Grey blotches on YT video, Voukoder rendering, BT.709?

Gid wrote on 9/20/2025, 8:09 PM

Hi, this could be a YT problem.. I don't think I've ever had this before.

I created a video & uploaded it to YT a few hrs ago, I watched it after rendering from VP22 (Voukoder) & I watched it on YT after upload, all seemed well so I 'Published' it.

The project, render settings etc are the same as I've used for quite a while & many vids have been uploaded to YT without problems.

But this one I got 2 comments reporting grey blotches,

If I play the video it looks fine as I mentioned

But if I use the timeslider thing at the bottom of the YT screen I see the grey blotches.

I Googled it & the AI tells me YT might need time to process higher res videos

For the past few yrs I've used H.265 HEVC & that is what this video is. but Google also says -

For most YouTube users, H.264 is the better choice due to its wide compatibility across devices and browsers, leading to smoother processing and playback. While H.265 offers superior compression for smaller file sizes, it requires more processing power for encoding and decoding, which can be problematic for some devices. For high-resolution content like 4K or 8K, or for specific situations where file size is a critical concern, H.265 can be a viable option, but H.264 is the safest and most reliable choice for general YouTube uploads. '

Grey blotches or desaturated colors on a YouTube video after uploading are often caused by differing color spaces (like DCI-P3 vs. sRGB) between editing software and browsers, which can lead to washed-out colors, especially in saturated areas. Other causes include YouTube's video processing, which takes time for higher resolutions, or issues with an improperly encoded video file, which can be resolved by re-exporting with appropriate settings, such as Rec.709.

Some Voukoder settings are beyond me so can someone tell me if I should have this ticked

This is my vid, I've got 714 views which is what I'd expect for for a late 10pm upload, I'll get more views tomorrow but so far only 2 comments mentioning this grey blotching & one of those watched it on his phone instead without problems, so we'll see what tomorrow brings reg comments/complaints but I think this video is staying uploaded & my concern is for the next & future videos. I'm just not sure about this BT.709 thing, all was well in the past...

Thanks, any insight would be welcome 👍

PS, the bit rate does seem low in that MediaInfo but I haven't changed anything from previous videos I've created & uploaded.

Comments

Alan-Smithee wrote on 9/20/2025, 10:19 PM

Upload the same video unlisted and see if you get same result. There used to be tricks to force a re-encode but they don't look to work now, if you verify the re-upload has no problem and the error was a temporary YT encoding fault it looks like at minimum you have to cut 1 second using YT editor somewhere in your video to force re-encode for your existing link. If it bothered you enough that is.

john_dennis wrote on 9/21/2025, 2:04 AM

Watching with Microsoft Edge.

The downloaded file played locally.

Played from my youtube channel.

I'd just blame it on the youtube server in your area and upload it again.

Gid wrote on 9/21/2025, 5:47 AM

@john_dennis @Alan-Smithee Thanks, I tried trimming off a few seconds using the editor forcing YT to re-process the video, that doesn't seem to have helped, the video is still blotchy 🤷‍♂️

I uploaded the same video again this morning & that seems fine, so I'm blaming YT, or maybe because it was Sat evening & it got corrupted in some way on a busy evening.

This is the same video re-uploaded, would you have a look pls?, to me it looks fine.

john_dennis wrote on 9/21/2025, 9:46 AM

@Gid The newly uploaded version looks fine.

Gid wrote on 9/21/2025, 10:01 AM

@john_dennis Thanks for testing. 👍