Vixia HF R800, R500 & R50 Washed out colors - Looks good on screen but not recordings

[analog]

I have four of these cameras, an r800, an r50 and two r500s.   All of them have the same issue - they look fantastic on the screen and even on the HDMI out on a TV, but when I go look at the files the colors are washed out and the brightness is really low.   I don't understand how they look so good on the camera screen (or TV) but not in the recorded files.   I fix them in post, but it's a pain.   Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Richard]

Hi Analog,

Thanks for posting.

How are you transferring your movies from the camcorder to your computer (e.g. "dragging" movies from the card in a card reader, using the Pixela Transfer Utility LE (recommended), etc)?

Also, which video player(s) have you used to play your movies?

[analog]

I'm taking the memory card out of the device and then copying the file from the memory card to the computer, or just viewing the video directly on the memory card on the computer.      I use VLC and PowerDirector to view/edit the movies.    It's dull in both viewers.  It's dull on every computer I watch the videos on, not just my editing computer.

Why would using some tranfer utility make any difference?  Why have a SD card slot if you can't use it to move the files over like I am doing?

[analog]

I should clarify when I say HDMI out, it's when I am using the HDMI out as a monitor while recording.  I haven't tried playing them back after the fact on a TV from the camcorder itself.

[Richard]

Thanks for your reply Analog.

Please do playback from your camcorder, for a comparison and let us know how the movie appears.

Also, in which format (AVCHD or MP4) have you recorded your videos?

[analog]

MP4 but why should that make a difference either?   Obviously I'm not going to be watching these videos from my camcorder when I need to use them to edit with, so it shouldn't make any difference whether or not playback on the camcorder to a TV looks okay or not.  I just tried it though and it does look fine played back from the camcorder.   The camcorder must be doing some kind of processing on the output...  because taking the file on any PC looks a lot less bright and less vivid on the colors.

[analog]

I'm also not the only person who has said this. I found amazon reviews that talk about this too. So it's either the cameras are messed up or there is some setting that needs to be found.

[analog]

Just so you have some idea what's going on here....   the first image here is what plays on the recording off the MP4 files.  The second image is color corrected with my video editing software, and is a fairly close representation to what is shown on the screen of the camcorder and on the TV.

[Richard]

Hi Analog,

Thanks for your replies.

The format matters because movies shot in the AVCHD format tend to be more fragile than those shot in MP4.  Dragging them off can permanently damage them.  Based on the images you've supplied (thanks), that doesn't appear to be the case here.

From your images, it looks like a different white balance setting should resolve this issue.  The Auto White Balance (AWB) setting is good for many scenes, but sometimes, a manually selected white balance setting works better.  This appears to be such case.

You may manually select the white balance setting when your camera is set to its "P", "Cinema" or "Highlight Priority" modes.  To access this setting, choose "Home" icon, then "Main Functions" (camcorder with gear icon), then choose "White Balance" then choose the white balance based on the light source for the scene you're shooting, the "X" out of the menu.

[analog]

It's not just the white balance, the brightness of the image is significantly more on the screen. Also, I went through all the white balance settings, including setting it manually with a white sheet of paper. The image you see pre-processing is the best one I could do. It's not about lighting. I have studio lighting.