Marco Menestrina's Tutorials - Do your Quicktime movies seem a little washed out?

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Do your Quicktime movies seem a little washed out?	4votes
May 05, 2008 12:56 AM	Views:1667 Favorited:0 Comments:20

	Filed Under: Colors, Exporting, FCP, Quicktime, Saturation
Tags: Colors, Exporting, FCP, Quicktime, Saturation



I had noticed that the Quicktime (H.264 @ 3500 kbps) movies I uploaded on ER looked a little different from the originals freshly exported from FCP. Shiv Kumar told me that Quicktime movies get slightly degraded in saturation and blacks richness when played on Windows systems. Since ER's servers run on Windows, that is exactly what happens. After some tests I came to the conclusion that by compensating on FCP by setting the saturation at 120 (from original 100) and the brightness at -11 (from original 0), you get a result pretty close to the one you intended to achieve. This is not 100% accurate, it's just the result of some tests I've been doing and it works fine for me: thats why I wanted to share it. If you have more accurate settings please correct me. Marco

Comments

Joe Shaw

May 07, 2008 03:04 AM

Thanks for this - yes, my videos were looking washed out. I'm going to play around with my settings. It's also worth noting that Quicktime has the option to add filters to the export including HSL, Gamma, RGB etc. This might be a better or more consistent way to regulate the output. (I have QT Pro, so I don't know if this option is available on the standard version).

Douglas Villalba

May 07, 2008 11:05 AM

I have notice that on my videos also.

I am afraid to do anything more to my videos because as it is I like to crutch the black and anymore and I may loose details on the original. I think that the problem is in the re compression.

I use H.264 as my compression, but maybe there is another way of doing it.

I like the resolution on this page, but I am still testing to see if I would direct a customer to see my demos here 'cause they don't really look as the should.

Marco Menestrina

May 07, 2008 05:18 PM

Douglas,
I think you should try anyway. Save the project as an alternative version ("Save as" instead of just "Save"), tweak it, export it, upload it and see how it is. Maybe the blacks will be really crushed to your eye... but detail may still be there: you never know with those 1s and 0s ahah.

Shiv Kumar

May 08, 2008 02:35 AM

Marco,
Thanks for the blog post and for the settings you've provided. I think it will help others. At least they can start somewhere and eventually arrive at settings that they like.

Douglas,

It's not the compression and the reason I'm saying this, is that when I play a Quick time Video on a PC (using Quick time) it looks totally washed out. Personally I believe this is intended by Apple (Buy MAC!!) :). But honestly, they look totally washed out (on Windows) and for the longest time I'd wonder why people even bothered to encode using the Quick time container until one of the members here sent me a screen shot of what they see and I was shocked to say the least. I sent Marco screen grabs of what I am seeing and I’m sure he was surprised as well.

FYI: We do bump up the levels and saturation a bit and after the experience with Marco, I'm wondering if we should simply have logic in our transcoding engine to say, "Hey, it's a Quick time container, bump, bump, bump". But here is what we found. Windows user who use the Quick time container already bump up the levels and colors because when they watch their videos on their machines they look washed out. So that theory went out the window.

I downloaded one of your original videos and run it on my machine. The difference is not that drastic (as compared to Marco’s video) but your original looks less “crushed” (blacks) than what I see on ExposureRoom.

Joe, to answer your question, no with Quicktime standard, you can only view videos, you can't do anything else.

Carl Adams

June 06, 2008 06:29 AM

I suspect that this is not the Quicktime container that is causing this, but more to do with the the Gamma, PCs & Macs use a totally different gamma setting. Also every monitor has variations between brands and going to be calibrated differently and tweaked by the end user. Just walk into a TV store and look at the difference with various TV's on display for example.

I think the best bet is to always test, check, and test again, like a web designer will check his or hers site on different browsers and machines. We have to think about, who our target audience is going to be, so I suppose 90% of the population use PC's (ooh I swore) and not Macs, so it's a good idea to boost the saturation and contrast a little.

I personally always keep my videos within the broadcast safe range in FCP (out of habit) and boost the saturation and contrast a little as viewing on TV's is a bit more washed out. This seems to work for me when viewed on a PC as well.

This is a good thread Marco and nicely pointed out. I'm sure this will help many members.

Adrian Frearson

June 13, 2008 04:26 AM

Hi
I had a similar problem with washed out quicktime exports, though the problem being evident in quicktime on my MBP. It seems that various codecs can cause different problems with the levels, when viewed in various browsers and or Quicktime itself. The worst culprits I've found have been, h.264 and ProRes.
I came across a post at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=114407&highlight=washed quicktime

"In Quicktime Pro--
-Open clip
-Window menu > Show Movie Properties
-Select "Video Track", then click "Visual Settings"
-Change Transparency (drop-down menu) value to "Composition."
-Save clip"
This seems to do the trick with keeping the playback correct in Safari and Quicktime. I don't know if this will solve the MAC to PC problem but will try it on my next upload.

One gotcha to this workaround is that this causes jittery playback.

Shiv Kumar

June 13, 2008 03:43 PM

Adrian,

That's interesting information.

I doubt that this will fix anything to do with the "From MAC to PC" issue simply because the same file (without any modifications) that Marco uploaded looks washed out for me while it doesn't for him.

The jittery playback is probably due to an over taxed CPU. When you set it to "composition" the player is compositing each frame as it is playing it back. That is to say that the video has not been re-encoded to composit the tracks, it's doing it at the time of playing the clip each time.

