H.264 export is desaturated (Not the Gamma-Shift Problem)

[FelixGER]

Hi,

I´m testing Premiere CS5.5 and have an issue with the H264 Blu Ray export.
The colors become desaturated and there´s a slight shift to red. This only affects H264 export.

Have a look:

That´s a screencap from the timeline:
http://www.imagebanana.com/view/ye9ppg26/timleine.jpg

That´s a cineform AVI. Looks exactly like the preview:
http://www.imagebanana.com/view/61syailg/cineform.jpg

And that´s the H264 MOV:
http://www.imagebanana.com/view/6oke1cva/m4v.jpg

All screencaps were made inside Premiere.
Is there a way to solve this ?

 

[Jim Simon]

Don't use the .mov container.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Hi,

I´m testing Premiere CS5.5 and have an issue with the H264 Blu Ray export.
The colors become desaturated and there´s a slight shift to red. This only affects H264 export.
......

All screencaps were made inside Premiere.
Is there a way to solve this ?

When I look at these images, on my Mac, using SeaMonkey or Safari, I find the 'h264' image to just be slightly 'magenta-ish'. and really so subtle that I had to flip back and for to convince myself that there was a difference.

I don't know what color space cineform uses, but I think H.264 uses YUV, or some variant, and Rec 709, unless there is some way to override this. And as such, the slight shift could be due to differences in color rendering relative to the color space of the codec.

For me and my Mac Laptop, matte finish 17", old school... there was virtually no difference...

I'm just trying to get an understanding of 'color space' as applied to 'video' and 'digital film'... and it seems that even though there was an attempt to 'standardize', for HD, it's not all that clear what the 'standard' is for 'digital' film... that is material that is created with the intention of displaying it on 'digital projectors', and 'computer displays'... the Rec 709 was for TV, and may be limiting for other display systems.

One think I ran across is that Premiere is supposedly working in RGB internally, and so the output rendering and codec selected will translate to the output color representation and gamut.

Even in the print world getting the monitor to match the resulting CMYK output was 'difficult' even with calibration equipment.

 

[iWiLL5]

I am struggling with the same problem. I find this color shift especially annoying because it totally ****s up the skin tones.

Is there any solution apart from not using the h.264 codec?

 

[PDR]

iWill5 - how are you taking those screenshots ? what software ? What you use can affect the appearance, even if the underlying video is the same

The difference is Rec.709 vs. Rec.601 coefficients

When you take a screenshot, Y'CbCr video (mpeg2 or h.264) is converted to RGB. The matrix coeffcients determine what the final image looks like in RGB (for monitor display)

e.g here is your "h.264" half converted as if it had used Rec.601 for RGB conversion, instead of Rec.709

(click to expand)





Note HD material is supposed to use Rec.709 by industry standard, and SD Rec.601 . This will affect how it appears on a DVD vs. blu-ray for example. Flash is completely different, there is a set of rules for whether or not you have color flags (VUI information), or the end user has hardware acceleration on/off