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Question

Washed out colors after export

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 31, 2017
5 replies
39844 views

Greetings,

even after two days and about 50 cups of coffee, I cannot wrap my head around this issue - to be honest it's starting to drive me insane. So yes, it's the classic problem with videos coming out looking washed out and dull. I'm sure many of you have read this story a million times, so please bare with me.

What I'm working with is a music video - it is shot on 8mm film and scanned frame by frame as a JPG sequence. I'm working on a PC with an NVIDIA Graphics Card and treating the material in Premiere Pro CS5.5 as stop motion in a sense. It's working great and everything has been a breeze - so far.

The video is aimed first and foremost for YouTube and the most important thing is that it streams on YouTube in as high quality and as "universally" as possible across different platforms, be it mobile or desktop, mac or PC.

By now I have read a hundred different discussions about this gamma issue or whatever you'd like to call it, there are views that it has to do with QuickTime specifically or that it's a problem within the H.264 codec - some claim it has to do with YouTube algorithms and some suggest simply changing the NVIDIA settings. There are views which suggest using other software (other than Premiere or H.264) for exporting and/or encoding, some folks say that a "gamma tag" within the video file should be changed. Some then argue that such tags don't exist in the first place. Me? At this point I have no idea whatsoever which, if any, of these suggestions is correct - all I know is, after 48 hours of trying I haven't been able to fix the issue. Everything looks very wrong on YouTube.

As I have no idea whether my issue has to do with a software bug, a codec issue, system wide color settings or YouTube itself - I will just list some key information on how the issue exhibits itself in my situation. Hopefully it would help in narrowing it down:

* The footage/frames inside the Premiere project look exactly the same as the original JPG-scans. Perfect. But exporting from Premiere Pro causes my video to look drastically more washed out and dull compared to what I see in a) the original JPG images and b) inside Premiere

*If I re-import an exported file (be it any format) back onto my Premiere project - the colors do look correct. No mismatch whatsoever. I do not know what this means, if anything.

* I'm using DivX Media Player, VLC Media Player and YouTube for testing out the rendered videos - interesting fact: in terms of what I see on the final YouTube upload, it doesn't seem to matter if I use, for example, the H.264 (or H.264 for YouTube preset) codec, MPEG-4 codec, AVI or QuickTime Animation codec - they all appear completely (and identically) washed out and ruined on YouTube. BUT as an exception, the QuickTime Animation Codec gives me a file, which does show perfectly on VLC Media Player after rendering. This then just doesn't translate to YouTube (and QuickTime animation would give me a too huge of a file for upload anyways - the tests I performed with short clips). So, no matter what format I upload on there, the end result streaming on YouTube will always be washed out and dull. As far as I know, there are no problems with any other videos I view on there, I've been using this system for years and have never paid attention that any videos on YouTube having incorrect gamma, it's all looking solid - but everything I put on there looks distinctively washed out. Very dark grays turn medium grays etc, bright lights turn duller.

* There was a suggestion to expand the dynamic range from 16-265 to 0-255 from the NVIDIA control panel itself. This indeed fixes the issue at once - both for videos viewed on VLC or videos streamed on YouTube! But see, I'm not worried about whether I see correct colors on my screen as much as I'm worried about correcting them on the actual video and making it look right on YouTube across platforms. I don't want something which only looks ok on my system (or systems with NVIDIA cards which have non-default settings set up by 0,5% of users). Once I have released the music video to the public (a very critical thing in regard to timing, social media exposure etc.) I cannot go back at that point. I need to be sure it is as "standard" as possible, even though I of course realize that different systems will always show things on screen slightly differently, as there are so many factors at play of course - that's not what I'm worried about.

Thank you so very much for any insight you could shed on this. I can't believe that after weeks of editing the music video (not to mention everything that went into getting high quality digitized material out of my 8mm footage...) it all falls apart at the final stage of making a decent YouTube upload.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Dip & Dot

Participating Frequently

I eventually found my answer to this issue buried away in another Adobe bulletin. I've been trying for years to find a solution to the gamma shift on video exports from Prem Pro, when viewing in Quick Time Player and on Vimeo and YouTube etc. I've generally just lived with it, too busy to find a solution in a sea of disinformation (eg many of the posts above.)

The link is below. Read it all but, importantly, go to point 4. I used the Adobe-designed export LUT and my exported video files are much more in line with what I'm seeing/grading in Prem Pro. I've now added the Adobe LUT to my standard Vimeo export profile, and it's near as dammit WYSIWYG. The colour on the exported file is very slightly less saturated, but I can live with that - crucially, the gamma curve looks right.

