Frustrating issues with brightness, hue and color sat rendering to DVD

D

David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
First off, I have read the sticky about best encoding practices.

I am using Vegas Pro 8.0c to edit and render out, and DVD Architect Studio 4.5 to burn my DVDs. I'm working from a HD 1080-24p timeline, progressive, with footage shot on an EX1. This is for a period/fantasy short called "The Silver Key".

Everything looks great on the LCD TV that I have attached to my PC as a preview monitor. Preview setting is "Best(Full)".

I render the footage out to DVD and when played on a DVD player attached to the LCD TV in my living room (as well as other DVD players with other TVs), it looks awful. Initially it looked much brighter, colors washed out, contrast low.

I have tried very hard to make the LCD TV on my editing deck display the played DVD the same way the TV in the living room displays it. But I still can't get a rendered and burned DVD to look on my TV screen the way it does on my preview monitor.

I know, I know -- all TVs will look different. I get that. And that's okay, because each TV is setup for a picture that looks good to the owner of that TV. My goal here is to get a picture that looks good to ME on MY TV.

In the beginning I was tweaking the render settings, but for the last several hundred burned test DVDs (not an exaggeration) I have just rendered as "NTSC DV Widescreen". But it's still not even close. It seems now my rendered DVD looks darker and oversaturated. I just can't get it right, and it's driving me NUTS!

What am I doing wrong here? Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!
 
Likely it's a levels issue. In vegas it's probably a "studio RGB" vs. "computer RGB" issue. You can use search, this topic is discussed rather frequently. There are a bunch of articles you can read from Glenn Chan

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/glennchan/levels_in_sony_vegas_part_one.htm
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/glennchan/levels_in_sony_vegas_part_two.htm
http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/v8color/v8color.htm
http://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/colorspaces/colorspaces.html


Short story is for most file types, in 8-bit mode vegas uses "Studio RGB" internally; this means Y' 16-235 is "mapped" to RGB 16-235 (black is at RGB 16,16,16, white at RGB 235,235,235) , and both undershoot and overshoot are kept. But LCD computer panels usually are calibrated so black is at RGB 0,0,0 , white at RGB 255,255,255 .

So if you are working internally with studio RGB, but have a computer RGB display, contrast will look low and picture will look milky. Conversely if you are working in computer RGB, but have monitor setup for studio RGB, picture will be very contrasty , black levels will look crushed, whites blown.

So 1st thing you should do is calibrate your display, regardless of what it is. Use calibration software like spyder and test blu-rays or dvd's

Next thing is setup vegas properly in the options . Both the display options (have color profile setup, and studio RGB checkbox) , and waveform monitor and scopes have a setup

Legal levels for DVD should be Y'16-235, overshoots & undershoots are fine . On a regular DVD/HDTV/TV setup, Y' 16 will mapped to black, Y' 235 will be mapped to white

Without knowing the specfics of your setup . I'm willing to bet if you play with the external display options (color profile setup and either check studio RGB on or off) ,that will probably make the difference. Another thing you can do is apply the computer RGB to studio RGB filter (or vice versa), temporarily
 
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Thanks for the reply PDR.

Everybody always says "Do a search". But the search function is SO unspecific, and there is SO much material here, that even doing a search leaves you with a mountain of threads and posts to sift through. It can be extremely daunting.

I understand about calibrating monitors and such. I don't think that's the issue here. The problem is, even with the monitor calibrated, the resulting DVD gives a drastically different result.

Say I burn a DVD, play it on my TV in the living room, and the colors look heavy on red. I come back to my computer desk, adjust my monitor so that the preview display from Vegas now also looks heavy on the red -- in other words, I've adjusted my monitor so it gives me the same image I see on my TV via the DVD. I then tweak the colors on the clip until they look good on my now-adjusted monitor. Burn another DVD, take it to the living room -- and it's still not right.

It's almost as if something in either Vegas or DVD Architect is trying to automatically 'correct' the white balance, saturation and contrast. But that can't be right, can it?
 
You have to be more specific, even post video samples

Is saturation the issue or is levels ?

The critical clues from your 1st post :

Initially it looked much brighter, colors washed out, contrast low....

It seems now my rendered DVD looks darker and oversaturated.
Click to expand...

This strongly suggests levels issue, like the computer vs. studio RGB issue



Does a test DVD look the same on your living room TV and the monitor/TV that you are using for vegas, when you attach a hardware dvd player to each ?

The problem is, even with the monitor calibrated, the resulting DVD gives a drastically different result.
Click to expand...

