H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

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JanKocbek

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H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostTue Jan 15, 2019 4:53 pm

The only true web color is JPG MOV format, which is 4 times bigger then h264.

I had these problems before I bought GTX 1050 and Win10. Im guessing problem is in Resolve or in h264.

H264 produces ok true results on Quicktime, but on Youtube or Facebook colors go dark and contrasty.
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Uli Plank

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 16, 2019 2:52 am

I guess you don't have proper monitoring. Are you judging your grades from the viewer?
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Byron Dickens

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 16, 2019 5:56 pm

DR will render exactly what color your project has in it. Problem is, without an accurate (read: calibrated) monitor you have no idea just what your project really looks like, so you are shooting in the dark.

This isn't a DR, issue. It is a monitor issue. Or a YouTube issue.
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Jim Simon

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 16, 2019 7:36 pm

"Variants of this question have been covered to death on this and every other color grading forum. The answer is always the same. The only way to get a [proper] image you can trust is to run SDI [or HDMI] out to an accurately calibrated reference monitor. Grading by viewing the image in the GUI just doesn't work." - Jamie LeJeune

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RCModelReviews

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 16, 2019 8:45 pm

Excuse my ignorance but...

If you're viewing footage on a specific monitor in DR and it looks okay then why would it look any different after that footage was uploaded to YouTube and then viewed on that very same monitor? Calibration would play no part in that difference. Obviously any differences must be introduced by YouTube's re-rendering to VP9 or H264 or whatever it happens to use.
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peterjackson

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 16, 2019 8:59 pm

True, but in order to have the right to say anything on this forum you need to use a BM IO card.

Because you know, there is all that spooky OS color management in you signal chain. The spooky stuff that works perfectly fine for the print and still image industry for ages. Also needless to say that technically it's trivial to do the same thing using a recent GPU.

The thing missing to this thread is now a discussion whether BM is hardware vendor, what's their business model, how they need to make money, why resolve is so cheap, etc.

Yes, I happily pay 900 eur for a proper GPU monitoring plugin or extension.
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Bartek Podkowa

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 16, 2019 9:10 pm

On top of what's already been said, Chrome in particular does weird things to color. A while ago I looked it up and there's a flag you can change that brings it in line with other browsers (and much closer to what I see in Resolve and in exported files).

That being said... even if you change it on your end, anyone watching your videos through Chrome will suffer from the same problem. Basically, between differences in hardware and software you have no way of ensuring that the colors in the end product will be shown properly anywhere - the best you can do is follow the correct procedure on your end.
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deezid

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 16, 2019 9:35 pm

Bartek Podkowa wrote:On top of what's already been said, Chrome in particular does weird things to color. A while ago I looked it up and there's a flag you can change that brings it in line with other browsers (and much closer to what I see in Resolve and in exported files).

That being said... even if you change it on your end, anyone watching your videos through Chrome will suffer from the same problem. Basically, between differences in hardware and software you have no way of ensuring that the colors in the end product will be shown properly anywhere - the best you can do is follow the correct procedure on your end.


Exactly
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Jim Simon

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSat Jan 19, 2019 7:30 pm

RCModelReviews wrote:If you're viewing footage on a specific monitor in DR and it looks okay then why would it look any different after that footage was uploaded to YouTube and then viewed on that very same monitor?


Because the Operating System, GPU driver and playback software (such as the browser) all can and frequently do alter the image. Not to mention the YouTube reencoding.

