How to fix an H.264 video conversion 'wash out' issue

Dec 01, '06 07:30:04AM

Contributed by: robg

I often use QuickTime Pro to convert video clips from my digital camera (which stores them as AVI files) into H.264-encoded clips, suitable for sharing on our family's blog site. The size reductions are notable, dropping a near-two-minute clip from 186MB down to anywhere from 5MB to 12MB, depending on the quality settings I use. However, for most of the last year, I've been bothered by a horrendous amount of wash out in the converted video, as seen at right (click the image for a larger, high quality version in a new window). The left half of the image is the source AVI, and the right is the H.264 conversion. When others viewed the clips, however, they saw no such washout, so I was pretty sure I had a local problem -- so I kept putting off trying to resolve it.

The other night, though, I finally got frustrated enough to go searching for an answer. After too much time with Google, I finally came up with the cause and the solution. The cause seems to be a combination of QuickTime Player's use of Core Video for playback, and my use of the sRGB color profile in the Color tab of the Displays System Preferences panel. (I found a player called NicePlayer that let me disable Core Video. Playing the same washed-out video in NicePlayer with Core Video disabled, the colors were perfect.)

The solution? Create a new color profile. When I did that, my problems (mostly) disappeared. I still have a small amount of visible washout, but I can probably fix that by just tweaking the profile a bit. I wrote about this in more detail in this macworld.com blog post. Keep in mind I know absolutely nothing about color profiles, ColorSync, and the entire professional world of color -- so I apologize in advance for any technical errors. All I do know is that creating a new color profile mostly solved the washout problem, which makes me quite happy.

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http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20061201035132365