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The Curse of the WYSIWYG Youtube Upload Strikes Again!
Guys, I’ve been admiring this forum from afar for some time but on this occasion I’ve reached somewhat of a brick wall. Forgive me for digging up an old chestnut but I’m being plagued by the curse of the Sony Vegas WYSIWYG Youtube upload with respect to colours only (blacks, whites and greys seem to match closely).
I have consulted the musicvid10’s famous tutorial: https://youtu.be/rWMX5lSvEgY plus Schuch Design’s tutorial: https://youtu.be/cRFAL-TJWWw plus many articles including Glenn Chan’s articles: https://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/glennchan/levels_in_sony_vegas_part_one.htm and
https://www.glennchan.info/articles/vegas/v8color/vegas-9-levels.htm , Bubblevision’s article: https://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-video/YouTube-Vimeo-levels-fix.htm and this article: https://www.jazzythedog.com/testing/DNxHD/HD-Guide.aspx plus countless threads including Laurence’s 2009 thread: https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=677560), muscivid10’s 2010 thread: https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=718695, James Dubendorf’s 2011 thread: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/942083
and paul w’s 2011 thread: https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/Forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=868968.The overriding advice is, as everyone well knows, to apply a Computer RGB to Studio RGB levels filter.
I am using Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum HD on Windows 8. So that means I don’t have access to a Video Scope.
To illustrate my problem, I’m using the Belle Nuit Test Chart (1920 X 1080 version, available at https://www.belle-nuit.com/test-chart) as it’s useful to have colours in there as well – not just black and white, to illustrate the problem. You’ll see why later on in this post.
I simply imported the chart into Vegas and dragged onto the timeline. I then applied the Sony Levels plugin with Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset selected as advised in musicvid10’s tutorial and countless other threads/articles. I then uploaded to Youtube via the “Upload to Youtube…” option in the Project menu in Vegas.
I include captioned screen grabs of four separate videos as follows:
1. Vegas Preview after FX unselected (what I want the Youtube upload to look like):
2. Local PC player (VLC) using the MP4 file rendered by Vegas:
3. Youtube player:
4. Downloaded MP4 file (click on the downward arrow beside “Edit” in Video Manager on Youtube and select Download MP4):
The uploaded video colours does not closely match the Vegas Preview Window (with the Sony Levels Plugin unchecked/not applied).
The downloaded MP4 is a very close colour match (RGBs are with a few points) for the Vegas Preview Window, so at least we’re going in the right direction here. Again, as everyone knows, from the aforementioned material, it’s the Youtube player that’s making it look different (the actual file that’s stored on Youtube is very nearly the same).
My local PC player: in this case VLC, also very closely matches the Vegas Preview Window. So we have three closely matching videos: one preview, one downloaded, one local, all within perhaps 2/3 RGB points of each other.
Interestingly, the Youtube video does not seem to be crushing the blacks and whites as the set of 255 251 239 231 and 0 4 12 20, respectively, are distinguishable from each other, unlike if you uploaded without a levels correction. In fact, it would appear that all blacks, whites and greys are nearly the same. However, the colours are significantly different shades, which indicates the importance of using a colour test chart.
The External Monitor on Vegas (accessed by the blue monitor button above the Preview Window) shows something different. I’m assuming it shows what’s been uploaded to Youtube (or close) but If I try to get a screengrab of the external monitor I just end up with a screengrab of the Preview Window for whatever reason so how close it is to Youtube I can’t discern. I have checked the Color Management and Studio RGB checkboxes under the Device Preview tab in Options/Preferences. Note I don’t physically have an eternal monitor so I’m using the fullscreen option.
So, finally, the thing that I wonder is, if I have applied the Computer RGB to Studio RGB preset, why would Youtube still be changing the colours significantly? What further do I need to do to get a match/close match with Youtube?
Incidentally, I wonder also why there is never an exact colour match between the different images; is this just part of the rendering/compression process?
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9 Replies
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[Iggy Roddy] “I wonder also why there is never an exact colour match between the different images; is this just part of the rendering/compression process?”
Rendering to a lossy format will ALWAYS loose data. The information that gets lost is mostly color because it is intentionally thrown away to get high compression. (i.e., 4:4:4 gets reduced to 4:2:2 or even 4:2:0 or 4:1:1) If you don’t want to loose anything you need to render to a lossless format. Unfortunately, these files are quite large and not used as a deliver format.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I just wanted to say “Thank you!” for posting the link for the free test pattern. This will come in handy!
