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karthi3219

  • 6 days ago
  • Joined Aug 14, 2021
  • Hey folks,

    Decided to make a new thread just for that question.

    As I mentioned in another thread, I have a problematic laptop that uses Intel Iris Xe Graphics video card that dithers and gives me massive eye strain and headache on any screen (internal or external). Can't install ditherig because it's a work machine.

    The user @karthi3219 proposed to me to use a video capture card to capture the HDMI output of my laptop and to display the video on another PC/laptop that has a 'good' video card. I bought a gaming video capture card (AVerMedia LIVE Gamer ULTRA) to test that but it was with terrible quality and high latency. And I am using 1080p with 60 hz monitor. Now, I am thinking of building a PC and buying a more expensive PCIe capture card (from Magewell or Blackmagic). But before I burn more money trying to find a workaround to this issue, I want to confirm with you guys whether it's a good idea or not.

    Questions:

    1. Would such a setup work? Because in theory I am starting to think it shouldn't work - the video card capture device will capture the dithering, too. And the video will have the dithering effect. The difference would be one is HDMI signal, other is a video. So, maybe there would be a difference of how my eyes react to the video.

    2. Is it possible that dithering could downgrade the quality of the video? I suspect this might be the reason why I get such a bad video quality with my current video capture card.

    I will be very happy if @karthi3219 could chime in on the thread, too. Maybe he could give insight about his setup and how is the quality, latency and how about the dithering that is also being recorded. I am also tagging @Seagull since he has done some testing with video capture cards and has knowledge.

    Thank you for your time.

    • Trying it now via @karthi3219 settings. See how it goes, will know in an hour if its bad but for now feels ok. Seems to definetly be outputting sRGB. I use this page to test, not sure how scientific it is but https://webkit.org/blog-files/color-gamut/, still the chance it dithers the srgb for whatever reason.

      how do you feel about setting the dummy display to something other than 1920 x 1200, personal preference?

    • @ryans @karthi3219 Based on the response I have from the developer of SwitchResX there's no way to revert to 8-bit color (turn off dithering) with settings on the M1 MBP. Not SwitchResX "Millions of colors" setting and not sRGB. In fact, the "Millions of colors" setting is no longer available. And it's not possible to import color profiles from older MBPs.

      The video driver in the Apple silicon macs doesn't manage resolutions with 8 bit color depths (millions). There's no way to get anything else than 10 bit color depths (billions) on these Macs. It's not a limit in SwitchResX, it's the Apple way of doing things: implement new features and progressively remove previous ones. There's no way for any application to make this possible again sorry - it has to be done in the driver and only Apple can write drivers on these Macs

    • I've not had any diagonis. Also been to dozens of doctors and opticians. None have ever heard of PWM and most seem to be incapable, even the PhD's to understand the concept of flickering light, if it is above 100Hz.

      @karthi3219 thanks for the info. Though they do not seem to list anything in the change log that would affect this.

      Well, I have to test on my trusty lenovo X280 laptop if that is better for my eyes no. My Sony TV which does not have flickering, does not seem to bother me, so in that sense I think it is not my eyes, it is some change that happened. There is a Play store update in my Phone, so maybe Google updated something on the phone as well. Because it is really strange that suddenly 2 devices that I have used extensivitly for years or in the case of the phone, one year, they would suddenly start producing eye strain.

      I have no neck or spasm issues at all. No migraines or headaches. (I do have the about once a year migraine, but that can happen on holiday or during the night or at the golf course, so no connection to displays.)

    dev