I’m working on a video in Kdenlive and I’m seeing some very inconsistent color grading on different clips.
I have 3 screenshots from the same clip with similar effects applied that I would expect to result in the same color profile, but they look wildly different.
First, the baseline. This is just the clip with a “color balance” effect added.
Second, a screencap so I can freeze the frame (I got this from using the “export frame to project” tool). This has NO effects applied to it because I would expect they’re already baked into the exported frame.
The first one looks how I want, but the second one looks like it has higher contrast and the third one looks like it has drastically lower contrast.
Kdenlive has done me well so far, but I don’t think I could use it seriously with color performance being all over the place. What could be causing this? Is there something I’m somehow doing wrong?
Thank you!
Export settings
Resolution: 3840x2160 30fps
I tried all of the following with the same results:
Codec: VAAPI HEVC (H.265)
Bitrate: Average, 100 mbps
Container: mp4
Instead of Zoom and Pan try the Transform effect. I noticed that just applying the Zoom and Pan effect w/o even changing any of the parameters alters the image slightly …
Awesome! That does seem to help with the “zoom” problem, at least.
I was actually using Transform before, but I decided to try one of the other effects to see if they had less of a performance impact on the timeline, since Transform seems to be kind of heavy. I’ll stick with Transform for now because it does seem to preserve the colors pretty well.
I can live with the difference with the exported frame, but I mean… does anybody know why that might be or how to fix it?
Ok I have an update with more troubleshooting. I’m wondering if maybe this should be a bug report now:
This problem seems to persist regardless of codec, export settings, or hardware acceleration.
The problem also seems to occur when other elements appear on screen. For example, I have a picture appear (with a transform effect to make it smaller) for a few seconds at some point and the colors jarringly change while that element is on screen. Similarly, I have some text appear on screen and the same effect happens.
But I’ve found that this only happens when rendering that timeline or sequence directly. I have a master timeline where I’m putting together sequences, and if I render that timeline, then there are no weird color problems.
What’s your full stack of effects? This sounds like what can happen with some of the effects (like normalise or colour correct or some of the white balance effects etc.) which do ‘automatic’ adjustments based on the content of each frame.
You haven’t got something like one of those hidden as a zone effect on the timeline or so perhaps?
