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Washed-out blacks
Hi everyone.
I’m pretty new to Premier Pro (CS3) and though I’ve had a quick search through the forums, I can’t seem to find an answer to my question, so here goes:
It appears that any time I export a video file in any format other than AVI, any real black images (such as an all black background) appear to be washed-out, looking more than a dark grey than black.
Ideally I want to be able to export my video to a WMV file (for unloading to YouTube and similar services) so even though AVI appears to save out perfectly, the file size is far too large.
I hope someone can help here.
Mike.
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4 Replies
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This is a compression problem. Try to crush the blacks using the fast color corrector.
Play with the black levels so the black areas come up blacker. It’s a fine balance to not darken the main image too much as it affects everything with a dark range.
Play with the gray level too.
– Jon 🙂How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?
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Thanks for the fast reply John.
I’m not really sure how to use the FCC. I brought it up and to say it’s a little confusing to me is an understatement! If you could point me towards and online resource that explains it a little that would be appreciated.
As I said before, the blacks on the original AVI are, well, very “black”. The video is sourced from a a program (CamStudio) that has recorded directly from my PC desktop.
I tried setting the WMV image quality slider to ‘maximum’ in the Adobe Media Encoder section also.
I might play around with saving in other formats to see if that helps, though as the target audience is YouTube, again I need to keep the file size to a minimum.
Mike.
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You could also use the Levels filter. Apply it to your footage, switch your preview window to YC waveform, then bring the (RGB) black output level (third down) up until the lowest parts of the waveform gets up past the dotted line (7.5 IREs).
Then go back to your footage preview and make fine adjustment to your liking.
Also remember that the darkest part of your footage may not be recoverable. In the digital world, a clip in the blacks or in the whites is lost.
Vince
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Has anyone has much success on this issue? My footage preview looks great, but as soon as I go into the Encoder (before compressing even) the preview blacks are brighter and the overall image is washed. Is this some kind of gamma issue?
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