MPC-HC and vlc color difference

[hbloc]

Why are the colors in vlc different to MPC-HC? They look unnatural in MPC-HC. I want to use MPC-HC Enhanced Video Renderer (custom presenter) and achieve the same colors that vlc gives me, what do I need to change in the MPC-HC settings?

A comparison in the attachment between the two players using the same source test card video - clearly a difference in the Cyan and Green.


These are the filters currently loaded in MPC-HC:
- Default DirectSound Device
- Enhanced Video Renderer (custom presenter)
- Audio Switcher
- LAV Video Decoder (internal)
- LAV Audio Decoder
- LAV Splitter Source (internal)

[pandy]

You should provide more details about quantization range and used colorspace when YCbCr is converted to RGB

[flashandpan007]

upload the sample file, so I can test too

[jagabo]

rec.601 vs. rec.709. You have a rec.709 video that is being correctly displayed with a rec.709 matrix by VLC, but incorrectly with a rec.601 matrix by MPCHC. Probably because it's standard definition and the matrix isn't flagged.

[hbloc]

Lav video decoder settings in attachment
A copy of the video file used: Here is the file http://w6rz.net/bars709flash.zip

The color difference occurs on every video I've tested

Thanks for any help

[flashandpan007]

I played the file with MPC-BE and external LAV Filters: seems fine to me:

[Attachment 46176 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 46177 - Click to enlarge]

[sneaker]

Could be a problem with the combination of Enhanced Video Renderer (custom presenter) and your GPU driver/OS. Workarounds:
- use different renderer (e.g. madvr)
- let LAV Video do the YUV->RGB conversion by unticking all output formats except "RGB32"+"RGB24".
Letting LAV Video do it will use the CPU, I recommend the madvr workaround.

[jagabo]

As expected, the source is rec.709 and not flagged. VLC is displaying it with the correct colors, MPC is displaying it as rec.601 (on your computer), delivering the wrong colors.

On my computer VLC displays it wrong unless I use the OpenGL renderer. MPCBE displays it correctly with EVR Custom Presenter (though this may depend on the driver settings).

In general, when making videos you should use rec.601 for SD video, rec.709 for HD video, and always flag the matrix when you encode. That doesn't guarantee the correct colors at playback (some players/renderers will ignore the flag and the rule) but any player that obeys the flags will give the right colors, and any player that guesses based on resolution will get the right colors.