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sebastiank95713004
Participating Frequently
January 30, 2017
Question

Pixelation of red graphics during export

  • January 30, 2017
  • 17 replies
  • 17681 views

Hi,
I just encountered a strange effect that gives me a lot of headaches in the middle of a deadline. I've never seen this before:

I have a sequence with some graphics, and some of them have red in them. In the preview and in screenshots / single png frames, everything looks perfect, but when rendering, the exported clip has this strange pixelation at the red areas (see screenshot below: left is a single frame exported / right is screenshot from the exported sequence).


This happens when exporting in different compressed filetypes such as mp4, wmv etc. However it does NOT happen when exporting a large quicktime file. But when I recode it in Media Encoder, the problem returns.

I have documented this on two different workstations both running CC 2017.

the logo files are pngs, but the effect still happens when I save them as jpgs and place them into the sequence. Size of the logo does not matter, the only way to keep away the pixelation is if I use some other color than this red.

What kind of witchcraft is this? Can you help me? Thanks!

Dropbox - zzz_frame_red_pixelation.png

17 replies

A
Augusto29833887rd0h
Participant
March 3, 2025

Hi guys, does anybody solved this?
I'm having the same issues that you guys had years ago. The only way I see to avoid this is to not use small red elements at all. Bigger and simpler shapes tend to work ok. But small shapes and serif fonts in red color is really a nightmare. I also have a client that is all about red and we're struggling with any animations in Premiere and AE.

    riccardo.fissore
    riccardo.fissore
    Participant
    February 16, 2023

    I don't think that Exporting in Prores can be considered a solution because when you export in Prores is because you are creating a part of the project, the final product will most likely be recompressed in h264, for websites, youtube, ecc... and the problem will represent itself. Someone said that adding a black border should fix or adding noise should fix, if funny because my graphic has both a black border and very hard noise (style).

    Check it out

    SamMcFadden
    SamMcFadden
    Participating Frequently
    May 30, 2022

    having this prob too- white text is fine red text is terrible (red is corporate colour so cant change it)

    if i export as animated gif it looks perfect - but mp4 pixelated

    i even tried converting the gif to mp4 using Adobe CC Express but then it just pixelates

    D
    default5aqbl0pbpcij
    Participant
    October 9, 2020

    We were able to resolve the issue by exporting Prores 4444.

    D
    default5aqbl0pbpcij
    Participant
    October 9, 2020

    Correction: Prores 444 16bpc

    SamMcFadden
    SamMcFadden
    Participating Frequently
    May 30, 2022

    how do you use this Prores 444 in photoshop?

     

    jstrawn
    jstrawn
    Legend
    October 17, 2019

    Thank you all for your support and feedback. To be sure about what's going on here, we've run some tests that should help clarify things.

    See:
    ExportPngClipH264 - For this video, I put some text over a still frame image in Photoshop, flattened all layers, saved as PNG, then imported that into Pr 14.0 and exported using the H.264 format and Match Source - Hight bitrate preset.

    Also see:
    ExportPrTextH264 - For this video, I put a Pr Text Layer over a video image in the timeline and then exported using H.264 format and Match Source - Hight bitrate preset.

    The same pixelation problems are visible whether you are using Premiere Text Layers or burned in Text from Photoshop or elsewhere. We also tried some tests using other Adobe apps and some Non-Adobe apps and the same basic problems were evident in each case.

    So what we're seeing is compression artifacts. Most major compressed video codecs are perceptual. These codecs have to choose which details to preserve, and the green channel (which corresponds roughly with the Y channel) preserves much more detail than blues and reds. Perceptual codecs like H.264 have always been much worse on text than images, and particularly on text with no green channel.... like bright red text. (RGB 255,0,0)

    To learn more about why why Red is a problematic color for TVs and other video display devices, see this Video Production Stack Exchange article.

    B
    benjaminr84977267
    Inspiring
    October 17, 2019
    The pixelation seems to be the same even with rendering in prores 422 as well.
    jstrawn
    jstrawn
    Legend
    October 11, 2019

    The image attached by the Original Poster is no longer in that location, so I can't see what that bad result looks like. We'll run some tests of our own to see what's going on here and what might be done about it.

    B
    benjaminr84977267
    Inspiring
    October 12, 2019

    On page two at the bottom, someone has an example picture but here you go anyway.

    jstrawn
    jstrawn
    Legend
    October 14, 2019

    Thanks for the screenshots. We ran some simple tests for this using various Adobe and non-Adobe apps. Stay tuned for a more detailed response in the main thread soon.

    B
    benjaminr84977267
    Inspiring
    October 11, 2019

    Has this been fixed yet?

    The only thing that has fixed it for me has been rendering at 4K.

    But when I re-export it as 1080p it is still pixelated.

    TBH this is a bit ridiculous Adobe.

      ljonSFC
      ljonSFC
      Participant
      October 11, 2019
      I found a solution.. just have your client completely re-brand their company and make sure they don't use red! (success)
        K
        kejahm96956255
        Participant
        June 12, 2019

        Did anyone find a solution to this? Or is red just a lost cause? I just spent the better part of my day trying to resolve this issue, and to say I'm annoyed is an understatement.

          M
          Mr. Saarmets
          Participating Frequently
          June 13, 2019

          Looks like it's a global problem that must be somewhere in every codecs spine. It's not only red, blue seems even worse. We all thought we can fix it, but seems like it is not fixable by user. The only thing that bothers me, how Adobe managed to render their red logo without getting pixelated... If there is any Adobe related people here in Adobe forum, would you mind telling us?

            M
            Mr. Saarmets
            Participating Frequently
            May 30, 2019

            I am wondering how Adobe renders their videos to Youtube. I see pure Adobe red in the end of every video. Can you give us your workflow?

            Ann Bens
            Community Expert
            Ann BensCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            May 30, 2019

            Upload offending png to test and post screenshot export settings.

            M
            Mr. Saarmets
            Participating Frequently
            May 30, 2019

            I don't know how would it help, tho there are many previews at the beginning of this thread, but ok, here's the comparing. I also noticed that it's not about H264 codec, because Apple ProRes 422 did the same job.

            And it is very easy to replicate. Just add pure red text on darker image or footage and voila. Tried it on another computer as well, just to be sure, it's not machine related. Same same.

            StasStas12
            StasStas12
            Participant
            May 22, 2019

            The only solution I've found is to render an animation with Apple ProRes and then use Quicktime to convert and reduce the file size.

            UPD: and it doesn't work after all

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