After Effects Render Color Washed Out

The Problem

I capture a video using Fraps. Information technology produces a many-gigabytes AVI pic. I load the AVI into Adobe After Effects (at which point the colors match what was on screen exactly). Then I export the video to H.264 so I can go skillful quality, small file size, and a format that works well on YouTube. When I open up it in QuickTime Player, or VLC Media Role player, the colors appear massively washed out. The darks are besides bright, the saturation is too low.

(Windows Media Player on the other hand is a dark horse, displaying the correct brightness simply over-saturating the issue.)

Here is a side-by-side picture of (a piece of) the After Furnishings project, and the result in QuickTime Player, VLC Media Player, and Windows Media Player, followed past the HSV values for the background colour in each:

AE	QT	VLC	WMP
hue:180 sat:17% val:14%	hue:180 sabbatum:12% val:23%	hue:180 sat:thirteen% val:18%	hue:187 sabbatum:22% val:fourteen%

The Solution (works for me)

The only fix that I plant worked for me was:

Plough off colour management. It does not matter if y'all practise this by having no Color Working Space and export equally pure RGB, or if you prepare your color space to sRGB and export every bit sRGB. Equally long equally the working space and export colour space are the aforementioned, y'all should be proficient to become.
In the After Effects Project Settings dialog (under the File menu) turn on the checkbox for "Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments". This is the well-nigh of import step to perform in Subsequently Effects:
Export your H.264 video using the settings you lot similar, with the Colour for your Video Output fix to "Premultiplied (Matted)" and with Color Management off (same working space as your project):
Open the .mp4 in QuickTime Histrion. So far you will encounter NO alter in your color.
Under the Window menu in QuickTime Player choose "Show Film Properties". (You need to purchase QuickTime Pro (for about $30) for the next stride.)
In the dialog that shows up, select the Video Track, go to the Visual Settings tab, and change the Transparency setting to "Straight Alpha". At this indicate you should run across the colors change and get meliorate!
You should probably also check the "High Quality" checkbox (of class you want that!), though exactly what it does is not clear.
Close the Flick Properties dialog, and save your movie every bit a new (self-contained) file. The results are non perfect, simply much, much closer.

AE	QT	VLC	WMP
hue:180 saturday:17% val:fourteen%	hue:192 sat:22% val:18%	hue:180 sat:13% val:eighteen%	hue:187 sat:22% val:14%

I wish the colors were exactly correct. If you have more data on how to get better results, please add a comment below, or email me (see "contact" above).

Culling (Boosted) Help

If you lot are using an NVIDIA graphics card on Windows, there is another possible solution for washed-out videos. In the NVIDIA Control Panel, go to Video Adjust video color settings and for each monitor y'all take (I happen to have four) select the brandish, and and so modify How do yous brand colour adjustments? to With the NVIDIA settings and so in the Advanced tab change the Dynamic range from Limited (sixteen-235) to Total (0-255). Voila! H.264 videos are no longer washed out in your videos, on every video player.

Screenshot of the NVIDIA control panel, showing the steps described above

There is, evidently, an equivalent fix for ATI drivers (which requires modifying the Windows registry).

Not-Solutions

I tried a lot of different settings to fix this problem. The following do not piece of work:

Setting the Working Infinite of your project to sRGB and exporting with sRGB.
Setting the Working Space of your project to sRGB and exporting with Preserve RGB.
Setting the Working Infinite of your project to sRGB and exporting to a different colour space, like HDTV. (This particular combination massively darkens the resulting colors.)
Turning on the "Linearize Working Space" project setting. (This makes things darker, simply also messes upward gradients.)
Changing the "Color" setting for your video output in After Effects to "Straight (unmatted)".

Source: http://phrogz.net/h264-export-from-after-effects-washed-out

Posted by: manninosumanducke.blogspot.com