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Activity Forums Adobe Premiere Pro washed out contrasty mpeg2 dvd

  • washed out contrasty mpeg2 dvd

    Posted by Rajeshm on November 22, 2006 at 6:24 am

    I am having a strange problem that I have ben wrestling with for a couple of days. I captured a bunch of DV PAL tapes with Premiere PRo 2 and am planning compositing in After effects. To test my workflow I output a test clip as a Quicktime with Animation codec which looks great on computer monitor. I converted this to mpeg2 with TMpegEnc burnt a dvd and checked on TV and the clip looks washed out and contrasty.
    SO I encoded the original Dv avi’s that I had captured and checked it on tv and they looked washed and contrasty as the After effects clips.
    Since then I have encoded with 4 different encoders, burnt DVD with 2 different authoring applications , processed the clips in After effects adding Levels adjustment to reduce levels to 16-235 , tried a 601 shrink levels filter during encoding as well. Also tried lowering contrast during encoding mpeg2.
    I suspect it has to do with yuv-RGB color space issues but there is no explanation since I have tried every combination I could think of.

    COuld anyyone have a clue? I can’t find anything similar on the web forums?

    RAJ M

    Harm Millaard replied 19 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • Harm Millaard

    November 22, 2006 at 2:52 pm

    You are working in PAL, so why use limiting 16-235? PAL is 0-255. Secondly, what are your settings when using Adobe Media Encoder and MPEG2-DVD?

    Using AME I never experienced your problems, so please give some more details.

    Harm Millaard

  • Rajeshm

    November 22, 2006 at 3:37 pm

    Hi If you check my earlier post I encoded the Premiere Pro PAL DV avi(simple DV capture from Tape to COmputer) without any changes and also my After Effects quicktime Animation codec export(also without any filters and some with color correction) without any changes and got the harsh contrasty look. Then I tried compensating with a levels filter to 16-235 which did not make it any better.
    In fact I have tried pretty much every combination I could think of.Have tried exporting with other codecs as well.
    ANy suggestions would help.

  • Harm Millaard

    November 22, 2006 at 6:23 pm

    To reiterate, details on your workflow and system please. You do not have to repeat what you already mentioned.

    Harm Millaard

  • Aanarav Sareen

    November 22, 2006 at 9:27 pm

    [rajeshm] “Since then I have encoded with 4 different encoders, burnt DVD with 2 different authoring applications”

    Care to expand on the different applications you used?

    Aanarav Sareen
    premiere@asvideoproductions.com

    https://www.asvideoproductions.com/techtalk

  • Rajeshm

    November 23, 2006 at 12:44 am

    Ok There seems to a little communication problem so let me give details of the whole process I went thru.

    1. Capture from DV PAL tapes with Premiere PRo. I used a standard PAL DV template and I am using a Dual core 4200 AMD with 2 GIG RAM . I use a generic TExas instrument Firewire card which is on the motherboard itself.
    – Tried to encode these DV Pal Avi’s with TMPGenc , Procoder, CCE with standard template for PAL DVD . All gave harsh contrasty output.

    2. IMported PAl DV avi’s into After effects and then output (without any filter applied) to Quicktime movies – ANimation codec , AVI – with HUffyuv codec, Microsoft DV codec. then encoded these files with TMpgenc. Same contrasty results. Highlights are clipped and shadows lose all detail.
    3. Now reimported all avi’s into After effects and applied levels and changed output levels to 16-235. Now output again as QUicktime – animation codec, AVI- Huffyuv, AVI – Microsoft DV. Encoded them with TMpgenc and got same harsh results.
    I did DVD authoring with TMPGENC Author and also tried with Super DVD Creator and Nero Burning software.
    All results were the same.

    COuld some codec from any other sofware be the reason for this?

    WHen I check the raw DV files on the waveform and the histogram they always look within limits and so do the processed clips from After effects.
    The DV avi’s and the output movies all look just fine on the computer monitor but look a lot worse on the TV. I tried changing TV settings just in case . All the 100 channels look just fine on TV only the test DVD doesn’t look good, other dvd’s are OK.

    I have used this workflow on other computers and have had no problem for years.
    I do suspect it is video clamping issue but how and why still is very confusing . I am in the middle of a big project and deadline is looming ahead.

  • Harm Millaard

    November 23, 2006 at 10:17 am

    It seems the problem may be in the raw material, if you say it looks bad on TV. You could check by exporting some clips from your time line back to tape, connect the player to the TV and then consider the quality.

    Harm Millaard

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