Washed-Out Colors After Compressing?

[Kero777]

For some reason, even when I use the guide's recommendations for compressing I always come out with footage that just doesn't look vibrant and sharp like the original lagarith file. It comes out looking a bit dull and washed out. I cannot figure out why. MP4 gives me an overall better looking file than the XviD, but still the colors aren't as sharp. I understand that some detail has to be lost because I am compressing, but it shouldn't look so washed out. It's hard to tell with this but here is an example gif:

Uncompressed vs Compressed

(There are a lot of artifacts/ringing that aren't actually in the original clip; try to ignore them. It's due to it being an animated gif.) If you look at the right side of his face, after I compress it looks very washed out and somewhat discolored... like he lost a tan or something. Color is taken from the hair too, actually making it appear darker. You might not really notice a huge difference, but it's more apparent when watching the video, especially comparing it with the original.

I normally don't use any post AMV scripts except maybe undot() for better compression. (I'm honestly not the best with scripts at all, so I only use what I really think I need. I'm afraid I will hurt the video, rather than help. ) Are there any scripts I can use to fix this without hurting compressibility that much, or just anything I can do to help this problem at all?

Maybe I'm just being too picky.

Thanks for reading!

Haha, Me=slowpoke. I still don't have all this down. XD I ask questions here all the time. Thanks for everyone's help: especially Qyot27 who has helped me in nearly every thread I've posted so far! If I ever know half as much as most of you know, it'll be a miracle.

[Kariudo]

are you using avisynth before compressing?
some plugins (smoothers suffer from this the most IIRC) will make the video looked washed out.

if you get removegrain, it comes with temporalrepair() which is supposed to reverse the washed out look. (I don't know anything about its usage)
increasing the saturation may compensate (something like tweak(sat=1.2))

[Qyot27]

I wouldn't say it looks washed out at all (then again I typically don't use 'washed out' as a synonym for 'overexposed', but rather for things like the watercolor-esque distortion that happens during overfiltering), but it is clear that it's probably being compressed a tad too much - which is why there are sharp blocks along gradients. Increasing the bitrate or using a gradient smoother (like gradfun2db) might help. But I'm hinging on increasing the bitrate. The tint issue is rather minor, IMO.

If you could post your compression settings it would help. I don't know about XviD, but with the H.264-centric GUIs (at least Zarx's and MeGUI, for that matter), it should tell you the command-line being used on the 'Advanced' or Configuration areas. Copy and paste that here.

[Shazzy]

May have something to do with this?

I’ve done some more research on this problem. Apparently, the issue is caused by hardware acceleration, in particular Core Video on the Mac and DirectX DirectDraw on the PC. Somehow this must be tied in with QuickTime’s rendering of H.264 embedded ICC profiles.

I confirmed the problem is related to hardware acceleration by opening in QuickTime Player 7.2 an H.264 video I encoded, and playing it with and without DirectX acceleration. See attached screen shots at the end of this post.

Visit these links for more information:

Quicktime Player h.264 Bug
Update and comments
RE: Core Video/ H.264 Color issues

To quote a Robert Spryn from the second link:

“I spoke to one quicktime engineer. All I got out of it is that this is a problem they are aware of and working on, and that detailed information on the problem like I provide is helpful.”

This comment was posted on June 26 of this year.

To sum things up, nothing is inherently wrong with the H.264 format; it is QuickTime Player’s handling of the embedded ICC profiles that is at fault. Thus, I would strongly urge against doing anything like increasing saturation or decreasing the brightness of your project in an attempt to correct for this problem when exporting to H.264. If and when Apple fixes this issue regarding ICC profiles and hardware acceleration in the QuickTime Player, any H.264 videos so corrected could end up being rendered rather, well, interesting.

Regarding the screen shots below, in each of the two the QuickTime window on the left is being rendered with DirectX hardware acceleration, and the window on the right with Windows GDI.

Screenshots it's referring to are at: this thread

Also see:

All Washed Out
How to fix h.264 video conversion 'wash out'

[Kero777]

if you get removegrain, it comes with temporalrepair() which is supposed to reverse the washed out look. (I don't know anything about its usage)
increasing the saturation may compensate (something like tweak(sat=1.2))

I just might try that. It sounds convincing. I'm sure a little saturation adjustment will at least help a little. Thanks.

Screenshots it's referring to are at: this thread

Also see:

All Washed Out
How to fix h.264 video conversion 'wash out'

My situation is a lot like that, although I'm not quite sure if that's the case because it seems to be doing it when I compress with XviD as well, except even worse. It can't hurt to try. Thanks so much for the links!

...using a gradient smoother (like gradfun2db) might help.

It helps with some things, but unfortunately, didn't fix the problem.

If you could post your compression settings it would help. I don't know about XviD, but with the H.264-centric GUIs (at least Zarx's and MeGUI, for that matter), it should tell you the command-line being used on the 'Advanced' or Configuration areas. Copy and paste that here.

Command Line for Zarx264gui:

BePipe.exe --script "import(^C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\myscript.avs^).Normalize()" | neroAacEnc.exe -br 192000 -ignorelength -if - -of "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\myscript.avs-temp.m4a"
x264.exe --crf 18 --ref 16 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --subme 7 --trellis 2 --analyse all --8x8dct --me umh --progress --filter 3:3 --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\myscript-temp.264" "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\myscript.avs"
MP4Box.exe -fps 23.97602 -add "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\myscript-temp.264" -add "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\myscript-temp.m4a" -new "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\test2.mp4"

[Qyot27]

x264.exe --crf 18 --ref 16 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --subme 7 --trellis 2 --analyse all --8x8dct --me umh --progress --filter 3:3 --no-psnr --no-ssim --output [...]

