Video is washed out when importing certain clips into Premiere

[Master Tape]

After rendering a 2 hour long video in VirtualDub after applying filters and deinterlacing with Avisynth. I want to do edits in Premiere as i prefer their transitions and ease of use when editing longer files.

After muxing the video and audio back together and importing it into premiere, the picture is all washed out. It isn't like this when i preview it in a media player. So just assumed it's Premiere's preview window playing up.. but after i render it's still like that! I then did some experimenting. I then imported the avi file, before muxing was applied/no audio, and low and behold the colours are all normal, no bright blacks. Then i import the long muxed clip right next to it, and it changes to washed out. I can tell the difference by clicking between the two in the timeline. So i think this might be a problem caused by muxing the original audio to the video. I also had to offset the audio due to the slight delay after extracting the files via DGIndex.

And yes the color space is correct after i applied "No change" in vdub, with Lagarith.

Has anyone ever heard of this before and know how to fix it?

[KarMa]

Sounds like a TV vs PC levels problem. I don't know enough about Adobe PP and how to deal with mismatched levels in PP. Normally I can just feed it TV levels and it just about always gives me TV levels back.

What codec/format of video and audio are you feeding into PP to get raised blacks?

[smrpix]

One practical way to fix it is to not premux. Bring the audio and video in separately, as you did, and group the video and audio together on the timeline to bind them in sync.

I agree, an RGB/YUV flag is getting messed up somewhere in the muxing.

[jagabo]

Doesn't Premiere have a problem with levels with some codecs/containers? It assumes full range YUV rather than limited range? This has been mentioned in these forums many times. Or maybe it was Vegas? I don't use the programs, but you should be able to convince it your source is limited range.

[Master Tape]

Well here is the MediaInfo to give all the stats of the video/audio.

General
Complete name                            : F:\A Video Files\DVD Rips\Video.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile                           : OpenDML
File size                                : 114 GiB
Duration                                 : 2 h 8 min
Overall bit rate                         : 127 Mb/s
Writing application                      : Lavf58.45.100

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : Lagarith
Codec ID                                 : LAGS
Duration                                 : 2 h 8 min
Bit rate                                 : 127 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 50.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 2.753
Stream size                              : 114 GiB (100%)

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : MPEG Audio
Format version                           : Version 1
Format profile                           : Layer 2
Codec ID                                 : 50
Duration                                 : 2 h 8 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 256 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 235 MiB (0%)
Alignment                                : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 24  ms (1.20 video frame)

I rendered it via VirtualDub lossless AVI so there would be minimal quality loss when i render it further is Premiere Pro.

I just don't get why the colours are normal when i import the same AVI file without the remuxed audio.

[Master Tape]

One practical way to fix it is to not premux. Bring the audio and video in separately, as you did, and group the video and audio together on the timeline to bind them in sync.

I agree, an RGB/YUV flag is getting messed up somewhere in the muxing.

With the audio being 72ms out of sync how can i sync this back up correctly in the timeline? Or is there a way to offset the audio after i render the video without re-encoding?

[jagabo]

Use a test pattern that easily lets you check black and white levels. Try the one in this post:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/374734-Superblacks-and-superwhites-question#post2414529

See where in your workflow you are getting a levels shift.

[smrpix]

72ms is about 3.5 frames at 50fps. You can easily slip any offset in the timeline before you group.

[Master Tape]

Doesn't Premiere have a problem with levels with some codecs/containers? It assumes full range YUV rather than limited range? This has been mentioned in these forums many times. Or maybe it was Vegas? I don't use the programs, but you should be able to convince it your source is limited range.

Another thing i forgot to mention is i upscaled the original video to 1280x720, so Premiere may be incorrectly assuming the colorspace is rec.709, rather than rec.601. Though changing it to rec.601 in the Export Settings section and rendering doesn't seem to help. Though the problem only occurs after i mux the audio, so it maybe a combination of things causing Premiere to get confused perhaps.

Use a test pattern that easily lets you check black and white levels. Try the one in this post:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/374734-Superblacks-and-superwhites-question#post2414529

See where in your workflow you are getting a levels shift.

I've never used a test pattern before. Do you have to load it in Avisynth alongside your source video?

One thing i noticed in that line of script is ConvertToYV12(matrix="pc.601")

I never use this since it's already YUV to begin with but i guess it wouldn't hurt to do so and make sure it stays in rec.601.

[jagabo]

Another thing i forgot to mention is i upscaled the original video to 1280x720, so Premiere may be incorrectly assuming the colorspace is rec.709, rather than rec.601.

That doesn't change the Y levels. Only the colors will be wrong.

One thing i noticed in that line of script is ConvertToYV12(matrix="pc.601")

My goal was to make a rec.601 video with superblacks and superwhites from an RGB image. It's not possible to produce those illegal values with ConvertToYV12(matrix=rec601").

[jagabo]

By the way, I posted a similar DV AVI levels video here:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326496-file-in-Virtualdub-has-strange-colors-when-...ed#post2022085

The images have an error in the Y=0 bar but the file was updated with a corrected version.