Are you comparing what you *think* you see in vegas' small preview window, or attached display vs. normal living room DVD setup ?
 
PDR said:
You have to be more specific, even post video samples
Click to expand...

How can I post samples of how a video looks on my living room TV??? I can post something rendered out from Vegas, but I'm not sure how that will help, since the problem may be in how DVD Architect handles it.

Is saturation the issue or is levels ?
Click to expand...

As I said, it seems to affect saturation, brightness and contrast -- all of which could be levels -- as well as color balance.

Does a test DVD look the same on your living room TV and the monitor/TV that you are using for vegas, when you attach a hardware dvd player to each ?
Click to expand...

It depends. If I haven't changed the color settings on the monitoring TV, then yes they do look similar. But in order to get the Vegas preview screen to look similar to what my living room TV displays, I have to change some of the monitoring TV's settings as well as adjusting the video card output settings via software. But as I said originally, this problem has occurred with at least 2 different TVs and 2 different DVD players.

Are you comparing what you *think* you see in vegas' small preview window, or attached display vs. normal living room DVD setup ?
Click to expand...

How would I know?? Everything I see is what I "think" I see, isn't it? I'm aware that things on a smaller screen can look sharper and more saturated, even darker, than the same video on a larger screen. But they don't usually drastically change colors. And the bottom line is I have to be able to come reasonably close to seeing on my monitoring TV the same image that I'll see on a TV playing the burned DVD. Otherwise, this is going to be impossible.
 
David W. Richardson said:
How can I post samples of how a video looks on my living room TV??? I can post something rendered out from Vegas, but I'm not sure how that will help, since the problem may be in how DVD Architect handles it.
Click to expand...

A TV hooked up to vegas is different than a TV hooked up to DVD player. In the latter, if you play a test calibration dvd, and you've adjusted the set accordingly it will always be close to being "correct". In the former case, the software settings and driver settings help to determine the output levels, and many things can go wrong. If you don't have it setup properly, what you *think* you see isn't necessarliy what vegas "sees" on the timeline.

More information helps, a rendered video sample, compared with a screenshot taken in vegas or a still with what you think it should look like. At least it's less vague than your current description, and there might be some key information that you've neglected to post. Your 1st post suggests a levels issue, and computer RGB vs. studio RGB, but something might have been lost in your description. You're describing a large change, but a large change to you might be a small change to someone else... Also please post your settings, project settings, render settings

There is often a disconnect between what you *think* you see and what vegas is seeing internally. If you've had a chance to search or read those articles, the reason is the underlying video is Y'CbCr , but you're viewing in RGB. There is a disconnect . You're not viewing the video in it's native colorspace directly. How you have Y'CbCr <=> RGB conversions setup will affect what you think you are seeing in vegas' preview (or any other software) . Also how you have vegas' display setup affects this, if you're using color management and icm color profiles - this can drastically change what you see (or think you see)


How does the exported footage look before DVDA ? in a media player (I'm assuming you've calibrated both display and graphics card levels correctly)

If you load up some xdcam footage, no filters or color adjustments, export using dvd architect profile, how does it look ? before DVDA ? After DVDA ?
 
A good start to finding the problem is to make sure your TV which is hooked up to your DVD player is properly calibrated. I hook my camera up to my TV , output color bars to it and adjust the TV. If you have never done this before read http://www.videouniversity.com/articles/color-bars-and-how-to-use-em
Once calibrated then play your DVD. If the colors and saturation don't look right then you can rule this part of the equation out and look elsewhere for the problem.
 
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Mark Williams said:
A good start to finding the problem is to make sure your TV which is hooked up to your DVD player is properly calibrated. I hook my camera up to my TV , output color bars to it and adjust the TV. If you have never done this before read http://www.videouniversity.com/articles/color-bars-and-how-to-use-em
Once calibrated then play your DVD. If the colors and saturation don't look right then you can rule this part of the equation out and look elsewhere for the problem.
Click to expand...

Well the problem is, the average person at home watching my DVD hasn't calibrated their TV to much of anything except their own personal viewing preferences. So I need the DVD to look at least decent on the typical TV, not one painstakingly tweaked to near perfection. Know what I mean?
 
