Colors shift when uploading to youtube, how to fix?

[Daniel Waldron]

YouTube and most other video hosts do their own compression to the video after you upload it. If your export looks good and you’re following YouTube’s specifications, I would say it is out of your control. You could try compensating for the shift ahead of time by adjusting your red and seeing if the upload is closer to what you want, but it’s just a guessing game at that point and I can’t see it being worth it.

[Chris Wright]

you didn’t say what program you were exporting out of. What I would do is…
1. take the final master clip and import into AE
2. disable interpretation color management in project settings
3. apply utility color profile converter , set output to sRGB 1966

now the color should be the same online because the sRGB is standard across the board.

[Jeremy Mccloud]

Thanks for the replies! I’ve finished the video and the client has uploaded to their website, I suppose running from their server and the colors still do not match, so maybe it’s not just a YouTube problem.

The client hasn’t said anything, but I want to be sure I have it fixed and know what the problem is for next time.

The video is here: https://www.maxibond.com.au/ and the red used in the text in the video, should be exactly the same as the red from the logo. I sampled the colors directly from their logo ai file when I imported it into after effects.

I thought maybe it was my browser or computer, so I’ve tried different browsers and 3 different computers (2 windows and 1 chrome), they seem to shift colors a little, but they all do not match the color of the logo (though the colors from the chrome book looked a little closer).

@Chris Wright – I used sRGB 1966 as the Working Space and Output when I created it, I don’t know if that makes a difference, but I’ll try adding the “Color Profile Converter” and see if that works.

I’ve also tried outputting as Rec 709(I think it was), that said it’s what YouTube changes the video to, but it didn’t seem to make a difference either. I’ve also tried exporting directly from AE and also Adobe Media Encoder, in both MP4 and MOV H.264. If anyone else have any suggestions, I’ll give it try.

Thanks!

[Georgios Tryfonas]

Hello Jeremy, I am running into exactly the same problem just from Premiere Pro. Did you actually manage to fix this? I would so appreciate something close to a solution.

Others have claimed this has something to do with Youtube encoding but it doesn’t really as I had 100% accuracy on all projects till I upgraded to Windows 10 and Premiere CC 2015 a couple of weeks ago. I have even re-rendered older projects that worked fine a couple of weeks ago but this time I do get the color shift. I don’t get the color shift when uploading the previous renders though. I am thinking about a codec problem but I have tried exporting on other codecs. Video plays the same as Premiere locally. This is so weird – probably resolvable with a re-install but I’m trying to avoid that.

Any clues appreciated.
Thanks

[Ben Rich]

I have been fighting this issue for years now. Still no proper fix yet but I have found a trick to help mitigate the issue a little:

Since the color shift is likely due to YouTube’s compression algorithm throwing away color data, as most compressions do, I took to de-saturating areas that were not vital color zones. Primarily it was desaturating the shadows and/or the highlights. This way YouTube’s process doesn’t have to throw away as much color data overall since there is less to throw away in the shadows. This is all speculation on my part but it seems to help some. And I will often oversaturate the mid-tones slightly in anticipation of losing some color.

Ben Rich
Videographer | Technologist
https://sites.google.com/site/benrichfilm/

[Sharad Patel]

For whatever reason, maybe because I didn’t use youtube in the past, but use Vimeo, I never noticed this problem until I started working as a video producer at a new job that distributes work primarily online. (Before, much of my pro work was for broadcast or theatrical (festival) projection, and colors always looked great on those screens)

Recently, I made a careful color grade on an interview subject to get just the right skintone…
Monitor is calibrated to Rec709, the AE workspace for graphics is Rec709, Premiere reportedly works in Rec709, and the color grade is done in Davinci Resolve which reportedly also uses a Rec709 color space. (No, I did not have a dedicated monitor with an SDI connection)

But once on youtube it lost contrast, and had a slight yellow-green shift (which was made apparent because the emphasis here was on the skin tone. Yet, youtube was supposed to also use the Rec709 color space.

I looked at the exported movie file (encoded as an Apple ProRes master and as a Mpeg4 for youtube) and in QuickTime as well, both also looked dull and with a slight color shift. so basically youtube and QuickTime were both displaying the movie the same incorrect way.

This color flaw showed up consistently on the computer monitor, any browser, phone screen, etc.

Just to check, I imported the master and the Mpeg into Premiere and…. they looked great, just as intended!

So… I opened them in After Effects where I had controls over color management for the project. With the Rec709 management on for the project color space, the contrast/colors of both looked flawed, but with color management completely off, they both looked great! So somehow Resolve was showing me what the colors looked like with color management off, but youtube was displaying it through a Rec 709 color space translation.

On a completely random move, I decided to re-output my master from resolve as a sRGB profiled file out of After Effects (since it gives you control over what color profile to flag an output with). I then used this on Youtube and looked at it in QuickTime… and the contrast was correct! But the color shift was still there.

I found that Resolve does let you control the color space, but I haven’t figured out the right parameters to recreate the dull, yellow-green tinged output. Yet.

But then I also read that the difference between a full 0-255 range RGB output vs 16-235 RGB output could also be causing the loss of contrast (or increase in contrast other people are surprised by at the end of their workflow to distribution). There is a switch in Resolve to make sure it’s full range output.

So I guess I need to map out the variables and find the magic chain that maintains consistency between Monitor calibration, Premiere, After Effects, Resolve, Rec709, sRGB, 0-255, 16-235… but it feels like I’m trying to guess a winning lottery number.

My work:
https://ufoclubcreative.com