You need to get those variables out of the signal path.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSat Jan 19, 2019 7:37 pm

You tube doesn't alter colors at all. At lest not from sources with typical codecs.
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Michael Tiemann

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSun Jan 20, 2019 12:02 pm

What is color? This video answers "it's not what you think"



P.S. Post preview doesn't show the above link as embedded video, but posting does. Annoying that preview wasted 15 minutes of me searching for answers when "it just works" as a post.
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Charles Bennett

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSun Jan 20, 2019 1:54 pm

I use a computer monitor to grade but have made sure that its colour rendering,brightness, and contrast are as accurate as I can make them. As to YouTube, I've never had problems like Jan. Here are two identical frame grabs from one of my videos. One is from the original render, the other from replay on YT. .
Attachments
Original Render.JPG
Original Render.JPG (274.4 KiB) Viewed 3617 times
YT Replay.JPG
YT Replay.JPG (265.86 KiB) Viewed 3617 times
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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSun Jan 20, 2019 4:33 pm

Charles Bennett wrote:One is from the original render, the other from replay on YT. .

There is clearly some desaturation going on in the YT clip. As I have noticed myself, this desaturation is most noticeable on yellows and greens.
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Bryan Worsley

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSun Jan 20, 2019 7:26 pm

RCModelReviews wrote:
Charles Bennett wrote:One is from the original render, the other from replay on YT. .

There is clearly some desaturation going on in the YT clip. As I have noticed myself, this desaturation is most noticeable on yellows and greens.


I don't see any desaturation going on there.

Here I brought both images into Resolve, zoomed in on the front of the train, pulled a Saturation (only) qualifier off the yellow on the 'Original Render' image 'clip' and copied it to the 'YouTube Replay' image 'clip'.

Image
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSun Jan 20, 2019 7:48 pm

RCModelReviews wrote:
Charles Bennett wrote:One is from the original render, the other from replay on YT. .

There is clearly some desaturation going on in the YT clip. As I have noticed myself, this desaturation is most noticeable on yellows and greens.


You say this based on what ? How yo see master in Resolve etc and then in browser on youtube player?
This is not the way to compare it.
Possible very tiny difference will be down to compression, but this is very small and nothing can be done about it. There're no other shifts which could be counted as some issue on youtube encoding (at least not with typical source formats).
Your perceived desaturation can be simply due to footage being flatter (with less details) due to unavoidable compression. Real issue is most likely related to color management in OS/browser which is not related to youtube itself. Bring your youtube file back to your NLE and compare it against master there. 99% it will look "the same".
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Peter Cave

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostSun Jan 20, 2019 11:06 pm

Charles Bennett wrote:I use a computer monitor to grade but have made sure that its colour rendering,brightness, and contrast are as accurate as I can make them. As to YouTube, I've never had problems like Jan. Here are two identical frame grabs from one of my videos. One is from the original render, the other from replay on YT. .


The Youtube clip shows a difference in black level. This is usually caused by uploading a clip to Youtube with video range levels that Youtube interprets as full range. This video levels vs full range issue is poorly understood by users with no broadcast delivery experience. The more experience users have with the technical side of digital video, the less this is an issue.
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Bryan Worsley

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 1:00 am

Charles Bennett wrote:Here are two identical frame grabs from one of my videos. One is from the original render, the other from replay on YT.

Peter Cave wrote:The Youtube clip shows a difference in black level.


I don't see a difference in black level. Actually the two shots are not are not exactly the same frame (look at the group standing next to the fence on the right), but here I brought them both into Resolve at (default) Full data levels and cropped/stretched as best to match:

Image

Top is the original render, bottom the YT replay.
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Peter Cave

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 1:37 am

Bryan Worsley wrote:
Charles Bennett wrote:Here are two identical frame grabs from one of my videos. One is from the original render, the other from replay on YT.

Peter Cave wrote:The Youtube clip shows a difference in black level.


I don't see a difference in black level. Actually the two shots are not are not exactly the same frame (look at the group standing next to the fence on the right), but here I brought them both into Resolve at (default) Full data levels and cropped/stretched as best to match:

Image

Top is the original render, bottom the YT replay.


