Bad quality in custom wallpapers.

[brychi]

I created a 1920 x 1080 video that looks really nice. When added into wallpaper engine the video looks blurry in the background. My monitor is 1920 x 1080 with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (i also set the wallpaper to that aspect ratio). Help?

[Biohazard]

Can you share a screenshot of how iti looks in WMP and Wallpaper Engine?

[Conspicuous Coyote]

I'm getting this issue as well.

https://i.gyazo.com/3284fcaea55ae0bbab281def4a165b42.jpg

Here's the exact same image full screen for two monitors. One is displaying the image using WMP, the other is displayed as a wallapaper background to a pretty simple visualizer. As you can easily see, the Wallpaper engine image is very low quality, it's as if the colour range is lower than it should be.

This happens with any wallpaper that can use a custom background, I've tested several wallapers and had the same results, with multiple background images.

[Biohazard]

Were any video settings changed in the options?

If this is just a common mp4 file then it's using the same video decoder in both applications, so it's strange there is anything different. Are you on a laptop? Then the difference may be that Wallpaper Engine is using the integrated GPU and you need to reset the video settings in the integrated GPU graphics panel.

[Conspicuous Coyote]

On a desktop, I've not changed any of the default settings, I've tried changing many of the default settings to no avail so I've reset them all to default for the time being.

I've also checked to make my driver settings are default as well. The issue started after a Wallpaper Engine update, not a driver update anyway.

Also the image is just a PNG. But I can confirm the issue persists with JPG either. I haven't tried using video files for backgrounds yet.

I hope a fix can be found, my desktop is honestly pretty damn ugly at the moment :C

[Biohazard]

Oh, wait this is an image? Then your problem is different from the OP, but it comes from Google messing up some monitor color profile thing in Chromium I'm afraid, not sure if their latest version fixes it already (I'm now presuming this is a web based audio visualizer).

If you have Google Chrome you could try opening the image in there to check if they fixed it, they released a new version not too long ago, I can't immediately integrate this into Wallpaper Engine though.

[Wulf]

I am having a similar issue, although using the web-page as background. I was using a coggle.it mindmap as my wallpaper, and it looked great. Today it became really blurry and I think the only thing I changed was that I unplugged a second monitor, maybe some issue with multiple monitors?

[Biohazard]

Yes, the issue is related to monitor color profiles. Could you try the same with Google Chrome I mentioned in the previous post to see if Google fixed it by now?

Also, if you open the start menu and type 'color management' I think it will take you to the right profiles, can you see anything you can change to stop it from converting the colors?

[Takeo S.]

I'm running into the same problem. I have made an MP4 Video with the correct codec. Everything looks fine when I'm watching the video (25 MB 2:14 minutes long) till I import it into the program. The colors are washed out and it looks like a really bad Gif version of the video. Is the video too big or too long?
https://i.gyazo.com/c92b39fa367f5e0558a2bb5758c60f51.jpg

And a Delete feature would be really nice.... my list is filled with reimports of my video

[Biohazard]

Wallpaper Engine uses the video decoder of your graphics card while VLC (or what you are using) may not. You have to open the Intel/Nvidia/AMD video settings and reset the settings to their defaults, they have a reset button there.

Where did you import it? If you just imported it locally into the browser, there is a 'remove' button on the right. If you created a full project with intention to upload it, you can delete it from the editor.

[Takeo S.]

I just deleted all the Folders because I haven't seen any options to delete them.

I completely reset all graphic cards and video settings from my Intel and NVidia graphic cards and also changed the the the main graphic card for the program (VLC is using the same card as Wallpaper Engine) but nothing works.

I'm using an HP OMEN Laptop https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01MRBW4QR/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Biohazard]

Are you sure your VLC uses hardware acceleration? Because in VLC I never got that to work on any system I owned in my life.

It should be using the Intel GPU by default then and if you change that and restart over Steam, it will revert to the integrated one anyway, only starting it directly (wallpaper32.exe) will not revert to the Intel GPU.

Intel's video settings are notorious for being wrong from my experience since it is frequently reported here. Did you click the (video) reset button there and fully restart Wallpaper Engine? It may not take effect otherwise.

[Takeo S.]

Restarting, resetting, changing settings and everything but nothing works. Guess I'll have to ask a friend so he can upload it for me

[Biohazard]

What if you just 'mess' with the video settings, i.e. change the hue and such, does it at least affect the image?

I think uploading is fine either way, others won't be affected by this unless it's something with the file. Did you try using various players? Maybe it just looks different in VLC, but in your web browser/WMP it looks like in Wallpaper Engine?

[Takeo S.]

The video looks as expected while using VLC, Browser (chrome), Media Player and more. Only in wallpaper Engine it has a very low quality and washed out colors. I also tried to upload it but it gives me an error "File not found". I guess the program has more than just one error on my end

[Biohazard]

Can you share a screenshot of the file not found message? I'm not sure I'm following since if you get that, it shouldn't even be able to play the video (but it depends on where that error comes from).

Can you share these two log files on www.pastebin.com:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\log.txt
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\bin\log.txt

They should show whether WE is able to use the default media player from Windows (media foundation) or if it has been using some other thirdparty module all this time. Perhaps that is why the colors are different.