Video gamma: why footage looks washed out or too dark
The same clip looks correctly exposed on a TV and washed out on a computer — blacks turn gray, whites turn flat. Most people suspect corruption first; in truth the gamma was interpreted wrong.
What gamma is: the brightness encoding rule
Human eyes are far more sensitive to changes in shadows than in highlights: the same physical brightness difference is obvious in the dark and invisible in the light. Gamma (the transfer function) is the encoding rule that exploits this — it allocates more code levels to shadows so that 8-bit precision looks even to the eye.
Video and images use different rules: HD video is encoded with the BT.709 transfer function, while computer displays and web images follow the sRGB gamma (about 2.2). Interpreting data under the wrong rule shifts mid-tones globally — video read as image gamma looks washed out; images read as video gamma look too dark.
Common root causes
The most frequent cause is a lost tag: a video tagged BT.709 loses its tag in some transcode or screenshot pipeline, the player interprets it as sRGB, mid-tones lift and blacks turn gray. HDR video on a normal monitor also reads as "washed out" — the PQ curve interpreted as SDR collapses contrast.
Display modes are the other source: a monitor on the wrong gamma preset, or with an eye-comfort / low-blue-light mode enabled, shifts brightness globally — that is not a video problem, and grading the video only makes it worse.
The troubleshooting order
Walk the chain: use the codec checker to inspect encoding and color parameters (HDR shows 10-bit/PQ traits, SDR shows 8-bit) and confirm what the file claims to be; then check the playback environment — try another player, another device. If the gray cast follows the file, it is a tagging problem; if it follows the display, it is a settings problem.
Tagging problems are fixed by re-encoding: one pass with correct parameters restores brightness, then compare blacks on footage with large shadows and skin tones — the two areas most sensitive to gamma. Display-side problems get fixed on the monitor, never in the video. Separating "file problem or display problem" is the core discipline.