Clip washes out when Exported

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Level 1

30 points

Clip washes out when Exported

There's been a number of posts on this topic, but I'm encountering a slightly different variation of this problem and hoping someone can help sort it. I have a video clip that's been cut into many 3-second segments, which are reintroduced, interspersed with other footage, as the film progresses.

It all plays fine on the Timeline. When I export it, these segments are fine for the first couple appearances. After that each time a segment appears in full, saturated colour, but within a second it desaturates. Other clips using the same camera are displaying fine.

The affected segments go from this:

To this:

So far...

I've tried changing the Codecs. (Pro Res 422 and 422 HQ, H.264).
The problem appears not only when playing in QuickTime, but also in VLC and Apple TV.
After unsuccessfully trying to alter settings in QT (there's a recommendation online of how to do this, but the version of QT has moved on and it's no longer applicable), I tried to use VLC to convert it to MP4, but the same problem appears.
For some reason, the problem doesn't appear if I switch from Master to YouTube/Facebook in the Export menu...but then the file is so low res that it's useless.

Any ideas on how to fix?

Posted on Feb 28, 2021 5:51 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 1, 2021 2:24 AM in response to ggfromcp

It does not seem like the clip is HDR, and as you experienced changing to HDR makes it all worse, so that is out.

I don't know why this is happening, but you could try exporting as Master File, but in Settings, instead of "Video and Audio", choose "Computer". This will create an mp4 file with H264 that is higher resolution than the Facebook thing. How does that come out?

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Answer 2

Mar 1, 2021 1:29 AM in response to ggfromcp

What are the clip settings?

Open the source clip in Quicktime Player, press command-I, twirl open the video settings and post screenshots.

Is it HDR? Is the library set to HDR?

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Answer 3

ggfromcp Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 1, 2021 2:06 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks for your help! I've checked the original source file and here are the details:

I then looked at the Library settings, which was set to Standard. I changed this to the only other option, Wide Gamut HDR and did an export, but the problem is more severe.

The other issue I don't understand is that all the other film clips used have the same settings, yet they're fine in the exported file.

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Answer 4

ggfromcp Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 1, 2021 4:37 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks so much, Luis! That worked.

The original HD file was 6Gb. The Youtube/FB file was a 25Mb, so there was a long way to go to get to decent quality. The Computer/Video and Audio approach has brought it up to 700mb, which is a massive improvement!

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