Overly saturated colors after compressing, etc.

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 9:45 pm

1. ReStream says it's 4:3. Apparently I need to ignore the fact that my video looks squished and assume whomever gives my AMV (if it gets that far) the thumbs up or thumbs down as convention fodder won't think I messed up the aspect ratio. I'm still terrified about this, but I'm going to trust you folks because a) you know a heck of a lot more about all this than I do and b) I don't have much choice.

2. The "output yuv data as basic YCbCr" is checked by default using Scintilla's template. I unchecked it, but if there was any improvement, it was so negligible as to be no improvement whatsoever.

3. My AMV may never get to the convention it was made for because I still cannot get quality encodes out of TMPG. I even tried MPEG-1 with the same exact results. And by decent I mean not only the color, I mean everything - the files I'm getting out of TMPG are very grainy, I can see some interlacing...they are poster children for bad video quality, which is crazy, because I've got great video quality...until TMPG gets involved. I can load the exact same AVS file into VDM and it looks crystal clean, perfect color, perfect everything. The second TMPG gets a hold of it, everything gets messed up.

So I guess my question at this point is: if we can't figure out why TMPG is ruining my AMV, what alternative MPEG-2/MPEG-1 encoders I should try? It will be extremely interesting if they also ruin my AMV (albeit incredibly depressing).

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:22 pm

It COULD just be whatever playback filter is playing your mpeg file. Can you load it in virtualdub or dgindex and see if it looks ok?

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:58 pm

Zarxrax wrote:It COULD just be whatever playback filter is playing your mpeg file. Can you load it in virtualdub or dgindex and see if it looks ok?

Looks the same in both programs as it does in all the others: quite obviously squished, bad color shift, grain, ugliness, etc. I wish you guys made house calls. LOL

Qyot27 wrote: Have you tried playing it back fullscreen, though? And how does it look when played in Media Player Classic? Link to the actively-developed Homecinema fork of MPC.

Had to wait on this:
I would say MPC definitely looks better, if not 100% the way it should in terms of the PAR. I do have some extremely vertical graphics, though, that reflect the PAR change really badly (or really well, depending on how one wants to define it) and they still seem a little too squat in MPC. ReStream seems to think it's all perfectly resized, though...so maybe I'll have to live with squished graphics(?). This still makes me profoundly nervous.

There is still a considerable color shift, however, and as before, I am less than impressed by the video quality TMPG is giving me. What's going in is not what's coming out.

For the record: I just uninstalled all my extraneous codecs (namely CCCP), because I've had issues in the past with some of them messing around with my computer in bizarre ways, particularly ffdshow. Getting rid of them didn't make a difference, though. I also tried ColorMatrix just for kicks, as you predicted it didn't do a thing. I'm going to tote some of these MPEG-2 files with me to work tomorrow and see what they look like on another computer on the off chance my home PC has developed an MPEG complex. Worth a shot, I figure.

If there's any status/properties/info screenshots I can put up for anyone to help troubleshoot the situation, please let me know and I'll be glad to do so.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 11:12 pm

Try taking the version you get out and burning it to DVD and checking it out on a TV from a DVD player - see what it looks like on the medium you're essentially making it for.

An aside - I know it's worth making it all pretty and such, but you should also keep in mind what the projector at the con you submit it to is going to do to it too - it's doubtful that anything you get it in will look as good as your online distro encode.

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:51 am

BasharOfTheAges wrote:Try taking the version you get out and burning it to DVD and checking it out on a TV from a DVD player - see what it looks like on the medium you're essentially making it for.

Yeah, I was mulling that over, too. I'll give it a try tonight.

BasharOfTheAges wrote: An aside - I know it's worth making it all pretty and such, but you should also keep in mind what the projector at the con you submit it to is going to do to it too - it's doubtful that anything you get it in will look as good as your online distro encode.

On a projector this might look ok, heck maybe the oversaturation actually would make it look better, but the bottom line is that I'd be handing over an inferior version of my AMV to the people who should be getting the superior version.

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:10 am

More news: I watched my MPEG-2 at work, on the faintly hopeful idea that perhaps my home computer is just not displaying MPEG-2 properly, but nope, over saturation is IN the file – it seems to have nothing to do with the computer’s playback capabilities or settings, unless both these PCs are messed up in exactly the same way, which is highly unlikely.

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:00 am

A few things that might be of interest:

I tried encoding some other uncompressed AMV footage I have. Same exact results: oversaturation and the aspect ratio is off. Now, on regular anime the oversaturation actually looks quite nice, but on Advent Children it's definitely

There is something in my system somewhere that is affecting my ability to encode MPEG-2/-1.

I burned my AC MPEG-2 to DVD and popped it in my DVD player. The aspect ratio was not corrected - it's still squished even on TV. My DVD player also had an extremely difficult time playing it, basically it could handle the first 7-8 seconds, then the sound cut out intermittantly and the video became quite jerky. Not sure if this is normal or not for an MPEG-2 on a DVD, BUT...

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 9:05 am

Out of curiousity, what happens if you export your mpeg2 avs script to a lagarith encoded avi and then run the avi through TMPEG?

I'm guessing probably nothing, but it couldn't hurt if you are still stuck I guess.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:39 am

Other mpeg2 encoders you can try are HCenc or Qenc.

DriftRoot · Post by **DriftRoot** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 2:55 pm

Corran wrote:Out of curiousity, what happens if you export your mpeg2 avs script to a lagarith encoded avi and then run the avi through TMPEG?
I'm guessing probably nothing, but it couldn't hurt if you are still stuck I guess.

This is very interesting, it's also driving me up the wall:

The color: I just spent almost an hour attempting to verify whether there is a color shift with the Lagarith file. Why? Well, I'd play it and it would look great, then I'd double check and it would be oversaturated. Then I'd go back to my old MPEG-2 and IT would look oversaturated, but the next minute it would look great. Multiply this by the five different files I'm cross checking, plus the five different media players I'm using, and it's a mess. The verdict is, however, that:

1. They do not all display a color shift all of the time. I'm 100% sure of this, because otherwise I wouldn't be so befuddled.
2. I can take a snapshot whatever of the video that's playing that looks very different in a lot of ways than a snapshot I take five minutes later, regardless of what player it's on.
3. A snapshot of a supposedly oversaturated video will look perfect on its own, or snapshot of a supposedly perfect video will look oversaturated on its own, or the video and the snapshot will both match.

I couldn't put together an image to post of the different results because every time I'd try to get the appropriate shots to "prove" that one file or another was coming out better than the other, they wouldn't cooperate. -_- I couldn't even get together a collection of images to prove there is a color shift, even though I'm sitting here looking at oversaturated video!! At first I thought it was the combo of programs I had open at the same time, perhaps the overlay functions were interfering with the color display, but I couldn't determine anything conclusively. So right now I don't know what the heck to do about it, seems like there's nothing I CAN do about it.

The aspect ratio:
Prior to running the Lagarith AVI file through TMPG, it displays the same level of aspect ratio squish as the MPEG-2s I was making before. Once TMPG processes it, however, the aspect ratio does improve. I'm guessing this is because TMPG adds the 3:2 pulldown. HOWEVER, the AVS MPEG-2 files I've been making now give me the same annoyingly inconsistent playback with the aspect ratio as with the color, insofar as they can look bad one second and fine the next. ARGH!

The aspect ratio is still not 100%s for any of these files, even if they are improved, leading to the question of...will the aspect ratio always look "off" on my computer? I've got five different media players on my PC, not counting all the video editing software, and NONE of them are capable of properly displaying AMVs encoded for convention purposes?