Colours changing when I upload to Vimeo/YouTube

[Noah Kadner]

Not much you can do here- YouTube tends to apply its own filters upon upload. Try a shorter upload from a ProRes compression.

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training

[Rikki Blow]

hi noah

well yes, i uploaded a 20 second colour test in prores 422 and that remains the brand orange.

but clearly i can’t start putting up 8 minute interviews in this codec.

do you think that fiddling about slightly with the orange values i might be able to find something that compresses closer to what the brand colour should be? or will the whole orange range just turn red?

isn’t it weird that vimeo is also turning this red? that’s why i decided to ask on an FCPX forum rather than a YouTube forum – it seemed unlikely both youtube and vimeo were using the same compression technique.

[Bret Williams]

What’s your bit rate?

_______________________________________________________________________
https://BretFX.com FCP X Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists

[Rikki Blow]

bit rate info:

[Bret Williams]

Ok, so 16mb/sec. That should be fine. You’re REC709? I’m wondering if it’s a color profile thing. I do a lot of Home Depot work (can you say orange?) and I’ve never come across this color shift.

_______________________________________________________________________
https://BretFX.com FCP X Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists

[Rikki Blow]

yep i know that youtube filters and compresses, but this is such a big shift, and although i guess the video looks generally a tiny bit redder if you look hard, it’s this particular shade of orange that seems to go way off – also the fact it’s doing the same on vimeo makes me really wonder if i have some weird camera or FCPX colour profiling setting wrong somewhere along the workflow, but i’m just not sure where to look. i don’t think it stems from any camera setting though, because i’ve imported and edited footage from other cameras with same result.

[Noah Kadner]

Also you might have an issue in your monitor calibration. I would recommend doing a final grade out to a broadcast monitor ie not your desktop.

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training

[Rikki Blow]

unfortunately i don’t have a broadcast monitor, but i’m a bit confused – if it’s a monitor thing then surely watching a youtube video would have have the same cast as watching the quicktime or the pre-edit in final cut.

they might ALL be wrong, but not JUST the uploaded/compressed one.

am i misunderstanding something about calibration?

[Noah Kadner]

You could try the Rec2020 preset and see if it makes any difference.

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training

[Rikki Blow]

tried 2020 and any difference was negligible.

however, have been doing a bunch of tests using ‘Drop’ – a neat little screen colour analyser, and after playing around with monitor profiles and different browsers, i’ve got some more details to report.

main headline – this seems to be a HUGE problem with Firefox. (v 54.0 on Sierra on 2016 Touch Bar 15″ MacBook Pro)

I created a short video in FCPX of a simple solid orange screen (RGB 244/70/28) and uploaded it to youtube and to vimeo.

looking at the vids on Safari browser (which I don’t often use), they are coming back within reasonable tolerance of those RGB values. the only slight anomaly is that the YouTube generated thumbnail choices are a lot redder, but I tend to upload thumbnails generally and these always look fine on both Firefox and Safari.

but looking at both Vimeo and YouTube on the Firefox, the solid orange videos appear bright red (like 255/0/0!! – although the self-generated thumbnail on Vimeo reads 255/30/00).

doing a bit of research on Firefox, seems a few other folk have complained of some colour problems. I tried setting my icc profile in the Firefox color_management configuration (which was a suggestion on one mozilla forum), but this didn’t help – and i haven’t got any further with this.

one other big difference of note between Safari & Firefox:
when i was playing around selecting different colour profiles on my monitor, i discovered that Safari would change its look in the same way as the rest of my monitor screen, but Firefox would briefly blink as I changed, and while the rest of my screen takes on new colours, the web page reverts to however Firefox was displaying it – ie keeping the colours constant.

all this is probably straying far outside the remit of an FCPX forum, sorry, but it started with my concerns over export settings and why my video colours might be changing so much when uploaded.

if anyone has any Firefox colour knowledge they’d like to share, I’m still baffled what’s happening and why it’s not a big deal the hasn’t been fixed by Mozilla (unless it’s some system or software setting i’m missing here).

attached is a pic of various oranges! top left is YouTube on Firefox, top right Vimeo. in the middle is the quicktime i uploaded. bottom left and right are Safari on YouTube and Firefox respectively. hopefully you can see why this freaking me out!