why does quicktime look so washed out
 

the coloring is better on avi files and wmvs why is the image washed out on quicktime files? any way to fix this

i guess no one knows

Could be:

A- Quicktime applying color management inappropriately. Try using a different format, or the same format going out of AE as the one that came in.

B- Studio RGB versus computer RGB levels. You may need to convert from one to the other.

Some files which play soft and white on Quicktime play better on VideoLAN which is a free downloadable player.

I know exactly what your talking about. When I export with QT h264 the image looks desaturated, but if i use mpeg4 it renders out nice and vibrant. I use tmpgenc for the encoding. Doesn`t make sense why h264 was so highly spoken of but clouds the image so. I wonder if i still have the comparison shots i did around on my comp somewhere. Never found an answer

i Have the problem of AVI's from Premiere Pro 2.0 looking heavily pixelated on QT 7.2 on playback, but beautiful on WMP....

Its quicktime applying color management inappropriately, from what I remember. Its a bug.

2- When playing back DV AVIs in quicktime, enable high quality. (crtl j or video settings)

Hmmm I find the washed out appearance much more evident in wmv than in quicktime. The biggest reason I use H.264 codec for web applications is its great colour rendition compared to its bitrate/compression. Avi and Mpeg2 files are usually the best retainers of colour for computer video; but I've never had dramas with quicktime in Mpeg-4 or H.264. What editing software are you on?

With compression you loose some contrast, colors, pretty much a little of everything. Decent compression programs apply specific filters before encoding to highly compressed formats for the internet.

Try PREPARING your high quality footage BEFORE compressing - increase contrast, lower brightness, remove chroma noise.

I've seen the same thing rendering quicktime (mov) from Sony Vegas.
I'll have to look closer when rendering, but maybe there's a setting for luminance set to 16-235 (601) as Glenn mentioned.

If there is, try disabling it and render again.