MJPEG to MPG2 color issue

boriskey · Post by **boriskey** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:54 am

Guys, I am going to kill myself. Please help me!!

I have been trying for 3 days to figure out why my original file (MJPEG) is more bright and has vivid colors while after conversion it loses colors and not so appealing as the original one.

I did a lot reading last 3 days and I am pretty familiar with VS10 (and now I have 11) and when I had my old digital camera (which shot MPG) I did not have such issues. But now I have Canon G9 which shots video to MJPEG and the first clip I tried to render came out much worse than original video

I uploaded 2 clips. The first one basically original video and second one is compressed to MPG2

http://www.devcomzone.com/temp/AsFirstVideoClip.avi
http://www.devcomzone.com/temp/MPEG2.mpg

I played with thousands options including GAP structure (6 I-frames), but result is always the same. Just look at original colors of grass and yellow car and colors after compression

I would really appriciate your help. I never asked for it since I always used SEARCH, but I am really stuck...

Post by **Ken Berry** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:21 am

Can we assume that you have loaded the MJPEG codec onto your computer? (It will probably have been on the Canon disc which would have come with your camera...)

boriskey · Post by **boriskey** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:32 am

Ken Berry wrote:Can we assume that you have loaded the MJPEG codec onto your computer? (It will probably have been on the Canon disc which would have come with your camera...)

Hi Ken,

I am not sure, but I did install software that came with the camera. I also have full version of K-Lite codec pack

I ran Sherlock and here is MJPEG codes found:

MJPEG Compressor
FileVersion = 6.05.2600.2180
CompanyName = Microsoft Corporation
FileDescription = DirectShow Runtime.
InternalName = Quartz.dll

MJPEG Decompressor
FileVersion = 6.05.2600.2180
CompanyName = Microsoft Corporation
FileDescription = DirectShow Runtime.
InternalName = Quartz.dll

Can you do me a favor and try to convert to MPG2 my original file and see if you lose colors as well?

Appreciate your help...

Post by **Ken Berry** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:24 am

I downloaded and played your MJPEG original, and as you say it is crisp and bright. I have the MainConcept MJPEG codec on my computer so I used that to do a conversion. I was careful to match the NTSC setting (since of course I am in a PAL country). And I went to Share > Custom and chose a high quality mpeg-2 setting compatible for a DVD -- a bitrate of 8000, lower field first and LPCM audio. The major significant change that I had no control over was in the frame size. Your camera shoots in 640 x 480 format, which is not DVD compatible. So I chose the standard NTSC format size of 720 x 480.

It took about 5 seconds to render to mpeg-2. And I have to say that the resulting clip was not too different from your own rendering of it into mpeg-2. Mine might be marginally brighter than yours, but not by much. And if you are not happy with yours, I doubt mine would make you feel any better. Curious enough, my own looked not too bad in the VS preview window, but looked worse when played back on WMP. Your mpeg-2 also looked better in the VS preview window,

At a guess, I would say the overall quality is not perfect possibly because of the change in the format size. Is there any setting for the Canon which will allow you to produce a DVD compatible frame size?

Whatever you do, if you have not done it already, do not install the K-Lite pack holus-bolus. Mega codec packs cause more problems than they are worth. But if you must, open its control panel and choose only the MJPEG codec you might want to download.

boriskey · Post by **boriskey** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:30 pm

Ken, thank you very much for trying to help me

I also downloaded mainconcept codec yesterday after your first post, but results were the same

And maybe you rignt that it happens because of resolution converstion, but my previous digital camera shot in 640x480 as well, but I did not experience such issue with it (but maybe I did not notice because it was worth in quality and colors than produced by Canon)

Unfortunately it cannot shot in DVD format, but I cannot ask that from digital camera

I have probably the last idea after that I should probably get over it and live with it

Is there any way to use other MPG-2 codecs instead of original Ulead one? I see dropdown menu "Encoder", but there is Ulead only.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:18 pm

Do you have the color filter enabled (I think that is what is called)? I believe it is by default. Turn it off in File > Preferences and see if that helps.

boriskey · Post by **boriskey** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:18 pm

Black Lab wrote:Do you have the color filter enabled (I think that is what is called)? I believe it is by default. Turn it off in File > Preferences and see if that helps.

Thanks for the tip, but did not help a bit

Wierd but seems this option "Apply color filter NTSC/PAL" does not do anything (at least I cannot tell the difference visially)

I tried third-party convertors also, but the same issue with them - colors are not so crisp and bright as on original video

Do you guys know any good forum on video formats where I can post this questions as well?

boriskey · Post by **boriskey** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 3:26 pm

if you are interested, here is explanation that the guys on videohelp forum gave me

http://forum.videohelp.com/topic342710.html#1790001

Apparently it has nothing to do with VS, but its codec and different way how color can be converted during MJPEG->MPEG converstion