If you're adding a bit of contrast & saturation in PrPro, then exporting an H.264 to be viewed in QuickTime, you'll get this. Or at least most people will.
QuickTime is designed to "enhance" the video experience for the Stoopid. So it's built with internal controls that are rather dated by today's standards, as to what "video" signal should be. Including it expects that unless a clip includes specific info in the header to say it's "full dynamic range", it will assume the clip is 16-235 or perhaps 16-255, rather than 0-255. And sets the gamma for the clip a bit off from "modern" also as it used to be different in ye olde video tape days.
PrPro puts out full-range 0-255 media ... period. Apparently, it doesn't put the marker in to say so as that's rather a dated ... anachronistic ... form of media.
Hence, a PrPro H.264 output viewed in QuickTime will have the blacks (the 0 end of the scale) lifted to 16, and the whites at times dropped to 235 from 255 (pure white). This flattens contrast, muddies the darks, and kills saturation.
On some Nvidia GPU's you can go into the card's setting file, and as shown here, set the Video section to Full Dynamic range, and select the option that the Nvidia settings are supposed to prevail over video player settings. That works ... for some.
Also you might try using the DNxHD/R codecs within a QuickTime wrapper ... as shown here:
For some people, this gets around both the QuickTime and YouTube issues of dynamic range and gamma.
But past that ... QT is really one of the worst players you could use for really seeing the video. I'd highly recommend PotPlayer or VLC over QT.
Neil
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