It's not the most elegant of solutions - I'd much prefer a software switch in Prem Pro to say "I'm publishing exclusively to the web and not TV broadcast" - but it looks like the best WYSIWYG solution on offer from Adobe at the mo.

Ben.

The link:

"Why does my footage look darker in Premiere?" Color Q&A

R Neil Haugen

Legend

There's a common misconception that is leading you to this choice: you're assuming all other screens look like yours. There's a good chance you're on a newer Mac, from your comments.

Those "P3-Display" color space screens are what ... somewhere around 4-6% of screens in the US, a bit lower elsewhere probably 2-4% of screens worldwide.

The problem you're going to have is your "solution" looks better on your screen, but worse on the majority of screens.

So which is more important to you ... the small percentage of new Mac users or the large majority of older Macs and non-Macs?

The underlying problem is the display variance between newer Macs and everything else out there. And that no app actually does the auto-adjust thing between color spaces for media.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

Dip & Dot

Participating Frequently

"So which is more important to you ... the small percentage of new Mac users or the large majority of older Macs and non-Macs?"

Neither. I can't account for everyone else's hardware. I think you're conflating two different issues. I came across this thread because, like the OP, my exported file was not matching what I was finishing in PP. That is an issue for which I feel I've found a satisfactory solution. I'm now confident that what I grade is what appears in the finished file. It gives me confidence.

The other different issue you're highlighting is accounting for varying quality monitors with different colour spaces etc. That's a decades old issue - similar to the weighing up of a broadcast monitor vs domestic monitor and those lovely big speaker stacks in a dubbing theatre vs the tinny speakers on someone's TV.

Yes, I might consider having a "domestic" reference (ie lower quality monitor and speakers) as part of a QA process before sticking it on YouTube, but unless I have confidence in the exported file, it's impossible to find a baseline from which to fine tune a "domestic" reference.

Thomas Feiner

Participant

For those who have waded through the above solutions and still get a gamma-lifted washed out version of their uploaded material, maybe also look into the specifics of the web browser itself. I discovered my videos looked as expected on Firefox, but washed out and pale on Chrome. I work with print as well as video on a calibrated monitor. This fixed my issue:

In the address bar of Chrome write chrome://flags/ and in the search bar that will appear below, write colors and hit enter. Chrome will give you a so called “experiment” named “Force color profile”.

Checking the options included in the box at the right you see the “default”, which is currently selected and is responsible for the washed out colors, as well as some other options you can try. In my case the option that worked perfectly was scRGB linear (HDR where available). This option gave me the exact same colors I enjoy also with Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

Perhaps in your case some other option works better. You can try all of them; nothing to lose! Each time you change color options you need also to restart the browser, but it re-opens automatically intact with all your previous tabs, including the “flags” tab with the color options. Therefore, it is really easy to try everything.

MojoPixel

Participant

This "washed out" issue just reappeared (this month September 2017) in After Effects, too, when I output my h264 Quicktimes.

For that app, the fix that worked for me was looking at the Preferences of After Effects and changing the 'Preview' setting to "more accurate except cached preview". I assume "more accurate" would also work.

pcrecord

Participant

I found this that may help some users that find this page.

Adobe Premiere & Youtube - gamma/color shift FIX !! - YouTube

R Neil Haugen

Legend

A summary of the YouTube referenced above ... when YouTube first takes in H.264 uploads, they are AVC1 ... and in that form, they may not show correctly. If YouTube does a full re-encode, it will be to VP9, which will show correctly.

So ... when exporting from PrPro using ProRes (not available in PC's), the WMV format (near the bottom of the Format options, at least in PC's), or the WebM format (apparently available from a plugin from the link I'll give below) you start with a VP9 ... and therefore exporting for YouTube in a VP9 format may be the easiest fix for many.

The fnordware site he mentions has Mac & PC downloadable plug-ins for PrPro ... note, I've not downloaded nor tried these. This plugin supposedly adds the WebM format to PrPro's export dialog box Format listing.

WebM for Premiere

The YouTube also lists an alternative YouTube workflow ... noting that although most vids uploaded to YouTube are converted to VP9 and then show color & gamma correctly, some never are converted by YouTube, and always show "wrong". For those uploads starting out in H.264's AVC1, you can force YouTube to convert an already uploaded video by going to your YouTube channel's edit options, choosing 'retouch' for one of your videos, and then saving without even changing anything. Sometime in the next two to ten hours YouTube will re-encode it to VP9, and then it will display properly on most browsers.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

pcrecord

Participant

Just a little precision.

