Same h264 movie looks different in quicktime and flash

Compression Techniques

Same h264 movie looks different in quicktime and flash

Posted by Chris Tomberlin on March 8, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Does anyone here know why the exact same h264 mp4 file looks different when played in quicktime than when presented in flash player 10? The first still is from the flash player and the second is from Quicktime. The differences are much more obvious in motion. It looks like Quicktime is doing some chroma smoothing or softening that is preferable in this case. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Chris Tomberlin
Outpost Pictures

Chris Blair replied 17 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Daniel Low
March 8, 2009 at 10:07 pm

This is almost certainly the extremely well known Quicktime H.264 Gamma issue. There’s no real solution but tons of published workarounds.

We’ll likely see a fix from Apple with the next release of Quicktime; in Snow Leopard but it’s not certain.

__________________________________________________________________
Fonts are like cologne:

A bad choice speaks louder than a good one.
Chris Tomberlin
March 8, 2009 at 10:49 pm

Daniel,

Thanks for the reply. I’m all too familiar with Quicktime gamma issues in FCP and AE, but this looks more like a softening or chroma smoothing type issue. The gamma doesn’t actually look that different to me. Any other ideas?

Thanks again,
Chris
Outpost Pictures

Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures
Daniel Low
March 8, 2009 at 11:12 pm

There is most certainly a difference in Gamma but having looked closely I can now see the smoothing effect you are referring to.

Are you by any chance resizing the clip in the flash player or are you transcoding to the exact delivery dimensions? And what frame size are you using?

__________________________________________________________________
Fonts are like cologne:

A bad choice speaks louder than a good one.
Chris Tomberlin
March 8, 2009 at 11:30 pm

I’m not resizing at all but am transcoding to the exact same size for both QT and flash. Frame size is 480X272.

Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures
Chris Blair
March 9, 2009 at 2:31 am

Doesn’t QT player have quite a few options for video processing upon playback? Like deinterlace and some others? Couldn’t that be what’s going on?

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

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