In bold. That may be the cause. High smoothing values and all. Reduce those to 1:1 (or into negative integer values, or even completely turn it off using --nf) if you can and see if the effect is as noticeable. I have no idea if ZarxGui lets you adjust that, but if not then you could probably just call up the command prompt and feed it the same exact set of functions that you posted (except with the filter setting changed to 1:1) and it should work. Although keeping in mind you have to know how to navigate Windows' folder structure using DOS commands to wherever the x264.exe binary is - of course, this is negated if you've got the 'Open Command Window Here' PowerToy for XP.

[Qyot27]

Also, does anyone know offhand which x264 revision number is being called here? Or if ZarxGui has it set up to auto-download newer builds as they're available, like MeGUI does?

[Zarxrax]

Also, does anyone know offhand which x264 revision number is being called here? Or if ZarxGui has it set up to auto-download newer builds as they're available, like MeGUI does?

I don't know what version it is, but its about a year old now. It doesn't autoupdate.

[Kero777]

x264.exe --crf 18 --ref 16 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --subme 7 --trellis 2 --analyse all --8x8dct --me umh --progress --filter 3:3 --no-psnr --no-ssim --output [...]

In bold. That may be the cause. High smoothing values and all. Reduce those to 1:1 (or into negative integer values, or even completely turn it off using --nf) if you can and see if the effect is as noticeable. I have no idea if ZarxGui lets you adjust that, but if not then you could probably just call up the command prompt and feed it the same exact set of functions that you posted (except with the filter setting changed to 1:1) and it should work. Although keeping in mind you have to know how to navigate Windows' folder structure using DOS commands to wherever the x264.exe binary is - of course, this is negated if you've got the 'Open Command Window Here' PowerToy for XP.

I looked around and I can't find a way that it will let me change it. I will be honest, I got completely lost when you started talking about the command prompt and this: "Although keeping in mind you have to know how to navigate Windows' folder structure using DOS commands to wherever the x264.exe binary is..." totally confused me! I'm not familiar with that stuff at all. If possible could you please explain what it is that I am supposed to do? If not, that's fine. Thank you so much.

[Qyot27]

x264.exe --crf 18 --ref 16 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --subme 7 --trellis 2 --analyse all --8x8dct --me umh --progress --filter 3:3 --no-psnr --no-ssim --output [...]

In bold. That may be the cause. High smoothing values and all. Reduce those to 1:1 (or into negative integer values, or even completely turn it off using --nf) if you can and see if the effect is as noticeable. I have no idea if ZarxGui lets you adjust that, but if not then you could probably just call up the command prompt and feed it the same exact set of functions that you posted (except with the filter setting changed to 1:1) and it should work. Although keeping in mind you have to know how to navigate Windows' folder structure using DOS commands to wherever the x264.exe binary is - of course, this is negated if you've got the 'Open Command Window Here' PowerToy for XP.

I looked around and I can't find a way that it will let me change it. I will be honest, I got completely lost when you started talking about the command prompt and this: "Although keeping in mind you have to know how to navigate Windows' folder structure using DOS commands to wherever the x264.exe binary is..." totally confused me! I'm not familiar with that stuff at all. If possible could you please explain what it is that I am supposed to do? If not, that's fine. Thank you so much.

Ok, considering what Zarxrax just said about how old the build of x264 is being used, I'd suggest snagging the latest build from Cef:
http://mirror05.x264.nl/Cef/force.php?f ... 86_r736.7z

Unpack that (you'll need 7zip installed), and you'll get x264.exe. I really would suggest downloading and installing the PowerToy I linked to earlier, since it makes this easier (and I mean a lot easier - I'll explain below), but to do it manually these are the steps taken:

Go to Start->Run, type in 'cmd' (but without the quotes), and press Enter. This will bring up the command prompt.

Now, make sure you know what folder x264.exe is in. Let's say it's in C:\Program Files\megui\tools\x264. Type (or copy and paste) the following into the prompt:

Code: Select all

cd\Program Files\megui\tools\x264

And press Enter. It'll change to that directory (or whichever directory you actually tell it to). Now, just copy and paste the encoding script you got from Zarx264GUI, making sure to modify the filter setting from 3:3 to 1:1, and then press Enter again. It'll do its thing from there.

Another way that's slightly less to the point is to do this. After opening the command prompt:

Code: Select all

cd\

This will take you back to the root of the drive you're navigating.

Code: Select all

cd Program Files\megui\tools\x264

Which will take you to the actual folder. The first example I gave simply combines these two steps.



Now, the only thing that would be required if you have that 'Open Command Window Here' PowerToy I linked to installed, would be:

Navigate to the folder x264.exe is in using Windows Explorer.

Right-click on the folder itself (it helps if you have the 'Folders' view enabled, where you can see the directory tree in the left pane) and click the 'Open Command Window Here' option. Then just skip straight to the part where you copy and paste the commands for x264 itself. No having to mess with doing cd\ or whatnot.



As an extra note: if you put x264.exe in C:\WINDOWS, then you don't need to navigate anywhere, since the system will recognize it and allow you to run it from/in any folder. This also means that if, say, you want to use a script without having to type out the whole filepath, you can just go to the folder where the script is located, 'Open Command Window Here', and go ahead with using x264.