White, washed out video in Nero H.264? (caps included)

[emiiisdev]

Hi everyone,

Someone please help me solve this!

I followed doom9's Nero H.264 guide to the letter (with the latest Recode) and am wondering WHY my videos have a white filter, or washed out look to them. I compared my video with the screenshots of the matrix code in the 2004 Codec Shootout. The videos doom9 encoded look AWESOME and I'm I'd love to have those dark blacks instead of washed out ones. :(

Please take a look at the screenshots below and you'll see this white filter/washed out effect I'm trying to describe. I don't know where it's coming from but I want it _turned_off_. Where did I do wrong?? I've also included caps from the same video encoded to XviD for comparison (same bitrate).

Some tech info: This is a fresh install of XP SP2 with only iTunes & Quicktime, Nero 7 Ultra, and the Gordian Knot Ripping & Codec packs installed. All latest security updates have been applied. The version of Windows Media (never use it) is whatever came with XP SP2. :p I used Media Player Classic to take the XviD caps and am using Quicktime 7.0.2. Whenever I start the video in Quicktime there is ALWAYS a frame of complete white before the video starts. Can this have anything to do with it? There were no additional options in recode that *seem* related.

Matrix code, XviD:
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/5427/xvidcode2ju.th.png (http://img182.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xvidcode2ju.png)


Matrix code, Nero AVC (standard profile):
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/2860/nerocode5gp.th.png (http://img182.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nerocode5gp.png)

Final flight of the Osiris, XviD:
http://img327.imageshack.us/img327/9108/xvid1ff.th.png (http://img327.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xvid1ff.png)

Final flight of the Osiris, Nero AVC (standard profile):
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/5266/nero4ah.th.png (http://img252.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nero4ah.png)

Thanks for reading and I hope someone can point me in the right direction!!

Emi ^_^

[emiiisdev]

Bump ^

Am I asking the wrong question? Has no one else experienced this? If I posted this in the wrong forum can someone tell me where else I could try.

Thanks again.
Emi :(

[jel]

hi emiiisdev,

i will move this thread to the MPG-4 AVC forum, where hopefully one of the gurus there can point you in the right direction.

good luck :)

j

[CruNcher]

Whenever I start the video in Quicktime there is ALWAYS a frame of complete white before the video starts.

Welcome on Doom9, seems to be a Decoding problem (prediction error) try another Decoder ffdshow or mplayer instead of Quicktimes Windows snail Decoder :P

[bond]

all i can say is that qt7 is a piece of crapware and definitely not stable for useage

[charleski]

What you're seeing is a brightness shift that may simply be due to differences in the players. What happens when you play the h.264 video in Nero Showtime or MPC? I don't think your problem is due to the encoding, it's a playback issue.

[Taurus]

Maybe it's a video overlay/vmr9/vmr7 problem?
If your using video overlay from your graphics adapter on one player
and open the video in another player, it will switch to vmr mode, thus changing color information.

[emiiisdev]

Ok, thanks for the replies.

I tried the videos in Media Player Classic, and while they didn't play right (fast framerate then hiccups over and over again) the video *isn't* washed out. I guess this is a problem with Quicktime 7? I wonder now if there are certain options in the doom9 guides that I need to disable for the video to play correctly in the Quicktime player?

Thanks for answering. I do appreciate it.

Emi ^_^

[charleski]

I did a test myself and the QT player definitely does push up the black level. Amazingly, it doesn't even have any brightness/contrast options! :P

QuickTime is a very poor option for playing mp4 anyway.
Nero ShowTime is better, though it has a few known bugs which mostly seem to affect files encoded with the higher settings.
libavcodec (in ffdshow) is a good choice for playing mp4s in DirectShow players like Zoom Player.
VLC does a good job too, haven't been able to crash it yet.
I've had some problems with MPC's performance as well, but Gabest is still working on it and it looks like he's trying to develop the most complete implementation.
There are many other options, see the sticky by bond.