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Webclip Colors totally off

F

fuchsi

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 26, 2010
53
0
Hello Folks,
i recently purchased an Imac for my work as an editor.
After producing my first clips
for WebHD usage on FCP i noticed something strange.(I normally use alot of filters like Magic Bullet looks with those clips.)
When i render them out to High Def H.264 format for Web they look pristine on my imac screen.
Thing is once i upload them to Youtube the colors look totally off!
It's suddenly extremly oversaturated and the colors pop out of it so it almost looks like a rainbow...

And it's not just Youtube.
Also on a customer website where i uploaded the product as 320x180 .mov
When i check them out online on my Imac the colors are also off, same issue.
Now i have checked out the screen so it's definitely not that...
Anybody?

Would aprettiate
Rgds
 
are you converting the files to a different codec (other than h.264) before uploading? also what is the bit rate that you are rendering the h.264 at. Too high of a bit rate sometimes will cause issues with web video.

also, can you upload or provide links to a screen shot of both. That could help determine what is going on.
 
Well as far as i know, youtube renders the file again as Flash but that should not affect the colours.
Bitrate was between 5 and 6

Here's an example

The one on the left is the original RenderFile
The one to the right is the youtube upload (oversaturation)
 

Attachments

  • pic-fcp.jpg
    pic-fcp.jpg
    91.8 KB · Views: 87
  • Youtube-saturation.jpg
    Youtube-saturation.jpg
    51.7 KB · Views: 82
looks like a conversion issue. The more you compress an image the less information is stored in each frame. So there is less color information.

Its not so far off. try applying a filter in whatever compression program you are using and decrease the saturation by 5-10%. That should help.

Also H.264 compression runs at 1.6mb/s bit rate so if you convert to an flv (or f4v if you are up to date with adobe software) use 1.6mb/s CBR. That should go directly to youtube without the need for extra conversion.
 
Well like i said the left pic is an H.264 file converted out of AP CS5.
(i already tried the option with decreasing saturation in the original edit but that snowballs into other problems)
So what u are saying is that once youtube converts my file to .flv the color information lowers, hence the oversaturated outcome?

I will try rendering straigh out to .flv

Thanks for the advice

UPDATE:
Tried .f4v but youtube won't accept that format
also tried .flv but the quality was way off compared to H.264 and .f4v both @ 1.6 mb/s CBR
All out of MediaEncoder Cs5
 
fuchsi said:
Well as far as i know, youtube renders the file again as Flash but that should not affect the colours.
Bitrate was between 5 and 6

Here's an example

The one on the left is the original RenderFile
The one to the right is the youtube upload (oversaturation)
Click to expand...

Not that you asked, but both pictures look reasonable to me on my monitor ( 27inch iMac i5 2010 )

Yes, the one on the right is warmer. I would just chak this up to Youtube recompressing the video and further mashing up the colorspace.

Unless color accuracy is extremely important for your videos, I wouldn't sweat this. It looks fine.
 
Thanks huntercr.
At least i have a slight idea now of what is happening with the colors in those Videos.
The Youtube recompress thing sounds like a resonable explanation.
Which is a bummer for future projects

Well it was kind of a big youtube channel launch for a company so it did bother me a bit.
But they haven't mentioned it so i guess don't try to fix whant ain't (totally) broke :)
 
Web video can get real complicated because there are so many conversions going on at various points in the pipeline.

I'm not convinced it's the "compression" part of YouTube's recompression that's the problem. I think it might be the other things that come into play when compressing, like matrices or gamma; and it might not be YouTube that's doing the damage.

Before we get our hands really dirty, how does the video on YouTube look in other browsers? How does the vid you're uploading look in other media players?

And while we're on the subject, YouTube will always recompress your video. Unless you have a slow net connection, you're best uploading a higher bit rate vid than you are currently.
 
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