Home

Content

News

Help/FAQ

Search

Marco Menestrina
 

Do your Quicktime movies seem a little washed out?

 4.074.074.074.074.0713votes
May 05, 2008 12:56 AM  Views: 11654   Favorited: 0 Favorite It Comments: 36
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.

Loner Films    February 03, 2009 06:09 PM

SOLUTION: After rendering into a QuickTime/h.264 file, open it up in QuickTime and select “Show Movie Properties.” Highlight the video track then click on the “Visual Settings” tab. Towards the bottom left you should see “Transparency” with a drop-down box next to it. Select “Blend” from the menu then move the “Transparency Level” slider to 100%. Choose “Straight Alpha” from the same drop-down and close the properties window and finally “Save.”

Don't change brightness or colour!

Cherry Arnold    February 19, 2009 05:06 PM

Hi, this is a helpful thread (my client is indeed complaining about the washed out-look of my QT's on their PC's) but what I'm not clear on is where to make the settings changes.

Marco: "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."

ok, but where exactly do you set the saturation and brightness on a global sequence-wide level? The only way I know how is to lay down these filters on every clip. There's got to be a better way.

Thanks for any pointers.

   February 19, 2009 06:06 PM

Hi:
I do this in Sorenson Squeeze. It applies to the whole clip when I export and FCP QT file to an FLV. If you have Squeeze, let me know and I will send you the settings I use. Other than that there is a way to apply your Color Correction settings to multiple clips but I don't know what it is.

Tim

Juha Heiskanen    February 20, 2009 08:50 AM

set gamma

I use TMPGenc4 to decode quicktime H.264 and gamma setting -20..
Works fine !
Original cut Canopus NX 5 HD

Cherry Arnold    February 20, 2009 10:18 AM

ok, thanks for the tips, Tim and Juha - I will try several options and see what works best.

Cade Muhlig    March 19, 2009 03:15 PM

this was kinda mentioned above...
FCP
+HDV timeline
+export in prores
+compressed to h.264 in either sorenson anything else
=washed-out picture (it can look a little better in a player other than regular quicktime, such as embedded as flash in firefox, or cs4 media player)

BUT a better solution is:
FCP
+export in uncompressed hd
+then compress to h.264

i usually wouldn't recommend this, but the colors get messed up other wise. and this way you don't have to do unnecessary color correction

Dean Chaudhry    June 06, 2009 02:23 AM

Washes out-look

Thanks for all the comments and yes, I'm having the same issue with QT (washout). Can anyone tell me if there's a way to upload to XR without using QT? I own both a Mac and HP laptop. Some videos on XR look crystal clear?? How do they do it??

Dean Chaudhry    June 06, 2009 02:37 PM

Previous thread

In regards to the last thread, I'm referring to when I use the Mac. Also, I am shooting with a Sony HD.

Karel Bata    August 14, 2009 08:39 AM

We discussed this on the Adobe forum a while back. You may find that useful http://forums.adobe.com/thread/416509

Lorne Kwechansky    February 02, 2010 10:27 AM

And if you want something even more odd:

1) Open up an offending QuickTime movie which is washed out.
2) Drag the window between your two monitors (if you've got two).
3) Instantly, the color is restored.
4) Now drag to one monitor only.
5) Washed out again.

I've confirmed this now on 4 different dual monitor PCs.

Luc Charbo    March 04, 2010 03:11 PM

Sorenson Squeeze 6.0.2.41

I also had this problem a few months ago. Then I've upgraded to the last Sorenson Squeeze version (6.0.2.41)and now every H.264 Quicktime looks exactly as it should.

Finally, ends of tweaking!!

Walter Brokx    June 09, 2010 08:06 PM

I'd like to repeat what Loner Films said: SOLUTION: After rendering into a QuickTime/h.264 file, open it up in QuickTime and select “Show Movie Properties.” Highlight the video track then click on the “Visual Settings” tab. Towards the bottom left you should see “Transparency” with a drop-down box next to it. Select “Blend” from the menu then move the “Transparency Level” slider to 100%. Choose “Straight Alpha” from the same drop-down and close the properties window and finally “Save.” Don't change brightness or colour! This is working perfectly without messing with your brightness or colour. There is no need to overcompensate before encoding, just change settings afterwards in Quicktime.

Karel Bata    June 10, 2010 05:17 AM

Permanent Windows and Quicktime fixes

The problem with the fix above is that you have to go through all that every time you open a video! These are more elegant solutions: WINDOWS: Frantic Films Software created a small tool that simply strips out the gamma tags. It's a very simple tool called Quicktime Gamma Stripper which operates on all the file names and folders given to it. Download here: http://bit.ly/WinQTGammaFix MAC: This has been fixed in Snow Leopard by shifting the gamma to 2.2. Older versions of Mac OS still have the problem. There's an article here http://bit.ly/MacQTbug with a link to a permanent software fix. ;)

Dee    July 01, 2010 09:50 PM

wash-out with PC

I don't render to quicktime only FLV or avi and all my videos are wash out the color is poor, after rendering? the editing looks good but the output is so bad. I have try everything I use Adobe Cs4 software and I when our looking for other editing software thiking that was the issues and its not. I need a way out of this. I dont want to do with this ugly problem Dee

Andreas Burgess    September 18, 2010 03:36 PM

Tweaks for h264 encoding

I, like most people, noticed a shift and proceeded as Marco suggested (thanks for suggestion). When I did more comparisons, it seemed to me that the washing out / brightening / desaturation was happening in the h264 transcoding, but that those matched the Exposure Room versions quite well. I ended up tweaking in FCP (Brightness = -11, Saturation = 110) and the results are great. Really glad to have found your site. Thanks much, ANDREAS andreasburgess@gmail.com www.andreasburgess.com

Karel Bata    September 18, 2010 06:28 PM

Or move to Snow Leopard!

Or move to Snow Leopard, which has a Gamma of 2.2, and your problem goes away! If you're on an older system with a gamma of 1.8, you can do a permanent fix by re-calibrating your monitor. This tutorial might help http://bit.ly/Calibr



Leave A Comment

Data Entry Error
First Name:  Last Name: 
Title:
Comment: Required Information
  Required InformationIndicates Required Information
Marco Menestrina
London, ,
England
Contact Member
Member Bio Member Skills/Specialization

Specializations

close
Videographer/Cinematographer
Corporate
Documentary
Educational
Event Coverage
Feature
Interview
Landscape
Music Video
Musician
Nature
Portrait
Short
Sports
Television Programming
Wedding
Wildlife
 
Privacy Policy | Terms Of Service | Contact Us | Support | Help/FAQ | News