Washed out colors after export

[film-nerd]

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.

[MojoPixel]

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.

[Thomas Feiner]

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.

[matobo]

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]

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

[matobo]

"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.

[R Neil Haugen]

What I and Jim mention here is the same as practiced by all colorists. It's not opinion but physical reality.

You view anything in Premiere on a properly setup monitor system, and between the monitor and the scopes correct your material then export.

Guaranteed, it will be right on in any other calibrated properly setup system. Within any properly designed app. Period.

QuickTime, Safari and Chrome are apparently using the Apple scene-referred gamma rather than the display-referred gamma that has been the standard for all professional work. Which is why in those things look so different.

No colorist working professional delivery would use a system and practices as you are suggesting as there is no guarantee there that it matches squat.

So yea, Apple is giving you a tough choice. Play in their unique and intriguing if very small ball park, or in the one everyone else plays in.

Neil

[matobo]

Thanks Neil, but I'm still none the wiser. The practise I think I was suggesting above (ie having a separate domestic reference) is based on my 30 years as a supervising film editor on numerous landmark BBC/Discovery/NatGeo/WGBH international co-productions. But I'm happy to stand corrected - and that was then, and this is now 🙂

Anyway, I'm here to try and resolve a long-standing problem. Here's my use case for Vimeo-delivered content:

We shoot XAVC

Edit and grade in Prem Pro CC on iMac 5K Retinas. No external monitor.

Export to high bitrate H264 for Vimeo delivery (NB - not TV)

Resulting H264 always noticeably brighter, desaturated and with a flatter tone curve than what I'm seeing in Prem Pro, regardless of whatever monitor/tablet/device/streaming platform/computer/OS I view it on.

Problem: I just want the exported file to match what's appearing on my PP timeline screen.

I'd be most grateful if you'd post back your brief and specific advice for solving the problem I've outlined above.

Thanks in advance,

Ben.

[R Neil Haugen]

A simple fix to a complex problem with multiple causes. Right.

There is a thread on here, "Why does my media look darker". Search for it.

It's by staffers Carolyn Sears and color engineer Francis Crossman. First it explains the issues with some examples.

At the end, he supplies a couple LUTs. One to apply in the Export dialog (and of course you can make a preset that uses this) so that it mods the clip to look "proper" on a Mac Retina P3-Display screen.

Apply that, and you should get what you want. As the exported clip will appear on a P3-Display screen very close if not identical to as it did in Premiere.

But there are times to be careful what you ask for.

Being as you are now setting that exported media to the P3-Display color soace/gamma standards, on the other 90+% of screens out there well ... it won't look "correct" to you.

Unfortunately you can't have both.

Neil

[matobo]

Thanks mate - so exactly the same thread I linked to 5 messages above.

Sheesh. I wish I had as much time as you to chat about stuff.

[R Neil Haugen]

Aple ain't making it easy. And no one else is either.

You want a simple choice but there isn't one.

Can't do anything about that. 'Cept type fast.

Neil