Dave
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The shortest answer I can think of is: “Because it’s YouTube.”
YouTube is a lot of good things: quick, easy, ubiquitous. But it’s not known for being kind when re-encoding uploads for delivery. We also have to factor in whatever the YouTube player is doing to levels and colors on playback.
In short: Do your best and feed YouTube the best file you can, knowing that you have no control over how much the site will chew up your file once it’s received.
—
Radio guy in a TV world. Bigasssuperstar.com -
[Dave Osbun] “I just wanted to say “Thank you!” for posting the link for the free test pattern. This will come in handy!
Dave”
You’re welcome! It is useful to diagnose problems before you move into real world footage.
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[Scott Simpson] “The shortest answer I can think of is: “Because it’s YouTube.”
YouTube is a lot of good things: quick, easy, ubiquitous. But it’s not known for being kind when re-encoding uploads for delivery. We also have to factor in whatever the YouTube player is doing to levels and colors on playback.
In short: Do your best and feed YouTube the best file you can, knowing that you have no control over how much the site will chew up your file once it’s received.”
Thanks, I guess I thought that the “A Better Method” tutorial offered a solution – which it did for blacks/white/greys but obviously the green for example is a lot brighter on Youtube.
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Guys, I’ve an important update on this. I was rummaging through the old posts on similar issues and it got me thinking to check a different browser which is what I did.
So here is the equivalent Youtube screen grab on Internet Explorer (my previous screen grab had been when using Google Chrome):
As you can see it’s a much closer match to the Vegas Preview.
For example the RGBs for red are:
Vegas Preview: 180 16 16
Youtube on IE: 180 16 17 (below green line)
Youtube on Chrome: 167 0 18, the green is:
Vegas Preview: 16 180 16
Youtube on IE: 16 181 16
Youtube on Chrome: 29 209 22, the blue is
Vegas Preview: 16 16 180
Youtube on IE: 15 16 180
Youtube on Chrome: 18 5 174and, just to pick another non RGB colour, pink is
Vegas Preview: 180 16 180
Youtube on IE: 181 16 181 (some minor variations of this)
Youtube on Chrome: 167 0 177 (below green line)So what’s the cause of this difference?
I’m not quite sure, but I visited this page: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html and it told me that my flash versions were 13.0.0.182 and 11.3.372 for Google Chrome and Internet Explorer, respectively. I’m not an expert in this area but the cause may be these different versions, but I know also that HTML5 is involved with playing Youtube videos so I can’t give a conclusive reason yet. It would seem worrying though if a later version of flash was producing inaccurate colours.
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[John Rofrano] “[Iggy Roddy] “I wonder also why there is never an exact colour match between the different images; is this just part of the rendering/compression process?”
Rendering to a lossy format will ALWAYS loose data. The information that gets lost is mostly color because it is intentionally thrown away to get high compression. (i.e., 4:4:4 gets reduced to 4:2:2 or even 4:2:0 or 4:1:1) If you don’t want to loose anything you need to render to a lossless format. Unfortunately, these files are quite large and not used as a deliver format.”Thanks for the reply John, I’m just getting my head around color sampling! But, I’ve now got the RGBs very close (in many cases within 1 point) – see update below. So I’m not going to lose too much sleep over very marginal mismatches in color.
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Youtube can do HTML5, not this option needs to be selected. They typically default to their classic flash based video.
Just right click the video window and see if you get an About menu item for a flash player.
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Thanks, I activated HTML5 on Google Chrome (34.0.1847.131 m) but it makes no difference:
I’m not sure how to identify the version of HTML5.
Anyway, I’m wondering whether there is some other parameter that could make the difference. Otherwise there are millions of people getting off-color in their videos (if they’re using the Chrome/Flash/HTML5 combination). Granted 99% of people won’t notice.
I also tried Safari (4.1.3 (4533.19.4)) with a Flash version of 9.0.246.0 on an old Mac, purely out of interest:
Again, the colour is off although it’s such an old version the consequences are academic.
But, on the later versions of Safari/Flash (7.0 (9537.71)/13.0.0.206) on an iMac everything is OK:
I also tried a later version of Flash (13.0.0.206) on Internet Explorer (8.0.6001.18702) on a different computer and I’m getting a good match:
I realise that some of the browser/flash versions may seem somewhat obscure but they represent the ones I have available on various machines.
So, in conclusion, Internet Explorer and Safari using latest flash versions are giving a very close colour match to the Vegas Preview.
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