If you export in vp9 from premiere, you will have the right colors but youtube will encode it first in AVC.

In fact Youtube always use AVC first regardless of the uploaded format.

Also, I think the amount of time to get vp9 from youtube depends on the amount of subscribers and views on the channel.

So some popular youtubers may get it right away but small channels have to wait.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

"But see, I'm not worried about whether I see correct colors on my screen as much as I'm worried about correcting them on the actual video and making it look right on YouTube across platforms."

As Gandalf righteously says, "That way lies madness!"

I regularly talk with some colorists of note. They work on network broadcasts either the 'content' or commercials all the time. In commercials especially, the clients will be in their suite during the grade and obsessing about an exact re-creation of the colors of their branded logos and graphics. And a colorist better know how to do that. But ... they also note, not a single person on the planet is ever going to see those colors reproduced "correctly" once it gets broadcast. No one.

Only those working in "long-form" theatre-based work have some small guarantee that a certain percentage of the viewers will see that image pretty close to the way they graded it. Depending on how well the people running any individual theatre's calibration system work, of course.

What does matter is making it as close to broad-cast standard as you can, as once 'released into the wild' that is the only way to have it look "right" to the end-user: it looks the same as other b-cast type material does on their screen, no matter how badly their screen is messed up. As one colorist noted, he went to visit his grandma in Minnesota, and saw his program appear on her very-green TV. Yup, gramma's green TV ... that's Life for those who deliver content into the wild.

And all the user screens are messed up in different directions over which YOU have no control!

So make sure your setup is at least calibrated with a decent puck & software, if not done with full broadcast monitor specs. Test your output when possible on setups with better calibration than yours ... if you know anyone working in a tv station, or routinely delivering content successfully to such, see what your media looks like on their gear. Make sure you're creating proper stuff. And then, once your stuff matches other b-cast quality stuff, publish.

YouTube seems to do different things in different places. I've uploaded to that without any notable change in gamma and end-points when seen on my computer screens. Others have very different things appear, yes, with the blacks lifted from 0 to 16 ... but some the whites stay "up", and for some others, the whites are clearly dropped to 235. No clue how you get around the uploading service's weirdities.

VLC and PotPlayer are realistically the two computer video players that show the media most reliably outside of PrPro. And yes, with an Nvidia card, you NEED to set that control for video dynamic range to 0-255 "Full Range" and also set it to over-ride the video player with the video card settings. That's how you control what you produce.

I think I recall someone noting that one set worked for them, as an export setting. Trying to remember whether it was using the Quicktime format (wrapper) with GoPro Cineform as the codec, or just a DNxHD/R export. I've just used the H.264/YouTube preset.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

film-nerdAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the in-depth response Neil, it's very much appreciated.

I'd like to underline that I'm perfectly ok with videos not having identical appearance across platforms - a fact I've become painfully aware of in the past, when working with still photography for web. In this case, though, the difference is very drastic - way more so, than in most of the before-after pics I've seen in these gamma shift discussions, where it has mostly been about little nuances, ever so slightly different shadows or shifts in skin tone etc. Not the case here. The difference is noticeable. Deep, dark grays turn into medium, dull grays - vivid colors turn into seemingly lukewarm ones.

However, I'm happy to report that your tip on trying out a DNxHD export has already helped me! This is the first time I see an option to choose between 709 and RGB (why don't the other codecs - or YouTube - have any mention on this?!) - it's also the first time I managed to upload something on YouTube where the colors are not washed out when using NVIDIA's default, limited 16-235 range (although do, in turn, get slightly darker from the original, when using the correct 0-255 range).

So now I have been experimenting with 709 and RGB uploads and comparing them side by side on YouTube, using both the higher 0-255 range and the limited 16-235 range. Beside from my desktop PC (my main system) I have done tests on a laptop PC, a laptop Mac and a mobile device - all three of them appear to use the darker, 0-255 variant. It's beyond my comprehension, why my NVIDIA card (GeForce GTX 560 Ti) uses the 16-235 by default - all I know is, a heck of a lot of people have NVIDIA cards and for that reason, I cannot ignore it.

At this point, I did a few test renders to see if there'd be a workable best-of-both-worlds solution in between a too bright 16-235 version and a too dark in 0-255 one, since selecting 709 for export did give me a slightly darker export. I eventually found one, too - an ok-ish looking (not great, but ok) balance in between these two. BUT...

