Color problems on new PC set up

[Tim Cee]

I could really use some serious help and I apologize in advance for how long I know this post will be.

As a few of you know I came from Still image photography to HD video. What a jump and what a whole new world. I installed Vegas Pro 10 on my old Windows 32 bit system and fumbled along with a little help from Perone Ford, a member here as well as a few others in the forum. I learned that, or at least I think I learned that a 64 bit system is better and Windows 7 also allows me much more RAM than the 4GB I had to work with on my old Vista 32 bit system so I upgraded to this newer system, see specs below.

By the way I use the system mostly for Photoshop CS5 on my still images and Sony Vegas Pro 10 for my HD video. I post my videos on my You Tube channel but also like to watch them on my PC in Windows Media Player. I use Quick Time to preview my video projects before posting them on You Tube but also watch them on my system using Windows Media Player as it gets me full screen viewing and seemed to closely match the color and appearance that Quick Time displayed my videos at. On the old system it was a perfect world.

Now on the new system here is what is happening. By the way I am using the same monitor I only changed the PC out. Just as with the old system, I used Spyder Pro 3 to calibrate my monitor. Now all still images look great. Even video looks great if played using QuickTime Player. The video is rendered as MP4 with all the exact same settings just as before ( I use these setting to put the videos on my You Tube Channel ) anyways now when trying to play them in Windows Media Player they are disgustingly over saturated and look terrible. They also look horrible when watching them on my You Tube channel but as I said the color is dead on true to how I edited my still images when viewing them and dead on true to how I rendered them on my video played using Quick Time.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but there seems to be no way to adjust the monitor for windows Media Player without affecting the color profile I created using the Spyder Pro which looks great in Quick Time so I am at a loss. Should I even be using Windows Media Player for anything at all? I realize my playback and workflow is odd but it is self taught, I would love some suggestions on that also.

Please PLEASE help, So what am I doing wrong here folk's? Except for the machine itself I have everything else set up just as before but now suffer this color dilemma. Here's my new system specs.

Windows 7 64 bit machine
XPS 8300 Intel Core i7-2600 processor(8MB Cache, 3.4GHz)
12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHZ, 2x4GB/2x2GB
AMD Radeon HD 6770 Graphics card

Thanks for the help in advance

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Originally Posted by Tim Cee

By the way I am using the same monitor I only changed the PC out.

What monitor are you using and which port are you using to connect it to your PC? Are you using a GPU or other video card?

Just as with the old system, I used Spyder Pro 3 to calibrate my monitor. Now all still images look great. Even video looks great if played using QuickTime Player.

What are your source footage specs - which camera did it originate from? What are your target specs - especially which color space are you rendering to, how many bits, etc? What is your gamma setting at render - and how exactly have you calibrated the spyder? What are your project settings? Are you using LUTs? What is the color space of your monitor?

The issue is probably with the way you have set up and calibrated your color space, gamma, spyder and/or monitor.

[Tim Cee]

The monitor is conected via the DVI port, same as it was on the old system. The monitor is a Dell 23 inch flat wide screen LCD. The footage is made with a Canon XHA1, same as with the old system. Nothing has changed except for the computer. I uninstalled Spyder Pro 3, this seems to have made a big improvement but I'm still not where I want to be with how things play back via Windws Media Player.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

QT handles things differently under the hood, especially things like gamma. You might want to thoroughly check your color space and gamma settings across the entire pipeline, for starters.

The 23" Dell is sRGB only, if I'm not mistaken. The footage is in Rec.709. The difference between these color spaces is not as dramatic as being 'disgustingly over saturated' (but we could disagree here); so unless it's a hardware problem, I'd bet it's a color space and/or gamma issue within the workflow.

Can you test other clips in a new project? Is this issue restricted to this particular scenario? Try bypassing QT altogether.

Without detailed info of the process, it's difficult to give specific help.

[Christopher Lefchik]

QuickTime Player has had a known issue for years with the way it handles video gamma. At this point I would not recommend it as a reference player for checking video files. See this thread for more details: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/digital-...ast-issue.html

Also, you should be aware of a quirk in the way Sony Vegas handles video color space, which can lead you to overcompensate in adding contrast to your video. I highly recommend reading the following post on the CineForm Tech Blog to learn more: Cineform Tech Blog Blog Archive Why do colors in Sony Vegas look “washed out”?

All that said, when setting an AMD graphic card's driver Dynamic Range to "0-255" I have experienced issues with videos playing back with too high a contrast, which also resulted in overly saturated hues.

To check this setting in your AMD graphic card's driver, right click on your Windows desktop and choose "AMD VISION Engine Control Center." In the AMD control center window, choose the Video category on the left hand side. Then click the "Video Settings" subcategory. Scroll down to Dynamic Range and check if it is disabled (if disabled the bar should be to the right and the color red). If the Dynamic Range setting is already disabled, you could try enabling it and setting the dynamic range to "16-235".

Also in the Video Settings make sure the Brighter Whites option is disabled (if enabled this setting is supposed to give white highlights a blueish tint).