Problem in white areas while producing video files

[photosirel Profile Private message]

I have prepared a presentation where the slides are mainly in white (high key).
White areas are processed in photoshop cs6 and painted with 255/255/255; pure white.
When ProShow plays the presentation there is no problem.
But when I produce a video file like avi, mpeg ... the white areas turn to grey. What might be the reason?
(No problem when exe file is produced.)
This is a very big issue for me as this will be a high key photo representation.
Please help.
Thanks ahead and best regards.
Osman Sirel

[debngar Profile Private message]

It might help if to post a sample of what the problem looks like. Upload it to YTube and paste the link in your post using the YouTube button (upper right corner of the posting box) which inserts the code before and after the link so it can be viewed in the post.

I could be way off, but my only guess at this point is that if a slide style which has a gradient mask in the design is applied to a slide, maybe that's what's causing the problem. Without doing some testing, I don't know exactly. But if these images are straight, vanilla/plain, displays of images without slide styles applied to them, it's a mystery without seeing an example of the output how some of the slides are designed. Though I don't understand either why one output would look different than another in this case.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

I think what you are running into is the difference between black (0,0,0) and white (255,255,255) in Photoshop etc. and what the digital video world uses for "black" and "white" - check out the "Digital Video" comments in this link: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/vi ... tress.html That is where you see the "desaturate to 80%" type thing coming from. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding out there as to exactly what black and white are (and it is not clear in my head either when to use what), but it does give a bit of insite into where some of these things come from.

mikey

[debngar Profile Private message]

I think what you are running into is the difference between black (0,0,0) and white (255,255,255) in Photoshop etc. and what the digital video world uses for "black" and "white" - check out the "Digital Video" comments in this link: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/vi ... tress.html That is where you see the "desaturate to 80%" type thing coming from. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding out there as to exactly what black and white are (and it is not clear in my head either when to use what), but it does give a bit of insite into where some of these things come from.

mikey

How interesting.... I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing that piece of information Mikey!

[photosirel Profile Private message]

Thanks to both of you. I will work on this reading also the link and come back again, if my problem is not solved, and hopefully with some example.
Best regards.

[photosirel Profile Private message]

The problem still continues.
I think that the link given deals with the relation between analog and digital. But my work is digital from beginning to the end.
There is also no problem with the photos used and hence PS, as the exe file produced by ProShow works fine.

I have found that in video player softwares you have the possibility to adjust the levels (brightness, contrast etc), and that also there is a default value for these features. I think that normally nobody would play and change these preset values. We would just assume that the played video is fine and so is our program.

Hence my problem starts here: I do not think that it is possible for me to reach all the people who would play my video and say that they should change their settings until background is pure white (which is by the way not so easy; one either would over whiten or stay below white level).

So wonder, if there is not a way to tell ProShow what the white level will be or something like this, such that when the produced video is played with preset setting, we will get a white background.

Is there any person, who would deal this subject?

Best regards.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

I understand you are strictly in the digital domain (maybe ... ), however, I think what is happening is Producer is rendering to the normal video standard (I forget what pure white was used for, but blacker than black (0,0,0) was the sync pulse in the analog world. I have seen this discussed a number of times in various forums and never came away with the feeling that people had actually solved what to do for the best results in all cases. I know a vector scope (most high end video editors have them) can show you just what the pixel levels are (as well as the color), but I'm not sure what else will easily let you snoop at the video file and see just what it is doing. I would suggest contacting Photodex and see if one of their folks has some better ideas. The thing to keep in mind (which is where my "maybe .. " came from) is that just because you have created a file in a digital format (mp4 for example) that does not necessarily mean that by the time it gets to the viewing screen it has not gone through some analog filter or limiting filter of some sort. That is where this video stuff gets "fuzzy". Unfortunately, I am not a video expert, so this is about the limit of what I am familiar with. I believe Photodex has some folks there though that are pretty up on the video stuff and hopefully can either solve the problem or identify a problem that needs fixing in an upcoming release.

mikey

[photosirel Profile Private message]

Thanks for your interest, Mike.
I have send a message to Photodex.
Osman Sirel

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Sorry I could not be more specific on the solution, but I don't know the answer to what you are running into and the only thing worse than no answer is the wrong answer. I didn't want to give you the wrong information. It will be interesting to see what Photodex has to say about what you are running into.

mikey