I can post some examples showing the difference of what you see and what you get, typical of a vegas setup , because of studio RGB setup. But the onus should be on you to describe the problem more accurately and how you have things set up. Many people will see right off the bat that it's a simple PC/TV levels issue, but people can describe things differently. It might be that you have something completely different going on. There are many different configurations for vegas, and hardwaere. Providing the information requested will help

Very unlikely to be DVDA's fault, assuming you've rendered out using a compliant template out of vegas. DVDA only authors the assets. It's not re-encoding. Video should be passed through untouched if it's dvd compliant. So if the output is screwed up; it's screwed up before DVDA.
 
Well, I have tried to give you some help. It only takes about 5 minutes to calibrate your TV with the instructions I referenced. There is nothing "painstaking" about it. If you calibrate using color bars and the DVD looks good then it will also look good on others TV since the calibration is kind of a baseline for TVs. If it doesn't look good after calibration then the problem is back with your encoding and or down scaling process. One way to solve your problem is to rule out one thing at a time.

Although, I don't use Vegas (I use Edius, Tmpge and DVDlabpro) I experienced similar problems to yours in my early learning phase. It wasn't until I exported a lossless file to Tmpge4 for encoding and down scaling that I began to get excellent results. I have used my DVD masters to have thousands of DVDs manufactured/sold without one customer complaint.
 
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Well I do appreciate the help, I really do. But I don't really understand how me posting a sample is going to help. Whatever I post here is going to be seen by any of you through the 'filter' of your own system and monitor settings. You may look at it and say "It looks fine to me!" How will that help, if it continues to look different on a burned DVD played on a DVD player connected to a TV?

Even if I posted a clip that you could download and burn to a DVD yourself, how would that help? If your burned DVD looks great on your TV through your DVD player, that still doesn't solve my problem.

I guess my point in posting here was to ask if any of you had experienced anything similar. Have you? And if so, how did you resolve the problem?

Again, I appreciate all the help.
 
David W. Richardson said:
Well I do appreciate the help, I really do. But I don't really understand how me posting a sample is going to help. Whatever I post here is going to be seen by any of you through the 'filter' of your own system and monitor settings. You may look at it and say "It looks fine to me!" How will that help, if it continues to look different on a burned DVD played on a DVD player connected to a TV?

Even if I posted a clip that you could download and burn to a DVD yourself, how would that help? If your burned DVD looks great on your TV through your DVD player, that still doesn't solve my problem.

I guess my point in posting here was to ask if any of you had experienced anything similar. Have you? And if so, how did you resolve the problem?

Again, I appreciate all the help.
Click to expand...



As I've tried to explain eariler, and explained in those articles, you're dealing with different color spaces

By posting a rendered Y'CbCr DVD-video sample and comparing to a RGB still still of what you "think" it should look like it will help narrow down the problem as to how you're doing Y'CbCr<=> RGB conversions. I'm not examining the sample to see if it looks good or bad. The purpose is to see how you got from A to B, and is it a PC vs. TV levels issue. (use vegas file=> render as , render out a loop section and a png or tiff) , this is what vegas actually "sees" on the timeline (that's how vegas does it's RGB conversion under the settings you have chosen) . I can provide samples and test videos of this, and you will see the image is different if you've calibrated your PC monitor correctly. It's expected to be different, because a PC monitor should be using "computer RGB" levels .

Some people don't know that PC's are calibrated differently than regular TV's. Graphics cards have 2 types of settings, 1 for overlay, 1 for desktop, in addition to hardware monitor settings. Media players are a headache, because there are dozens of different combinations of renderers that will completely change the levels of the output image even though the underlying video is the same. So without knowing how you calibrated your setup, or how you have it adjusted, I wouldn't assume anything. How you have your display calibrated or setup doesn't affect how vegas does the actual Y'CbCr <=> RGB conversions. Internally, it might be "seeing" something completely different.

In vegas 8, 8-bit mode defaults to studio RGB for most input file types. In 32-bit mode, you don't have a choice in vegas 8, but in vegas 9 and above, you have "video levels" and "full levels" suboptions . Even something like this can drastically change what you get, so provide the information on settings requested

And if you've searched, your description is exactly what people describe, and the solution was mentioned eariler in my first post. Assmuing you have the monitor calibrated properly for a PC, the levels will display studio RGB levels in vegas, but the computer will be set to computer RGB levels. So what you *think* you are getting will have lower contrast than the actual MPEG2 export. The export will look darker, more saturated, perhaps black levels even crushed. The workaround is to apply a studio RGB => computer RGB preset temporarily, and disable it on export. This is also described in the articles. But I hate providing suggestions without confirming if that is the actual problem ... Hence the request for more information and at least a better description
 
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