Well you are correct. I was on a PC using Opera browser and it looks very different than on my main Mac system. Strange that frame grabs would look different.
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Charles Bennett

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 2:03 am

Done in a hurry so did not quite get the exact same frames. The main reason for posting these was to show the results I get in comparison to the "dark and contrasty" colour that Jan Kocbek has with YT video.
The YT one is running in Chrome. Both frames were grabbed using Windows Snipping tool.
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Bryan Worsley

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 8:11 am

Charles Bennett wrote:The main reason for posting these was to show the results I get in comparison to the "dark and contrasty" colour that Jan Kocbek has with YT video.


Which the histograms of the cropped images confirm.
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Dan Sherman

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 2:50 pm

My bet would be his render settings are different from his original source.

The other possibility, is that YT is altering the footage because out side of what is considered acceptable.
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Bryan Worsley

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 23, 2019 7:04 am

Peter Cave wrote:This is usually caused by uploading a clip to Youtube with video range levels that Youtube interprets as full range. This video levels vs full range issue is poorly understood by users with no broadcast delivery experience. The more experience users have with the technical side of digital video, the less this is an issue.


I've been looking at the way YouTube handles full range footage and find that there can be 'levels' issues when YouTube doesn't recognize it as such.

By way of example. I took a short clip (1080/25p HD-AVC.mov) that was shot on a Canon EOS 1300D with full range (0-255) luma. Pretty low quality but it's useful for 'levels' testing because the luma profile spans the full range. Resolve correctly interprets the clip as full range and imports at Full data levels.

So I exported to various formats at Full data levels, uploaded to YouTube, downloaded the converted files (maximum quality 1080/25p mp4), using YouTube Info, and compared the AVISynth YUV Histograms of the downloads with the original Resolve renders.

First, the original clip and 8-bit exports - H264 and DNxHR_HQ:

Image

Note, the YUV histogram presents the full luma data range (0-255) ; 16-235 is the range between the brown bars.

As the Histograms show, YouTube correctly recognized all three uploads as being full range and compressed the luma to 16-235 on conversion.

But with 10-bit 422 exports the outcome is different - here testing Cineform (AVI and MOV) and DNxHR_HQX (10bit):

Image

YouTube does not recognize these uploads as having full range luma and so encodes with no compression - the full range luma profile is passed through in the converted files.

And this presents an issue when viewing the videos on YouTube. Here are the YouTube videos produced with the original clip and with the DNxHR_HQX (10bit) render:





I also took screen grabs of the first frame (using the Snipping Tool, like Charles did), cropped the (png) images to exclude the control bar and converted to 8bit YUV420 with full range (PC.709) matrix coefficients in AVISynth and examined the YUV Histograms. I've included DNxHR_HQ (8bit) screen grab here also (unfortunately deleted the YT video subsequently). The browser was Firefox on Win 10.

Image

As can be seen, the YouTube videos of 'original clip' and DNxHR_HQ render preserve the full luma profile, but in the DNxHR_HQX (10bit) video the luma has expanded out crushing the blacks and highlights.

In short, probably not a good idea to render full range material to a 10bit 422 format at Full data levels for upload to YouTube.

Doesn't (directly) explain the OP's observations (he's exporting H264) but I suspect also that it is in some way 'levels-related'.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 23, 2019 9:28 am

Simply don't send YUV based codecs with full range data. DNxHR has flag for it, h264/h265 also, but most other codecs don't, so youtube engine has even no chance to know that video is full range. They may also blindly assume that video is legal range, so best to stick with video range.
Another issue is on playbacks side- not necessarily every player/browser will play full range h264 properly, so even if youtube processes it properly you may still have bad end result.
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Bryan Worsley

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Re: H264 export ugly colors on Youtube

PostWed Jan 23, 2019 3:30 pm

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Simply don't send YUV based codecs with full range data. DNxHR has flag for it, h264/h265 also...


Interestingly, on further testing, H264 exported with Full data levels in MOV container isn't recognized as full range by YouTube, whereas the H264.mp4 export used in that test series was.

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