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

[John Rofrano]

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

What you actually should be doing is when you start a Photoshop document you should select from the correct Film & Video preset and under Color Profile change it from “Don’t Color Manage this Document” to HDTV (Rec. 709) 16-235 so that Photoshop knows the correct color space to use. Photoshop will then give you an indicator of when your colors are out of range (like Vegas does in the generated media) and you can click it to bring the color back into range. I believe there is even a built-in Photoshop action that corrects levels and color to video levels. You have to fix both Luminance and Color values to be broadcast safe.

[Thomas Felton] “Now I’m wondering if the Contrast, Luminance is also affected ?”

Yes, which is why I never simply adjust Levels, I also add a Color Curve to get the contrast back to what it was before the Levels were applied. BTW Level and Luminance are the same thing. The Levels filter adjusts the Luminance but not the contrast.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Thomas Felton] “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.”

Thanks so much for the kind words. I’m OK when people just get with the need and take off, but I know what you mean. Sticking around a while and contributing is a great way to say thanks to the entire community. It’s better when we all help each other. Take care,

~jr

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

[Thomas Felton]

Thank you John, very good to know. I will be practicing this from now on!

[Laird Pettit]

I too have the problem of dark renders, created correcting for what I believe is extra brightness in the Video Preview window. Various forums have solutions that didn’t work for me, ..but I found a work around by accident. ..which I think may show a flaw or vagary with some systems, in Sony Vegas Platinum. ..mine is ver. 11.

In short, brightness and color match closely in all these: Orig clip, icon shown in Media area, and icon on timeline. The Video Preview window is noticably brighter. My two monitors match when moving a clip between the two. I happened to discover that, if, in the Video Preview window, I click on the External monitor icon (blue, upper left corner, the video jumps (still on the second monitor) to full screen, and changes to proper brightness.

In other words,choosing a slightly different means for displaying the Preview, changed the brightness setting substantially. …seems to me a Sony Vegas problem many are having, that none of us understand.

…any words of wisdom? Thanks.

[Daniel Barbour]

I have also had the dark mp4 render problem, and have tested quite a bit, I don’t know if this will apply to many of you but I have noticed I get dark mp4 renders with Bandicam recorded video but have noticed that I don’t get the dark mp4s if I recorded with Bandicam’s Motion Jpeg video codec instead of its MPEG-1 video codec.

I hope this can help some of you as it helped me.

[Laird Pettit]

If the Video Preview window seems, to so many users, some professional, to be too bright (and not matching the brightness of the original clip, the timeline icons, nor media window icons, AND this extra brightness can be corrected just by going to full screen, IS THERE NOT A FLAW IN VEGAS THAT ISN’T BEING ADDRESSED?

To test this method, you need to be using two monitors, with the Video preview on one of them. Then, in the Video Preview window, click on the blue monitor symbol (which displays the Video Preview full screen on the same monitor. i.e. NO change in settings, codecs, recording format, just going full-screen in Vegas.

If I am wrong, then can someone explain the reason, so we can all understand how to deal with this seemingly wide-spread problem?

Thanks.

Laird Pettit

[John Rofrano]

[Laird Pettit] “If the Video Preview window seems, to so many users, some professional, to be too bright (and not matching the brightness of the original clip, the timeline icons, nor media window icons, AND this extra brightness can be corrected just by going to full screen, IS THERE NOT A FLAW IN VEGAS THAT ISN’T BEING ADDRESSED?”

This is not a flaw it is by design. You will also notice that the Secondary Display has options for deinterlacing and conversion from Studio RGB to Computer RGB which the preview window does not have and which will absolutely affect the brightness of your video. The two displays are different by design which is why they don’t look the same.

