washed out colors on most player (fraps - lagarith - megui)

[modar]

Hello, I'm trying to compress fraps video following this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gobx4hcW8E
except that I used after effects instead of sony vegas

now problem is that if I play the resulting video of lagarith or the final mkv video with WMP, VLC or MPC then colors are washed out! But with GOM Player and Youtube it looks OK!
how to fix this so it would play correctly on all players?
thanks.

with most players


with gom player

[pandy]

too complex to describe with such low amount of details but check for: quantization range YCbCr(16,235;16,240) vs YCbCr(1,254;1,254) vs YCbCr(0,255;0,255) vs RGB(0,255) issues.

[modar]

I've edited the post with more details, hope it's easier to explain now

[pandy]

place snapshots for each configuration screen - in this YT link i see lot of problems - always remember that rendering in HQ for YT have no sense as YT will recompress video anyway thus you can safely render veryfast preset or even fixed quantizer, same for audio - see no point to struggle with settings HQ when YT will recompress this anyway with own settings.
There is a chance that there is some issue on quantization range and/or color space (601 vs 709) - i see that in video this area is untouched when x264 is setup.

Not sure about you target (i.e. if the video you doing is for YT only or also for other use) but probably it will be better to provide all information in final h.264 file anyway.

Similar problem mentioned https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/321024-YouTube-HowTo-Lossless-unchanged-color

Also i need to wait for doom9 begin operate back as http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1556914#post1556914 i need to check if full range for Fraps is 1,254 or 0,255 .

Anyway not sure how your video editor works (Adobe After Effects) - if it limit (saturate) YUV to 16,235 or pass 0,255 - perhaps this is main problem.

[modar]

Thank you for your time

here are the snapshots




note if I upload the video on YT it looks fine but if I downloaded it and played it with MPC and others it looks washed out again, and that's the heart of the problem, I want my videos to play correctly online and offline.


final file info

General
Complete name : C:\Users\mwdar\Desktop\sensation\Untitled.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 1.81 MiB
Duration : 2s 736ms
Overall bit rate : 5 554 Kbps
Writing application : x264 r2334 a3ac64b
Writing library : Haali Matroska Writer b0

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 2s 736ms
Bit rate : 5 444 Kbps
Width : 1 904 pixels
Height : 1 072 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.089
Stream size : 1.78 MiB (98%)
Writing library : x264 core 133 r2334 a3ac64b
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=6 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=300 / keyint_min=29 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

I've used sony vegs for this one, so it's not after effects issue.

[jagabo]

Fix your MPC or graphics card settings.

[modar]

how it's a graphic card issue if GOM player plays the vid just fine?

[jagabo]

RGB (what you see on the screen) vs. YUV (what's inside most video files) and how the transform is handled in software or by the graphics card.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/340804-colorspace-conversation-elaboration?p=212150...=1#post2121505
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326496-file-in-Virtualdub-has-strange-colors-when-o...=1#post2022085

There are many many threads here regarding these issues.

[pandy]

Last screen V.U.I. try to set quantization Range as Full http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings#range , color primaries and color matrix as bt709. currently there is no information on this and various players "guessing", beware also of the fact that VUI can be ignored by h.264 decoders (player) and still you can have issue http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings#Video_Usability_Info . But defining this will give at least some chance to avoid this problem.

[bigass]

Sounds like everything's working correctly. YouTube expects levels between 16-235 and expands them to 0-255 in the player. That's why your images look flat on the PC and correct on YouTube playback.

Want them to look different in your player? Adjust your player or make another version of your video for PC-only viewing with levels between 0-255. If you uploaded THAT one to YouTube, you'd notice the darks were too dark and brights blown out.

[modar]

RGB (what you see on the screen) vs. YUV (what's inside most video files) and how the transform is handled in software or by the graphics card.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/340804-colorspace-conversation-elaboration?p=212150...=1#post2121505
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326496-file-in-Virtualdub-has-strange-colors-when-o...=1#post2022085

There are many many threads here regarding these issues.

thank you

Last screen V.U.I. try to set quantization Range as Full http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings#range , color primaries and color matrix as bt709. currently there is no information on this and various players "guessing", beware also of the fact that VUI can be ignored by h.264 decoders (player) and still you can have issue http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings#Video_Usability_Info . But defining this will give at least some chance to avoid this problem.

unfortunately this didn't solve the issue, quantization Range has three values: auto, pc, tv
pc gives the same old result
tv makes colors a lot darker

Sounds like everything's working correctly. YouTube expects levels between 16-235 and expands them to 0-255 in the player. That's why your images look flat on the PC and correct on YouTube playback.

Want them to look different in your player? Adjust your player or make another version of your video for PC-only viewing with levels between 0-255. If you uploaded THAT one to YouTube, you'd notice the darks were too dark and brights blown out.

I see, but what's so special about gom player so it's able to play the pc and YT version correctly without any further settings tweeking?

[poisondeathray]

Check the settings between the players, especially the renderer used. That is likely the difference

It's obviously not an encoding issue. It's a playback configuration issue . You cannot control how people have their playback software configured

BTW - the description isn't "washed out", it actually should be "more contrast" . Washed out implies less contrast, elevated black levels

Be sure to check only one player at a time , then close it before you check another.

[modar]

Check the settings between the players, especially the renderer used. That is likely the difference

It's obviously not an encoding issue. It's a playback configuration issue . You cannot control how people have their playback software configured

yeah, you are right, I've changed the renderer of MPC to madVR and colors look fine now, it's more like a dead end though!

thank you everyone for you time.

[jagabo]

yeah, you are right, I've changed the renderer of MPC to madVR and colors look fine now

They would all look fine (as far as colors/contrast are concerned) if your graphics card was set up properly.

[pandy]

Different renderers use different hardware functionality - driver settings usually exposed this as separate color profiles for different screen types. In typical graphic card there can be different video data paths - some of them are special video some normal graphic data, some can use 3d path.

Anyway setting VUI is highly advised even if some retarded software ignoring VUI.