Hi Everyone,
I’m using OBS 64 bit to record video game footage with H.265 AMF HEVC encoding on my RX 580 GPU. I’m on Windows 10 Pro 64 bit latest build and everything is working great. I record my raw game footage to a .mkv container type and then load that into Shotcut, do my editing and then export my final video into a .mp4 container also using the H.265 AMF HEVC codec.
This all works great. However, there is 1 issue that I cannot figure out: When I load my raw .mkv recording file into Shotcut I can instantly tell that the video is brighter than it should be! Colors, especially blacks, are washed out and appear grey’ish or foggy. I figured this may just be an issue with the view screen inside Shotcut so I continued my editing and exported my video to .mp4.
The final exported .mp4 file does in fact playback much brighter and washed out than the original, raw recording .mkv file does.
I test this by loading the original footage .mkv file with VLC Player and it plays back perfectly. The blacks are nice and black, the colors are vibrant and not washed out. Then I load the final rendered .mp4 file in VLC Player and the colors are very washed out and everything is way too bright. It plays exactly as it looked inside of the Shotcut editor during my editing - way too bright overall.
I have no idea why Shotcut is automatically making my raw recordings brighter and I need to fix it.
I have noticed that some video players (Windows Movies, Pot Player) always playback files way too bright. But that occurs on all video file types I load into those players not just mp4 or mkv. Thus I use VLC Player for testing my raw recordings as it retains the original recording and does not enhance the colors or increase the brightness in any way.
I understand there is a Filter I can apply within Shotcut to manually adjust the Brightness back down during editing but that should not be necessary to do. Shotcut should be showing my raw recording exactly as it was made, not increasing it’s brightness levels. I can’t manually adjust the brightness to exactly the same level as the real recording. I can come close but I cannot get it exact nor should I have to try to do that.
I have scoured the forums here and searched the internet widely and cannot find any threads or posts talking about this issue within Shotcut. I’m praying someone on here can help me isolate and correct whatever the heck is causing my Shotcut editor to automatically increase the brightness on these raw recordings when I load them into my project.
As an extra piece of information the game footage in question is from Resident Evil Revelations 2, which is a very dark, scary type game. I had to manually turn the game’s brightness levels way down within the in-game options as the game itself also displayed way too bright during gameplay. I thought maybe the fact I had to manually turn down brightness in game could be part of the issue but VLC player plays the raw recording back with the same level of brightness that I had set in game. So it seems like my in game brightness settings do carry over into my raw recording .mkv file and then SHOULD carry over into Shotcut as well. But they don’t, Shotcut brightens the video!
I have tried everything I can think of, this is driving me nuts. I can supply screenshots of how my raw .mkv footage appears in VLC Player vs Shotcut if it would help.
Thank you so much in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this and help me try to sort this issue out!
Update: I think I fixed this issue! I found the option for “Color Range” within the Properties of my video file within Shotcut but this option was already set to “Full Range”. However, despite it claiming the video was already in Full Range color, it clearly was loading my video files with “Broadcast Limited” Color Range instead. (Screenshot below)
By selecting the Color Range drop down box and trying to flip it from “Full” to “Broadcast Limited” it reloads the video in “Full” color range and you can instantly tell that the color is corrected in the video and no longer washed out.
TL/DR: Try manually toggling the “Color Range” dropdown option within the Properties of your video file to “Broadcast Limited” and then back to “Full” if you are experiencing this issue. Even if your videos’ Properties already claim to be in “Full” range it may not actually be in Full range until you toggle this back and forth!
This was giving me a real fit, sorry for the lengthy post but I hope this information can help someone else out. I am rendering my video out to a .mp4 file again to make sure the color range stays intact but I am pretty confident it will. I will update this post with any further findings or information I come across on this topic.
As you can see in these before and after screenshots even though they both claim “Full” Range Color the before shot is clearly loaded in Broadcast Limited Color Range. Then after clicking on the Color Range drop down and actually choosing “Broadcast Limited” the video reloads in the correct color range:
Before: You can see the colors are washed out and that “Full (JPEG)” is showing in the Color Range.
After: The colors are more vibrant and the blacks are much darker. “Full (JPEG)” still shows in Color Range.
(As a new user the forum won’t let me post more than 1 screenshot to show the After image 
)
So the selected color range display may be bugged as no matter what option I select, the dropdown always displays as “Full (JPEG)”. In addition to that the selections actually seem backwards. When I load in the video it displays as Full but is clearly in Limited colors. Then I actually select “Broadcast Limited” and the video reloads with proper color range. Conversely if I go back into the dropdown and choose “Full” again then the video reloads back in Broadcast Limited color range. All while still showing “Full (JPEG)” in the Color Range dropdown box.
<3