Joe Shaw

June 21, 2008 03:47 AM

I have also read that exporting as a motion JPEG, then exporting that from QT Pro will yield good results - some say better. Worth a shot. I'm going to have a go and I'll let you know.

Andrew Brinkhaus

June 22, 2008 08:57 PM

Also, exporting in QT Pro with a -3 brightness filter in the export settings should return your blacks to intended levels.

James Fletcher

July 08, 2008 02:43 PM

My 2-cents to this discussion.

A lot of people who deal in quicktimes edit on Final Cut Pro. FCP automatically tweaks the gamma of your picture when displaying your image on a computer monitor. It does this to approximate what your image would look like on a broadcast television monitor. This is great when your final product is television, but if you're editing for the web, then you are not being given a true picture of what your video will look like. Your crushed blacks and saturated colors are not so saturated once you've exported out of FCP. If you want to see this effect in action, open a clip in FCP and then find that same clip on your capture drive and open it in a quicktime viewer. When you compare the clips side by side, it's easy to see what happens.

I personally prefer working on an Avid. The Avid gives you the option of displaying your image uncorrected or displaying it as it would approximately appear on a television monitor. When I choose to display my image uncorrected, then I have no surprises when making quicktimes for the internet.

Steven Eder

July 08, 2008 08:26 PM

First time here. I just want to upload some videos I shot using a consumer camcorder onto youtube after doing simple edit. The videos look really bad: grainy, low resolution, and pixalated. Any suggestions? Youtube does not seem to have any really good info on this. I am using Adobe Premier Elements 3.0 on a Windows XP computer. I tried using Any Video Converter, but this seemed to make the video look worse after uploading to youtube. I see videos on the web that look like good quality and was wondering what I can use. Maybe some free software? Thanks for your input. I am a newbie with this video technology.

Marco Menestrina

July 08, 2008 09:05 PM

Simple: quit Youtube and use Exposureroom!

Adrian Frearson

July 09, 2008 09:16 AM

Steven, I second Marco's suggestion!

James,
The gamma settings for monitoring in FCP can be reset in the user preferences. I have exported edits from FCP many times and they have looked exactly as I wanted them to, it's just when encoding them to h.264, they sometimes appear very washed out. This might be hardware specific, because I tried this on different systems with varying results. The problem talked about here is twofold, the difference in display of these codecs between MAC/PC and also, the difference in levels when encoding to h.264.

Adrian

Tim Palmer-Benson

August 16, 2008 09:18 PM

Sorenson squeeze and gamma

Hi:
I have just joined and came across this topic. I have had a lot of problems too with this issue. I use Sorenson Squeeze 5 to post videos to my own website...www.video-vermont.com. Everytime I squeeze a video out of FCP, I have to boost the contrast and play with the gamma. A recent foliage side show I did has problems. Often I end up with too much black in an effort to boost the color. Anyone here working with Squeeze?

Tim

Shiv Kumar

August 16, 2008 09:26 PM

Tim,

This is not a Sorenson Squeeze issue but rather the Quicktime Container when played on a Windows Machine.

Have you tried Marco's settings? If so, what was the outcome of that?

If you have a video that you've posted to XR, here is what we can try and do (some tests to see if we can provide this control to the user):

We'll bump up the saturation for you. But we'll need an image of a certain frame that we can use to match it so we know what it should look like.

Tim Palmer-Benson

August 16, 2008 11:04 PM

Sorenson Squeeze

No, I haven't tried the settings mentioned here, but will certainly do so.
To,

Tim Palmer-Benson

August 22, 2008 09:16 AM

I'd like to be clear about this. I am exporting from FCP after carefully going through my clips to make sure that my Color Correction settings are set to the proper blacks and proper whites. I have no exclamation marks on my clips. Then I export to Quicktime as is as an FCP QuickTime file...no changes except DVD chapter markers. Then I am importing into Squeeze 5 and exporting an FLV VP6Pro at 1000 k/bits. I am using the Generic web settings as follows....contrast +19, Gamma +24, Brightness +23. This looks a bit washed out on a MAC but looks okay on Windows. What do you think? Movies encoded like this are on www.video-vermont.com

Shiv Kumar

August 22, 2008 02:51 PM

Tim not sure why you do two steps here. Exporting from FCP should be all you need to do and it's at this time that Marco suggests bumbping up the saturation and brightness.

Also note the the FLV container is not the issue. Only Quicktime is the issue.

FYI: 1,000Kbps is too low if you're planning on uploading to ExposureRoom. Use a minimum of 3,000kbps.

Tim Palmer-Benson

August 22, 2008 03:06 PM

Do I do this in Filters/3 way color correction? What about clipping?

John Gussman

September 03, 2008 03:51 PM

My Two-Cents

Just some comments on the subject. FCP edits in a gamma of 2.2 (video std) and QT on a Mac displays in a gamma of 1.8 (by default) and QT for Windows with a gamma of 2.2. QT on a Mac has a preference to set to match FCP color and it does most the time. But for H.264 Compressor conversions I found the setting does not seem to have an effect.

So what I do when I use Compressor to create an H.264 in either a QT wrapper or MPEG4 is to apply a gamma filter set to 1.2 for QT on the Mac. And leave as is for QT on Windows. It sucks to have two versions but Apple created this mess by not switching to a gamma of 2.2 when they introduced OSX. And all this can even be more complicated when an application displaying the work has managed color.

My two-cents.