Movie Studio Platinum 13.0 - How to disable auto-contrast?

GuyWithPants wrote on 11/5/2016, 3:41 PM

Hi there,

lately I've noticed that a considerable amount of contrast or color correction gets added to every project I render, and I can't seem to find any option to disable this. Build is 957. I think this might have been added in an update, because I don't remember this happening a year ago.

And no, there is no Track FX, Event FX or Video Output FX. I've changed literally no settings. I didn't test every format, but it does happen every time when I'm using the Sony AVC/MVC and MainConcept AVC/AAC format and never happens when I render using an "external" codec (via "Video for Windows), even if that codec is a H.264 implementation with the same encoding settings as MainConcept AVC/AAC. It is however indeed, extremely annoying. It happens on new projects as well as old projects that rendered just fine a year ago (without any ridiculous amount of ugly additional contrast), but now render with this contrast.

Look at the attached screenshot. The right side is how Movie Studio Platinum 13.0 rendered the frame, the left side is how that same frame looks when rendered by Virtual Dub using the same settings via x264vfw. Colorwise the left side is almost identical to the source, whereas the Movie Studio side on the right has an outright absurd amount of additional contrast added to it. Considering this happens when I use Sony AVC/MVC or MainConcept AVC/AAC, I suspect this was added as a "quality of life" feature to try to counteract Youtube's colorspace compression. But I want to turn it off, because except for scenes where the whole screen has a balanced luminosity, it makes dark parts way too dark and bright parts way too bright. It's annoying, it almost never looks better, and 80% of the time it even looks considerably worse.

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 11/5/2016, 5:00 PM

Can't look at your screenshot now, but you may need to slap a Studio RGB filter on the Vegas output.

It is impossible to use VDub encoding settings in Vegas, since they don't use the same encoder.

GuyWithPants wrote on 11/5/2016, 5:44 PM

It is impossible to use VDub encoding settings in Vegas, since they don't use the same encoder.

Of course I can use identical settings to MainConcept in x264vfw. H.264 is not some sort of magic, it's a standard. I'm not saying it produces the same output file, but identical settings with identical chroma subsampling (so 4:2:2 as MainConcept can only do 4:2:2), the same profile (obviously) and the same (and adequately high) target bitrate in different implementations of H.264 generally produce files with video streams that are visually indistinguishable by humans.

Also it doesn't matter, because the same thing happens with the Sony AVC implementation, so I doubt it's a quirk in MainConcept.

Musicvid wrote on 11/5/2016, 7:50 PM

Yes, h264 is a standard. x264vfw is an illegitimate stepchild, and should not be your benchmark encoder, for that very reason.

For that compliance reason ALONE, Main concept and Sony AVC are wrapped correctly in REC 709 (YUV) colorspace, and x264vfw is wrapped full range (RGB) colorspace. Expected levels can be as different as night and day, as you are beginning to discover!

I guess you could install x264vfw as a system codec, and use it in Vegas, but why?

But instead of fixating on it, search the terms in my first post above, begin the learning curve, and post back when questions arise, along with complete source, project, render, and MediaInfo properties in addition to your screenshots.. Thanks, and welcome to the forums.