Sony Vegas mp4 render dark, more contrast, color change, brightness

[Nigel O’neill]

[Thomas Felton] “What you see is what you should get.”

Not entirely true. If you monitor is poorly or not calibrated, you colors will be ‘off’.

Color correction is unavoidable. In most video situations, color temperature will vary and affect your white balance. I do a lot of theatre work and white balance for tungsten. Occasionally, the lighting guy throws in some LED which throws the manual white balance off.

[Thomas Felton] “apply the Levels filter and select computer rgb to studio rgb”

This only works if you are using a properly calibrated monitor, otherwise its a bit of a crap shoot.

I don’t think I have ever done an edit where I have not done some sort of color grading.

[Thomas Felton] “I’m getting Adobe Premiere lol”

Enjoy Premiere. I suspect we may see you back in a few months 🙂

[Mike Kujbida]

Thomas, I highly recommend reading the following thread on the Sony Vegas forum as it gets into this “minor” problem in great detail.
Why DOES YT clamp 16<>235?

[Thomas Felton]

Hi Nigel thanks for the reply.

I’m curious, I bring in a picture and render it out, it changes color. Why is that not possible to stay the same?

[Thomas Felton]

Hi Mike thanks for link, I’m reading it right now. There seems to be a lot of chat about this. I have some learning to do. Hopefully I come out of this thing wiser.

[John Rofrano]

You are correct that misconceptions about this are still alive and well.

What are you using to determine that the video is coming out darker because I’m not seeing it. I get the exact same levels in my rendered file as I saw in my Vegas Preview.

You should be aware that the Windows Media Player and YouTube player will crush the blacks and whites and lie to you about what your video looks like. Try a player like VLC or QuickTime that doesn’t mess with the video playback I think you’ll find that your video looks as you expect it to.

Here is what I’ve found:

This my original project in Vegas Pro:

Note: If you can’t see the difference between 255 & 235 or 0 & 16 in this image, then you need to calibrate your computer monitor until you can see it. If you don’t have a properly calibrated computer monitor then stop right here. You have correctly identified your problem!

Below is what the rendered MP4 file looks like in VLC (looks the same to me):

Below is what the rendered MP4 file looks like in Windows Media Player (crushed blacks and whites):

Below is what the rendered MP4 file looks like in QuickTime (looks the same to me):

Below is what a rendered MP4 file looks like in YouTube (crushed blacks and whites):

These are all from the same Sony AVC/H.264 MP4 file rendered from Vegas Pro. This proves that there is nothing “dark” about the video being rendered by Vegas Pro. Your video player may just be altering it’s output (in which case it cannot be trusted to check video levels).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Thomas Felton]

Thanks John for the great reply and for including those images. From your images, the WMP and Youtube look the same levels on my screen. The rest are the same in that I see a difference in the values.

What am I using to determine video is coming out darker?

Here’s an example of what I’ve done:

For this recent particular test, I made an image in photoshop that is different shades of red. I’ve saved it as a .PSD (Photoshop) and a .PNG file. I look at them both in Photoshop, they are exactly the same. I look at them in windows photo viewer, I look at them online, etc. They are the same colors, everything. is consistent across the board.

Then, I bring the PSD and PNG images into Vegas. I notice they have changed as soon as see them in the preview, They appear slightly darker. I also notice the PSD and PNG images are different from each other, even though when I look at them in Photoshop they are exactly the same.

Now, I render the images out as an mp4 and open in VLC, WMP, Quicktime, and upload to YouTube.

I side by side look at the original image in Photoshop/web browser/photo viewer and have the mp4 open in WMP, VLC, QT, and YouTube.

I notice the difference from the what the image looks like verses the mp4 in all of the players.

Now I’m going to compare my original image to the mp4’s in their respective players:

WMP – Looks more orange, more contrast than image.
Quicktime – More pink, same contrast as image, less definition on the resolution also.
VLC – More pink also, but not as much as Quicktime. same contrast as image.
YouTube – Looks the same as WMP, more orange, more contrast than image.

What I add the computer to studio rgb they are still off. However, the WMP and YouTube are looking closer to my original image. The VLC and Quicktime still look awful, They’ve changed too but almost for the worse.

You see anything in what I’m doing that might be causing this issue for me?

What I would love to know is…

How can I render a video in Vegas of just an image and have it look just like the image?

I don’t want to color correct the image in vegas because obviously I could spend an hour color correcting, rendering, comparing, editing, re-rendering, etc. until it looks the same. I just want an image to render out the same as it looks on it’s own. There must be a way to do this.

Thanks John

[Mike Kujbida]

Thomas, if you can, please post the Photoshop image that you created (the red one) somewhere for us to download and look at and see if we can offer any suggestions.

p.s. another related thread on the Sony forum is Proposal for Semi-Automated Levels in Vegas

[John Rofrano]

[Thomas Felton] “How can I render a video in Vegas of just an image and have it look just like the image?”

I think you’re dealing with color space issue. You should read Glen Chan’s excellent article on:

“HD” versus “SD” color space

It will explain how the same input R’G’B’ values will lead to different Y’CbCr color values depending on which color space is being used. Note that images do not use the same color space as video and SD video does not use the same color space as HD video. Add to this the fact that some codecs only support certain color spaces so they will change the color of your image to fit within the color space of the codec and you have even more headaches.

This is a case where you may want to enable 32-bit floating point (full range) and render to QuickTime Animation codec to see how close you can get your video to match your test image. I would not use this to deliver your videos because you should be using video levels but it may answer some of your questions as to why images and video don’t look the same.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Thomas Felton]

I believe I found a good solution my problem of “what you see in photoshop is what you get in a video render”

what i’ve done was add a “levels” filter on the top layer of my photoshop image, I adjusted the values to 16-235.

It obviously changed what my existing image looked like, but I was able to add another levels filter underneath that layer and boost the levels so it looked how I wanted it.

I then saved the image with the top layer levels filter OFF and then rendered it in vegas…

What happened? The image came out the same. viola !

Everyone’s post on here helped push me in the right direction for finding a solution.

What did I learn? I think it is best to always work within the confines of 16-235 when editing for video so the levels are more consistent after renders.

Now I’m wondering if the Contrast, Luminance is also affected ?

[Thomas Felton]

This stuff seems complicated to me as I would consider myself a beginner within the confines of being technically sound in color and rendering.

Creatively I know what looks good but the technical aspect seems a bit of a challenge for me right now. You have really all helped me out a great deal and opened my eyes up to a world of things I would have never considered.

I really appreciate all your help and taking the time to read and post your advise. I always felt that people on forums get the info and take off. I just wanted to make sure you guys know how grateful I am of your help.

Thank You

Tom