----> unfortunately, upon doing more tests and side by side comparisons, I suddenly noticed this:

When I loaded up a couple of "commercial" videos with similar contrasts and colors as my video, then switching the NVIDIA setting in between 16-235 and 0-255 - it changes nothing in them. Their colors always look just as they should, whichever setting is chosen! There's not even a slight difference in between them, no matter what I select in NVIDIA's control panel. This is exactly what I was aiming to do with my video - but I'm still getting a completely different look in those two dynamic range modes.

Again, my absolute main objective is a nice, standard, pro-level upload that behaves just like most other music videos on YouTube and doesn't care which dynamic range setting is selected in NVIDIA's control panel.

There still must be something wrong about the video files which I have exported and uploaded, that causes them to look completely off when viewed with NVIDIA's default setting of limited dynamic range. It makes no sense to me to export/upload a file that obviously has some inherent problem inside it that makes it differ from most "official" material on YouTube.

What could I be doing wrong here?

Do the video files contain some sort of color/gamma tags after all (which possibly should be removed altogether prior to any upload - thus letting YouTube make the choice on the gamma matter)?

film-nerdAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hey fellas,

Bill, no hijack-worries - it fits within the topic.

Neil, I actually found all that background very interesting. While music/audio is my main area of focus (music videos being my most recent exploration) I do still film photography as a hobby as well and am generally intrigued by the imperfections of film, impractical as it may be. Something quite different from these "imperfections" and glitches in the digital world it seems...

About the earlier, perhaps no use dwelling on that further but essentially I felt like you weren't listening when I was stressing the fact that only very few videos on YouTube seemed to suffer from the NVIDIA/YouTube thing. So I didn't just want to just press a button on my system and forget about it, when obviously there was something off. You used wordings like "if that gets your images ready for YouTube, then..." when my point all along was, I hadn't yet found any way to get anything on YouTube which didn't suffer from this problem. So it felt like you weren't actually listening to what I had to say there.

"If your only output needs are YouTube, and if you could make a quick & easy change to the graphics card settings such that your exports look dead-on after upload to YouTube on that same machine, that would be seem a good practical solution."

What I'm trying to say is that it's no use having the NVIDIA card on this or that setting, when I know that the problem is still there with my uploads - and not other music videos. Whether I shove it under the rug or not, it's there. My main concern has been this all along. It's not a practical solution for me to try and pretend the bug doesn't exist. Regardless of my screen calibration and whatnot, I just wanted to upload a video, which behaves similarly to other videos - even for people using NVIDIA hardware. I do not want to be that guy to first pass on a link aaand then starts the "just remember, before you play this you need to go to NVIDIA control panel and..." - not very professional.

About Lumetri - my Media Encoder folder was also missing all the Lumetri folders, so I assumed the same thing (=only CC versions having Lumetri tools) applied to Media Encoder as well - anyways, fast forwarding a little bit here:

So I started getting very frustrated after having tried to either fix or work around this issue for five straight days (with all sorts of other projects being delayed because of this) and I even tried uploading "from a different country" using a VPN proxy (desperate measures!) but luckily, I finally did find a workaround to the problem today, which actually works! I almost can't believe it at this point.

It's just the strangest thing and seems to indicate the "bug" is somewhere inside YouTubes algorithms - my workaround (although not one for those looking for a smooth, day-to-day workflow, unfortunately) has to do with cheating those algorithms a bit, but it seems to do the trick!

Anyway, thanks for all the insight and help here, it has pushed me forwards on this ridiculous godforsaken "joyrney" of mine (well at least I now know a tiny little bit more about the quirks of video files and the way these things can behave when uploading to internet) and I will now write my workaround below as a separate post.

(Neil, one more thing btw, I had already drafted the above text before seeing your latest response just now, about the joining of videos before uploading to YT -method. That's very interesting! For all I know it could have to do with this very same thing (which I'm about to write) somehow? Although I will note this: yesterday I also tried uploading a completely random GoPro .MOV shot by a relative of mine, which had nothing at all to do with Premiere... And it suffered from this same NVIDIA bug. Which, again, other videos on YT don't. This, combined with the fact that my girlfriends earlier video uploads suffering from this issue, which were done on a completely different Premiere setup but from the same city, got me thinking that the other possible fixes (Lumetri etc.) probably wouldn't have cut it for me in the end anyways. What you said about uploads turning out different depending on where they're uploaded from is interesting... Aaargh I really have no idea, so many variables at play...)

So, cutting to the chase. Sorry for the long post in advance... Drumroll please -->

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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