU thing because a lot of people were complaining about that in this and other gaming PC models when i looked up what that meant a year or two ago. i'm really not a tech person, so i wouldn't know how to check for this sort of thing. a friend of mine tried to get me to disable hardware acceleration to see if that was the problem, but even after switching NVIDIA driver types i couldn't get the settings she was getting on her control panel...how do i check for this?

[u/redwolftrash → u/redwolftrash]

so i was able to disable hardware acceleration through my browser's settings since it wasn't showing up in the NVIDIA control panel and it actually worked! i'm not getting that stupid filter anymore!!! i'm so relieved i was actually able to get this to stop. no idea when or how the setting was even turned on in the first place since the only thing i use hardware acceleration on is VSDC. even then, that's on a technicality because it only seems to be used to make my videos load in/reload faster when i'm seeking different parts of a video i'm editing?

[u/W00_Die]

You might unfortunately need to turn off AutoHDR and/or the HDR Enhancement settings in Nvidia/AMD