black and white levels for mp4 encodes?

john-beale wrote on 3/17/2007, 12:01 AM
For making DVDs, I've always using Vegas' waveform monitor set to "Studio RGB: 16...235" and used "Color Curves" to put the luminance plot in the range of 0-100 on the chart. This has resulted in DVDs that look correct in playback on a TV set without needing to adjust the contrast settings. Now I'm using the MainConcept encoder to make 720p MP4 files and it appears that I need to uncheck the Studio RGB setting and readjust the levels for the contrast to come out right in playback (using either VLC or Nero Showtime for mp4 playback). Has anyone else been doing this?

My customers are starting to demand high-definition versions of their video even though they usually aren't exactly sure how they will view it. All I can offer right now is something for playback on a computer, although practical HD-DVD authoring will no doubt be available Real Soon Now. To fit an hour of HD on a single 4.7 DVD-R I feel my only real choice is H.264 encoding and I'm trying to figure out how to get the best encode. I have tried out the x.264 encoder also, which does well, but is more of a hassle to use.

Comments

GlennChan wrote on 3/17/2007, 9:19 AM
Some codecs expect studio RGB levels (16-235) and some codecs expect computer RGB levels (0-255).
*Sorry, I don't know what levels the Mainconcept codec expects. Presumably it's 16-235 (their mpeg2 codec bundled with Vegas does this), although it doesn't seem like the case??

Usually what I would do is:
-You probably shot on some video format like DV, HDV, etc. Not some non-video or "computer" format (i.e. still images from a DSLR / stop motion). With the Vegas default, anything that comes in over firewire or SDI decodes to 16-235.

- Convert everything in your project to 16-235 levels. If you bring in stills, apply the computer RGB to studio RGB preset in the Color Corrector.

- If you need to export for a web format, nest your .veg in a new project.
Depending on the codec, you may need to apply the studio RGB to computer RGB preset.
The reason I would make a new project is so that you don't apply it at the video preview FX level, and forget to turn it off.

2- Possible other solutions:
Sometimes the media player may not perform color management properly (this is a common problem with Quicktime), or it may be affected by the video overlay settings in your video card (some of these settings are specific to Directshow windows). I don't think VLC would suffer from this.