To summarize! The original problem had to do with videos having a washed out, low-contrast appearance when exported from Premiere (and uploaded to YouTube). Further along the road another issue came along: I am using an NVIDIA graphics card and even if I did manage to wiggle my way into uploading a video on YouTube that looked right, its appearance/gamma would always change when switching the dynamic range (16-235 or 0-255) setting from NVIDIA's control panel - ok, doesn't sound that strange does it, but keep in mind (almost all) other videos on YouTube ignored this NVIDIA setting altogether (looked good regardless of how it was set). So, something was wrong with my uploaded videos specifically. So after 150 cups of coffee and being to hell and back, I now have a partial solution/workaround - not an official, full-proof one unfortunately and not something that would work as part of anyones daily workflow, but something that still seems to work, when you absolutely need to get a video on YouTube without this issue. I tested this a dozen times to make sure I wasn't just imagining things. First, my system: Desktop PC. Windows 7 64-bit Premiere Pro CS5.5 NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti (Tested on Firefox and Chrome) Partial solution/workaround to exported videos looking washed out and having low-contrast: Following Neil's suggestion, using the QuickTime wrapper and Avid's (free) DNxHD codec may be worth a try in case your H.264 exports come out too bright - it gave me a darker export than H.264 and also has options for choosing between 709 and RGB should you need them. Also be sure to check out the YouTube transform LUT suggested by Chris in this thread. Solution/workaround to NVIDIA control panel's dynamic range setting changing the appearance/gamma of YouTube-uploaded videos (even though other videos on YouTube don't react to the setting): Apparently, this is a bug within YouTube algorithms. You need to let YouTube "fix" the video with its own tools, then undo that fix - this causes some part of the video headers or whatnot to change, and the NVIDIA bug is gone. There are at least a couple ways to do this - there may be other methods bu there goes: Method 1) If YouTube detects your video as shaky or in need of corrections it will ask you if you'd like to "enhance it" - it will show as a blue bar below when playing your newly uploaded video. Answering yes, a before-after preview comes up along with YouTube then asking if you want to apply the fix. Don't worry, answering yes will still give you an undo-button later. So answer yes and wait for it to process (it can take a while... My video was 4 minutes and it took over a half an hour). When it's complete (you can check progress by refreshing the screen) it will ask you if you'd like to keep the changes or undo. Then just undo - but you have to wait again?! (My guess is, it doesn't keep the version in between at all but instead, encodes it again from the original uploaded file - perhaps YouTube only ever keeps a) the original and b) the final/mashed-up version of the video but none of the versions in between, for saving some server space perhaps? Otherwise, it would just undo back to original in a few seconds right)... Furthermore, once it's all done - the bug (=NVIDIA setting not changing videos appearance) doesn't get fixed immediately! After the new encoding is done, it then takes another 5-30 minutes (could take longer if your video is long I guess) and then, BOOM! Something in the video headers perhaps (?) has changed or whatever, but it now works like all other videos on YouTube. I know this workaround sounds borderline ridiculous. I know. But this is the result of 5 days of newbie-research. I tested it a dozen times these past two days and I've found no other way to get my videos working properly on YouTube. One more notion about quality. You're thinking, am I sure that the undo process was lossless? Well, I'm not, not a 100%... But I took before-after screenshots of single frames into Photoshop (of the first-uploaded version and the one that was processed - then undoed) and zoomed in. So ok, they we're in fact not pixel-perfect-identical. BUT the more I looked at the pics, the more I came to the conclusion that it hadn't actually worsened in quality=been encoded twice (which would be very bad of course) but instead, it was probably encoded freshly from the very first, large video upload (which YouTube always safe-keeps on their servers for... Future's sake?) and the slight differences I was seeing, were only due to a fresh encode/compression done based on the original version? In fact - on some single frame screen captures I took (which were freezed in motion in the original video, so the algorithm did nothing during the duration of those frames for optimization purposes, therefore it was possible to capture a perfect before-after comparison), the quality seemed sharper and better (while on some, a little worse) on the version after the enhance-then-undo -process (I actually found a very distinct compression "block" artifact on one frame, which didn't exist on the frame after the enhance-then-undo -process... I know this is starting to sound quite OCD but I simply wanted to make sure this is a proper undo that we're doing) which would indicate that it has been encoded again from the very start - not on top of the old file. (Feel free to correct me on any of this though, if anyone knows more of the ins and outs of YouTubes internal system.) Method 2) If YouTube doesn't have any complaints about your newly uploaded video (shakiness, black bars...) you can't press yes to their question on enhancing it. You can try using the revert-button in the video editor menus to achieve the same thing - although keep in mind I didn't confirm method 2) so if you want to be sure that it actually works, it may be a good idea to make sure the "enhancement" you do is something you can notice (such as changing color temp) so that once you've reverted back from it, you can easily determine that it actually did go back to the original version. I've had some issues with reverting in the past (not going back to the original, unmodified version) which is why I'm pointing this out. Again, after doing this you have to wait 5-30 minutes (or more) before the NVIDIA fix suddenly starts to work. There may be other ways of letting YouTube correct the bug inside the video that I haven't thought of (such as, I don't know, adding subtitles or something?) I can't recall ever having to go through such a ridiculous workaround, but at the end of the day, this was the only way to get my video looking right on YouTube. And that's what I needed to do. I hope it helps someone out there. Needless to say, this is a temporary solution for anyone who just has to get a video uploaded on YouTube without this bug - this would be absolute madness as part of a daily workflow. So there. Took five days but the videos now upload as they should on YouTube. Phew.
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