How come h.264 looks all washed out but movie trailer look great?

[erilaz]

I'm also getting this "washed out" look to my renders under H264.

[JamesMK]

*attaches industrial strength thread-clamp*

I'd be very interested to hear about possible solutions as well...




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[beenyweenies]

This is a long-running problem, and to make it more confusing there are many different ideas of what causes it, and how to fix it:

1. It's a video card issue related to Core Video support. Workaround - Use a different player that doesn't use Core Video (such as http://niceplayer.sourceforge.net/)

2. It's a color profile issue. Allegedly, creating a new one from scratch fixes the problem (this solution blames default color profiles)

3. There are settings within Quicktime player to correct it:
"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%. Right after that, choose 'Straight Alpha' from the same drop-down and close the properties window. AND finally, 'Save.'


I haven't tried any of these solutions, but last I checked there was no definitive fix from Apple.

[JamesMK]

3. There are settings within Quicktime player to correct it:
"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%. Right after that, choose 'Straight Alpha' from the same drop-down and close the properties window. AND finally, 'Save.'

Just revisiting this thread to say thanks for the tip quoted above - it actually works! The only drawback seems to be that playback performance suffers a bit, but then again my graphics card never was that good at anything but 3D OGL - AND I seem to recall having pretty poor playback on high-res H264 trailers as well, so it probably just proves that this is how they do it.

So... yay! Mystery solved!



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[calmasacow]

I tried it and it did nothing.

[JamesMK]

It seems to be a bit erratic. Toggling the high-quality check box on and off seems to force a refresh.

[beenyweenies]

I tried it and it did nothing.

Yeah, the problem with ALL the solutions I cited are that none of them are really geniune fixes, only band-aids. It would seem that no one has really put forward a good, permanent fix except for replacing your graphics card with one that handles Core Video differently.

Sorry!

[w_capozzi]

I was having the same problem and followed the instructions here to solve it. I'm getting about what I expect now using h.264. Colors look nice and rich, darks are the way they should be.

I was wondering, will my h.264 movies look correct for other people viewing them off the internet, or is this saving movies a certain way so they can be viewed correctly only on my computer?

Thanks,
Bill C.

[calmasacow]

yeah I don't think that is the what the people encode movie trailers in 720p h.264 for apple are do this their color looks great no matter what computer you play it on. There has to something else to it.

[beenyweenies]

yeah I don't think that is the what the people encode movie trailers in 720p h.264 for apple are do this their color looks great no matter what computer you play it on. There has to something else to it.

Yeah that's why I disclaimed my advice by saying it's not a "fix" to the problem but rather a temporary band-aid. Unfortunately I don't know a solid solution, it seems some computers have the problem and others don't, so I would guess this means it IS a hardware issue, and possibly a hardware issue on the encode side, NOT the playback side.

Ugh, these are the types of issues that makes computers a headache!

[rhodeder]

I was running into this problem before and i switched off hardware rendering in quicktime and it fixed it. But thats never gonna fix it when someone else sees it. Id recommend you export another codec though since h264 really isnt meant for high quality movies but for good compression. I would use the mpeg-4 codec since its really meant for keeping the quality more. and if you dont care about file size use no codec at all and pick "none" where it asks you to choose your codec it will not change the video's color profile at all. hope this helps? I rarely use h264 unless the video is gonna be really compressed.

oh quick edit make sure you have best quality in mpeg-4 cause if you dont your just gonna get the same washed out look. and make sure the limit bitrate option is unselected as well

[w_capozzi]

Is there a possibility the good looking h.264's are encoded using a proprietary or undistributed color profile or something like that? I'm beginning to use a bit of what I've learned about color profiles in AE7 along with viewing the proof version of the output, some of that might apply. Maybe the Quicktime player likes to have a specific embedded color profile to play back the correct looking colors consistantly on other computers. I could be way off.

Thanks,
Bill C.