[Laird Pettit] “If I am wrong, then can someone explain the reason, so we can all understand how to deal with this seemingly wide-spread problem? “

The preview window is not to be used for color correcting. It is only a “preview”. You should be using the Secondary Monitor (or Full Screen if you have only one monitor) to perform color correction. Preview is just to show you a close proximity of what your video will look like. It is not a wide-spread problem… it is the way the program is designed to work. Color Correcting has always been done on an external monitor since the days of Vegas Video 2 and DV.

~jr

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

[Paul Wright]

Making a corporate video for a client that will ultimately be supplied on DVD. Previews are delivered via the Internet in a suitable format such as wmv. Already have to be aware of colour issues here and one will be aware of the DVD final output being in video colour space. But the preview colours are way off, no matter what level plug in is applied. There has to be a straightfoward process that ensures color will remain the same as the supplied source.

Client supplies a master image of their logo which is white text on a red background. In Vegas, create a generated solid color based on the RGB values of the red from the image. Can’t do that anymore because there is no RGB model in the color picker. Eyedrop the image(already starting to guess..not good). So what is the Sony generated media in color space wise? DO I care? Not really but now it has become yet another disturbing “gotcha” in the workflow.

Not talking about esoteric colour grading. Just talking about the same red the client supplied when looked at on the same monitor.

THE SAME RED THE CLIENT SUPPLIED WHEN LOOKED AT ON THE SAME MONITOR

Client is looking at it on a standard computer monitor
I am also and so will the millions of people who may watch it.
As long as its the same rgb values, the color should look close enough to not be disturbing.

But once you make a wmv,mp4 for client preview, no matter what you do, it doesn’t look the same on the same monitor?

[John Rofrano]

[Paul Wright] “THE SAME RED THE CLIENT SUPPLIED WHEN LOOKED AT ON THE SAME MONITOR”

Are you saying that you color pick the color and when viewed on the same monitor it’s not the same color? or after it is rendered (because some codecs will change the color space)? It should be the same as the color you picked when previewed in Vegas.

[Paul Wright] “Client is looking at it on a standard computer monitor
I am also and so will the millions of people who may watch it.”

If the monitors that you and your client are using are uncalibrated then you can’t expect to get the same color. This is nothing new. Some people joke that NTSC stands for Never The Same Color. This problem has been with us since the dawn of television. If you use uncalibrated devices, you get different colors. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has more than one TV their house in from a different manufacturer. Our Samsung HDTV looks NOTHING like our Sony HDTV (not even close!). That’s the “state of the art” when it comes to TV. You’re not going to be able to fix that.

What you should do is buy a hardware calibrator like a Spyder4Elite and calibrate your monitors and show your client that it looks correct on your monitor. That’s the best that you can do. I calibrate my monitors monthly with a Spyder3 and I always get the colors I expect. It also helps hat I use ASUS ProArt PA246Q monitors which are very accurate.

~jr

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

[Paul Wright]

Hi John,

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my post and apologies for the poor construction of thoughts I threw at it this morning!

Yes I do mean once I have rendered either an mp4 or wmv(client preffered and worse than mp4) for the client to preview, their Corporate red(from sony generated solid color) is now orange on the same monitor used for vegas even after trying both sony levels plugins. Using MainConcept by the way.

Either I have not noticed this in the past or something has changed Maybe its the players or the removal of the ability to type in 198,44,22 and forget about it? What does 0.1,0.07,0.01 really mean? It doesn’t apply usefully to anything in my world.

Being a sound engineer, I understand the need to master material on calibrated equipment, but we are not colour correcting here, just trying to get a similar colour to the one we were given, at the view point – which in this case will be the same uncalibrated monitors I am using. If to the eye it looks close on a bunch of different monitors, then it good to go. And that is the way it used to be. Now its obviously different and I am expecting the client to notice.

I will put a link up a bit later to show the comparison.

Thanks once again for your reply and all your comments on this forum. It’s great to have someone with your knowledge taking time to advise.It is very appreciated. And of course hats completely off to Sony who have created a tool that is capable, robust and reliable and amazing in its ability to absorb anything you throw at it!

Best

Paul