Washed out encodes, tried different codecs.

[ashr]

Hi there,

I'm trying to encode a 4 minute music video to put up online on websites like youtube / vimeo and so on but I'm not having much luck with retaining the colours from the lossless file.

Here is my workflow. I am using a PC running Windows for this project:

1. Edited using Premiere Pro CS4. Opened the Project in After Effects CS4 and graded the picture to get the colours I wanted.

2. Exported out of After Effects as Quicktime mov using the Animation codec (I have Quicktime Pro installed on the PC as I'm used to the Quicktime based workflow on Macs). I figured this wouldn't give me much trouble as the Animation codec is lossless. It looks great when opened in Quicktime Player and in VLC. The colours are an accurate representation of the grade from After Effects.

3. From this point on, nothing seems to be going right. I have tried encoding using Quicktime player as H.264 mov files and Adobe Media Encoder to H.264 mp4 files (seems to be using MainConcept's H.264 implementation) and even WMV 9 out of Adobe Media Encoder. The resulting encodes look clean without any blocks but they all appear washed out and desaturated.

Searching the internet, I found that many people have trouble with Quicktime H.264 encodes on Macs looking washed out. On the other hand a lot of the same people also mentioned that their files looked fine on PCs.

However, I am already on a PC and this problem occurs across 2 different encoders and 3 different codecs. Now I'm suspecting the Quicktime Animation mov file. Maybe it just doesn't work as well on a PC as it does on Macs. I know from my limited experience with encoding that trial and error goes a long way in getting the desired results so I'm currently exporting the Quicktime Animation mov as Uncompressed AVI so I can start all over again with a slightly different source. This probably won't help but anything's worth a shot at this moment.

I'm kinda running short of time so I was hoping someone could help me out with this and stop me from running in circles. Thanks in advance.

Edit: Add XviD AVI encoded using Virtual Dub to the list.

 

[Demistate]

The only non-gamma shifting Quicktime Codec that I've been able to export out of Premiere Pro CS3 was BlackMagic 8-Bit Uncompressed. You'll have to download it from Black-Magic's website.

Mainconcept h.264 files out of CS3 and CS4 do not gamma shift, however if you use Quicktime Player to view them, you will be viewing a gamma shifted video, since Quicktime Player tries to make them gamma 1.8 for whatever reason.

Renaming the file the .3gpp will give you a correct gamma playback in Quicktime Player.

If you're on a windows based platform try using Media Player Classic for all your playback needs.

WMV Gamma shift is very slight if you have a low bitrate. I know that Windows Media player will shift the gamma darker to compensate for this, but it depends on which version of WMP you use to play it back.

 

[ashr]

Thanks for the reply but unfortunately, Mainconcept h.264 out of Adobe Media Encoder CS4 is no different over here. I am using Media Player Classic + ffdshow for playback. Here is an image with my results from different codecs. Clearly, there is a loss of saturation and contrast. What I do not know if this is simply how codecs work : throwing out colour information to compress.

The Uncompressed shot is 1280x720 scaled down to 640x360. The others are encoded at 640x360. However, increasing the resolution or bitrate doesn't help either. All postprocessing options in ffdshow are disabled.