[beenyweenies]

Is there a possibility the good looking h.264's are encoded using a proprietary or undistributed color profile or something like that? I'm beginning to use a bit of what I've learned about color profiles in AE7 along with viewing the proof version of the output, some of that might apply. Maybe the Quicktime player likes to have a specific embedded color profile to play back the correct looking colors consistantly on other computers. I could be way off.

Thanks,
Bill C.
I doubt this because most people are able to generate perfect h.264 movies without any specific action on their part. All of the computers in my studio, mac and pc, export h.264 just fine. It seems to be a problem with specific hardware cofigurations, but Apple seems to have nothing to say about the issue. Until they speak up we'll probably never know since there are so many alleged explanations out there.

[Ransom]

Yea, i noticed the same thing too when rendering in H.264. Since then i have been using Sorensen Video 3 and seems to work preety well. Seems to me like a good mix of quality and compresion. It also seems to out perfrom H.264 on blacks much more than any thing.
Although this is all anecdotal evidence, just from my expierience.

[doctorx256]

After and premiere exports "washed out" H.264 videos. Tried it in 3-4 different machines and they all export the same kind of very low contrast videos. I thought that H.264 was a respected codec, and to say the truth i have seen some really good videos, with very good color. If someone has a good working solution i would like to hear it. I am currently using sorenson which i think is one of the top codecs in the market.

[rhodeder]

After and premiere exports "washed out" H.264 videos. Tried it in 3-4 different machines and they all export the same kind of very low contrast videos. I thought that H.264 was a respected codec, and to say the truth i have seen some really good videos, with very good color. If someone has a good working solution i would like to hear it. I am currently using sorenson which i think is one of the top codecs in the market.

Yeah sry to say man but the solution is just not use it. Cuz even if you do get it too look right on your comp then its gonna still look like crap on someone elses which will be most people since most people dont have workstation video cards like quadro or SDI cards. So i just recommend like i said before to use mpeg-4 at full quality.

-Derek

[beenyweenies]

After and premiere exports "washed out" H.264 videos. Tried it in 3-4 different machines and they all export the same kind of very low contrast videos. I thought that H.264 was a respected codec, and to say the truth i have seen some really good videos, with very good color. If someone has a good working solution i would like to hear it. I am currently using sorenson which i think is one of the top codecs in the market.

H.264 IS a good codec, and since it is only certain machines that have encoding problems it is almost certainly a hardware issue. All of my studio's machines export them fine, even on machines with standard Nvidia Geforce graphics cards. You do NOT need a fancy workstation gfx card to output good h.264, it is something else yet to be determined. Once exported (if they look right) they will be fine on any viewer's machine - my experience is that the problem is in the encode, NOT the playback. If you can export a clean h.264 movie, your viewers will see it as expected.

Also, I would just add that Sorenson has fallen far behind the curve in terms of quality-to-size. MPEG-4 is going to give you much, much better results and way smaller sizes. Second to that would be Flash video (FLV) or VC-1 (Windows Media only).

[rhodeder]

Also, I would just add that Sorenson has fallen far behind the curve in terms of quality-to-size. MPEG-4 is going to give you much, much better results and way smaller sizes. Second to that would be Flash video (FLV) or VC-1 (Windows Media only).

Yeah totally agree about sorenson. It was really nice mostly for encoding video in flash way back when, but now i think it pretty much sucks. And yeah i totally agree with beenyweenies to encode all video for compression in mpeg-4 i always encode my video with that if im trying to keep quality while having low file size.

[doctorx256]

I did some tests with codecs today, that have come to add upon a research i made before some months. I found informations that say Sorenson 3 is a tweaked version of H.264, although they may not be 100% accurate.

I have tested Sorenson3 and mpeg4, both set in maximum quality, in motion graphics and 3d animation test scenes they both gave very good results. Mpeg4 has 10-20% smaller filesizes.

Windows Media Video has a good quality for a relatively very small filesize.

