Finally found the issue. I went through every conceivable brightness setting offered through Windows, my laptop settings, and Nvidia's control panel. Found mine in Nvidia Control Panel Under "Video" > "Adjust video color settings". I switched it back to "with video player settings" and now the white washout is completely gone. My laptop was naturally dark so I was trying to turn up brightness through whatever means I could find since the display itself was at 100%.

There are about 3 different places in Windows 10 where you can adjust your brightness through software means.

1st I'll list is the one I used to fix my issue above. There is another in the Nvidia control panel. "Display" > "Adjust Desktop color settings". Note the extra tabs. Not sure of the Radeon GUI but I'm sure they have something similar.

2nd Easiest is located in your Notification bar at the corner of your start menu. A sliding bar with a sun next to it.

3rd Bit more complex. In the control panel there is "Color Management". You can type that into your search bar and pull it up that way, as well. Within Color Management window, click on "Advanced" tab and click "Calibrate Display". It walks you through a special monitor calibration that is independent of the default windows one.

Since I've never seen any conglomerate for editing colors and brightness in Windows, I thought I would throw in this explanation. Please forgive my diatribe as I'll likely refer back to this.

Why does this setting only affect Opera GX video player? Nothing else, including any video players I have installed, was affected. Funky. Hope this helps others.

@leocg It's not just Youtube. It's all video players on Opera GX. I did try to turn on youtube dark mode and it still has the white overlay. I do not have this on any other browser, just this one.

@burnout426 I did a stand alone install and the problem still persists. I even selected a light theme off the bat. I've adjusted the gamma through windows itself and it hasn't helped. Only Opera GX is doing this. Every other browser is fine.

As you can see from the screenshots below, I do not have dark mode enabled and I still have the white overlay on all videos. Animated gifs are fine. Webm, Youtube and streaming services such as Netflix or Prime Video all have this white filter overlay.

When first installing, I did select dark mode (experimental) on. Would that have caused it?
I have tried turning all versions of dark mode off to test it. I went into "opera://flags" and changed the dark mode to "Enabled with selective inversion of non-image elements". Nothing seems to change it.

Any tips?

I'm using an GT72 2QE laptop
BIOS: E1781IMS Ver:3.10
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 19043) (19041.vb_release.191206-1406)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5700HQ CPU @ 2.70GHz
Memory: 24576MB RAM
Page File: 11907MB used, 15177MB available
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M

Finally found the issue. I went through every conceivable brightness setting offered through Windows, my laptop settings, and Nvidia's control panel. Found mine in Nvidia Control Panel Under "Video" > "Adjust video color settings". I switched it back to "with video player settings" and now the white washout is completely gone. My laptop was naturally dark so I was trying to turn up brightness through whatever means I could find since the display itself was at 100%.

There are about 3 different places in Windows 10 where you can adjust your brightness through software means.

1st I'll list is the one I used to fix my issue above. There is another in the Nvidia control panel. "Display" > "Adjust Desktop color settings". Note the extra tabs. Not sure of the Radeon GUI but I'm sure they have something similar.

2nd Easiest is located in your Notification bar at the corner of your start menu. A sliding bar with a sun next to it.

3rd Bit more complex. In the control panel there is "Color Management". You can type that into your search bar and pull it up that way, as well. Within Color Management window, click on "Advanced" tab and click "Calibrate Display". It walks you through a special monitor calibration that is independent of the default windows one.

Since I've never seen any conglomerate for editing colors and brightness in Windows, I thought I would throw in this explanation. Please forgive my diatribe as I'll likely refer back to this.

Why does this setting only affect Opera GX video player? Nothing else, including any video players I have installed, was affected. Funky. Hope this helps others.

@leocg It's not just Youtube. It's all video players on Opera GX. I did try to turn on youtube dark mode and it still has the white overlay. I do not have this on any other browser, just this one.

@burnout426 I did a stand alone install and the problem still persists. I even selected a light theme off the bat. I've adjusted the gamma through windows itself and it hasn't helped. Only Opera GX is doing this. Every other browser is fine.

@leocg Trees through the forest much? I don't care about dark mode anymore. I care about the browser not putting a blinding white overlay on all my videos.

As you can see from the screenshots below, I do not have dark mode enabled and I still have the white overlay on all videos. Animated gifs are fine. Webm, Youtube and streaming services such as Netflix or Prime Video all have this white filter overlay.

When first installing, I did select dark mode (experimental) on. Would that have caused it?
I have tried turning all versions of dark mode off to test it. I went into "opera://flags" and changed the dark mode to "Enabled with selective inversion of non-image elements". Nothing seems to change it.

Any tips?

I'm using an GT72 2QE laptop
BIOS: E1781IMS Ver:3.10
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 19043) (19041.vb_release.191206-1406)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5700HQ CPU @ 2.70GHz
Memory: 24576MB RAM
Page File: 11907MB used, 15177MB available
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M