Hey, wheatgrinder.
To be honest I have no idea what Nemesis’ issue is here. It could be hardware, software or picture quality related. I was not trying to diagnose his problem but instead use the process of elimination to test what is within Nemesis’ sphere of immediate control - which to me is the very picture being rendered . Also, while I am in full disclosure honesty mode - I was dead tired, half asleep even, last night/this morning when I wrote that post. I’m kind’a freaked out myself at the level of detail that spewed outta me there.
Back on point tough. High level this could be hardware or software related. If that’s the case then I must admit that I am not tech savvy enough to assist on this one. But Nemesis still came to the right place as there are a lot of very tech savvy folks on here. My “detailed flap poetic” was aiming at tackling the problem from a process of elimination POV - change what you can, what is within your control, and assess if that’s the problem. The quality of the picture seems to be controllable at this point. (That said this could be a setting issue too, though nothing comes to mind for me at the moment. Is Nemesis’ preview window set to an external monitor, perhaps?) I had something like this happen to me once. My final render looked fine on my editing machine’s monitor but dark on my laptop and even darker on my TV. It hinted of a calibration issue. But to get the look I was going for I used the filters to correct/compensate for my poorly calibrated test monitor. That's where my suggestion of changing his levels comes from - to see if it is the picture itself that is the problem. The test renders may not work at all (meaning it's not picture quality) and this could be a bigger issue (software and/or hardware) and if so you escalate - but at least you rule picture quality/monitor calibration out of the equation.
In the end I was just suggesting ways to troubleshoot and kind’a fix the picture quality issue (brightness) at the same time. I was not trying to diagnose the problem. My apologies if my approach and detail have caused any further confusion. Good luck Nemesis, you are in good hands on tis site.
Thanks.
Kosh