[beenyweenies]

I did some tests with codecs today, that have come to add upon a research i made before some months. I found informations that say Sorenson 3 is a tweaked version of H.264, although they may not be 100% accurate.

I have tested Sorenson3 and mpeg4, both set in maximum quality, in motion graphics and 3d animation test scenes they both gave very good results. Mpeg4 has 10-20% smaller filesizes.

Windows Media Video has a good quality for a relatively very small filesize.

I suppose part of what can make the difference is what method you use to compress. I do not personally trust After Effects to generate compressed media, it never seems to be able to produce the results that a third party compression app can.

If you export an uncompressed/lossless video from AE and use a compression app, in most cases MPEG-4 will win the day. I used to rely on Sorenson extensively for it's wide compatibility, but lately MPEG-4 has done me right. I tend to get files that are much smaller than Sorenson and less artifacting.

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

My guess is this issue is related to embedded gamma tags in the .movs. Frantic Films has created a Windows tool to strip out the gamma tage from the movs. You can find the tool on their forum, here (http://support.franticfilms.com/wb/default.asp?action=9&boardid=2&read=74&fid=14). I also found reports that this may be related to viewing the quicktimes with hardware acceleration, and/or quicktime compensating for monitor profiles.

Hope this helps,
-Eric

[rhodeder]

Windows Media Video has a good quality for a relatively very small filesize.

Totally agree with this and im the guy who always says .mov files is the way to go but if you dont want mac users to have problems then stick to mov but if your audience is mainly windows users then you are gonna get awesome compression in wmv. I had a 320x240 movie 2 hrs long compressed to 32MB and it sounded alright and looked good enough to enjoy the movie. Even when stretched to full screen and it could stream on a 24kbps modem.

-Derek

[doctorx256]

I used AE for exporting H.264 because i was testing and thought that the problem maybe relied in Premiere.

There was no embedded gamma tags inside any of the quicktime files.

[stevester1]

Some questions/thoughts:

1- This isn't limited to contrast and gamma, whenever I export H264 video directly from AE, I get posterization (is this the word I'm looking for) near faded edges (only if the background is transperant). For example, I have a text layer, with some standard glow applied to it, once renderred with H264, not only does it look pale and washed out, but the glow appears to have "steps" based on the fade amount.

2- Encoding is a weird process in general. Take .wmv, from 100% of my experiences, and from 100% of my bud's/co-workers, .wmv will encode smaller files with better quality if you set your encoding's CPU priority to High or Realtime. I don't know why but give it a try, it has always yielded better results.

3- Whenever I encode mpeg-2 for DVD, I also get a washed out look (not drastic), I can never get it to look like a DVD that I will rent at blockbuster. Now obviously, I'm not using a 35mm camera to shoot my footage, but I have made some photomontages using 10MP stills, which is relativly high, and I still couldn't get the "Hollywood" quality.

Anyways, maybe there's incidents are isolated, maybe I'm just one of those bad luck magnets....mmmhmmm.... my 0.02cents.

[dell]

rhodeder

had a 320x240 movie 2 hrs long compressed to 32MB and it sounded alright and looked good enough to enjoy the movie



rhodeder

how long did that movie take to render, its seems h264 takes a lot longer than i expected?. Plus why can't i see any presets for HD compression?

Thanks

[MasterZap]

My experience is that quicktime in general has some bizzare, poorly documented (or not documented at all) gamma issues.

One one machine, I encode quicktimes and they play with the exact same colors the source data had.

Playing the same file on another machine side-by-side with the source data, shows it "brighter" approximately like an 1.2 gamma curve had been applied to it.

On yet another machine, it played fine using NVidia Geforce4 card, but swapping the card to an NVidia GeForce FX/5700 made Quicktimes suddenly play again brighter than their source data.

My conclusion is this: UNFORTUNATELY, something is broken in how Quicktime talks to your graphic card about the gamma curve, and/or some confusion exists in how drivers interface with Quicktime on this "issue".

