And thanks for drawing more attention to this annoying problem. I’m sure, in time, I’ll be able to award the Byteful Award.

Let me know if you learn anything else, and I’ll let you know if I learn anything new, as well.

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/cmg_blogs/story/brightness_issues_with_h264_quicktime_movies/P0/

It’s been frustrating yet encouraging to see multiple threads on this issue. I even asked Neil, the maker of iShowU and Stomp, if he could find a way to fix this. The tag-stripping described in the above link sounds the simplest — but it hasn’t worked for me, or perhaps I’m doing it wrong.

I’d be glad to hear if there are any new insights and/or a simpler solution. That being said, thanx for speaking out about this, Byteful! And I hope you get to award that. =]

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However, thanks for pointing out a concise description of that technique! I’m sure many people will find that useful.

Has anyone gotten that technique to work and ALSO preserve hinting? If anyone can figure that out, they win the Byteful Award. That award doesn’t exist per se, but I may have to invent it if someone can pull that off.

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I haven’t had much issue with color desaturation. Are you using Compressor or Quicktime Player to make your h.264 files? And what versions are these?

Handbreak is a great app, but it’s designed to convert DVDs into movie files, not to convert movie files into web-ready h.264 files. Different purposes.

I’m not surprised that the video washed out even more. Whenever you encode video, it’s better to have less steps. The more times something is reconverted, the more quality you will lose. Try converting the original .avi file to the smaller bitrate instead.

I have searched like a dumbass for this solution. Really annoying quicktime does this washing out of my movies. Although I have to convert 2 times now, I think it’s worth it.
By the way, do you have infos about handbrake? The videos there look pretty good, not washed out.
Another question: I had converted an avi to mp4, then tried to export the mp4 again to a smaller bitrate for ipod and, surprisingly, the video wash out was done again, means it got even brighter again. After 5 conversions the screen would be white I guess

Also, in my experience the brightness reduction is not noticeable in most situations I’ve run into. For example, does the “Wheel, Jets, & Rails” video look like crap? I’d venture to say no.

Thanks for pointing out this other solution though. It is my hope that people will see the various solutions collected here and find a method that works best for them.

Anyone else have a solution?

Try this instead:

1. Open the Quicktime movie
2. in quicktime player, Go to “Window/Show Movie Properties”
3. Select “Video Track”, then click the “Visual Settings” tab
At the bottom left, change the transparency to “Blend” then move the slider to 100
Change the transparency to “Composition”
4.Close the Movie Properties window, then play or scrub the QT. Your black levels should now look correct
5.Actually, “Save as a self-contained movie.”

However, I’ve run a few tests, and I suggest the following:

1. Try Exporting with the Animation codec instead of the Intermediate Codec when doing the brightness adjustment. I got slightly better quality in my final output doing this.

2. The default “export for iphone” settings are rather sloppy and don’t provide the highest quality possible on the iPhone. I recommend trying out the H.264 export settings I outlined in the How to Encode Video for a Podcast article. (Scroll down to “Byteful Video Settings”) The color blue did not shift when I used those settings.

3. The color setting being applied to the window is most likely Quicktime applying gamma adjustments to your video. This is supposed to happen and there’s no way to disable it as far as I know.

If you try out the specific h.264 settings I outlined in the other article, I think you’ll be happier with your result. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Just to be clear on the procedure (that I just repeated his morning):
- I created a simple project in Motion with rectangles filled with flat colors (pure red, green, blue, etc.) and a black to white gradient
- I exported with the Animation Codec directly from the app. It looks like the preview in Motion.
- I open the resulting movie file in Quicktime Pro and export it with the Apple Intermediate compression Type and Compressor Preset set to Other, setting the brightness at -7. This creates a temp movie file.
- I open the temp movie file just created and export it with the H264 Codec, Compressor Quality set to Best.
- I open the 3 files and I noticed that:
- the gradient quality has degraded right away in the Intermediate Codecn
- in the final H264 some of the colors have shifted severely (the pure blue is purple now)

FYI I have 2 MacBookPro connected to 2 LCD calibrated monitors. Depending where I move the Quicktime window I see after a second the colors shifting, like a specific color setting is applied to the window.

What am I missing?
Thank you in advance!