If anyone has any more specific data, I'm all ears...

/Z

[calmasacow]

man I wish they would just give you the option to disable gamma correction

[rhodeder]

rhodeder

how long did that movie take to render, its seems h264 takes a lot longer than i expected?. Plus why can't i see any presets for HD compression?

Thanks

I dont remember it was a long time ago but it probably only took like a hr or two

[landrvr1]

I spoke with an Adobe rep about exporting Quicktime from AE and Premiere Pro.

In a nutshell, the H.264 compression codec available in AE is NOT as good as what you find in Quicktime Pro. The version is apparently very early, and leaves a bit to be desired.

I purchased QPro, and ran a test. AE creates an H.264 .mov that is barely passable in quality, and the file size is enormous. I then dumped an uncompressed .avi file into QPro, exported as H.264 with the same settings as I'd used in AE, and the difference was amazing. Very nice quality, and half the file size.

I'm curious as to whether or not anyone else has found this to be the case. I've literally beat AE into submission with my H.264 tests, and the outputs always suck.

Oh, and .wmv files out of AE and Premiere suffer the same fate. Nice quality, but fairly large file sizes. After trying the free Windows Media Exporter, the quality went up slightly, but the reduction in file sizes were incredible; 30 to 50% in some cases.

[beenyweenies]

I purchased QPro, and ran a test. AE creates an H.264 .mov that is barely passable in quality, and the file size is enormous. I then dumped an uncompressed .avi file into QPro, exported as H.264 with the same settings as I'd used in AE, and the difference was amazing. Very nice quality, and half the file size.

I'm curious as to whether or not anyone else has found this to be the case.

I have always found this to be the case, and not just with h.264. Over and over again on this message board I have stated that AE SUCKS at rendering out compression, and the facts back that up. For example, MPEG-4 output using a free compression program gives me an incredible quality boost, and almost always at 50-70% smaller files, than if AE had created the MPEG-4. It usually only takes a few minutes to compress from a master file, so time savings is not an issue.

I would also say that given the very low cost of hard drive space, there is no longer any reason to be outputting compressed files from 3D or design apps - compression should always be the LAST stage. If you output an uncompressed file from AE, compress it and the client signs off on it, congratulations - you already have the final rendered out.

[JamesMK]

I have always found this to be the case, and not just with h.264. Over and over again on this message board I have stated that AE SUCKS at rendering out compression, and the facts back that up.
Well, technically speaking there's no mystery here. The reason QT Pro does a good job is because it already has all the frames available, and can use all sorts of clever look-ahead methods to make an optimal compression over a larger temporal segment, peeking across several frames before and after the current frame, whereas AE only "sees" that one single frame it's currently processing.

And like you say, the only sane way (disregarding the storage issue) is to make entirely uncompressed master files from AE. From that you then generate whatever format/compression you need for various deliverables, but everything should always start with the uncompressed master.

[Velk]

This is a long-standing issue with both AfterEffects and Premier—I found some info on this a while back on DVInfo, boils down to core video issue in many cases.

[landrvr1]

I have always found this to be the case, and not just with h.264. Over and over again on this message board I have stated that AE SUCKS at rendering out compression, and the facts back that up. For example, MPEG-4 output using a free compression program gives me an incredible quality boost, and almost always at 50-70% smaller files, than if AE had created the MPEG-4. It usually only takes a few minutes to compress from a master file, so time savings is not an issue.

I would also say that given the very low cost of hard drive space, there is no longer any reason to be outputting compressed files from 3D or design apps - compression should always be the LAST stage. If you output an uncompressed file from AE, compress it and the client signs off on it, congratulations - you already have the final rendered out.

Heh, good point. My 3D animations are only 3 to 4 minutes. They barely need any compression to fit on a 4.7G DVD.

Say, what MPEG-4 converter do you prefer?

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