Question / Help Partial or Full color range ?

[FAQU]

As the title says , what should i be using when recording/streaming , Partial or Full color range ?

From my experience Partial makes the recording to look like i am using a lower color depth... does anyone know why ? As far as i know Partial should only look washed out compared to Full . (just like limited rgb looks washed out compared to full rgb)
Btw , with some players (VLC for example) the Full range recording tends to be too dark , while with other players (PotPlayer for example) it looks good. Again , does anyone know why ?

I'll upload some screenshots with :
-Partial (took with PotPlayer)
-Full (took with PotPlayer)
-Original (took with snipping tool directly from the desktop)
-OBS Advaced Settings (took with snipping tool)

Note: - My monitor is using 4:4:4 RGB Full Range and 8bit color depth.
- Sorry for me being a noob , and sorry for my bad english :xd:

Screenshot Partial:

Screenshot Full:

Screenshot Original:

Screenshot OBS Advanced Settings:

 

[DEDRICK]

Browsers are expecting Partial, if you send them Full(0-255) they will pull everything from 0-16 down to 0 and 235-255 up to 255, which causes it to become super dark and lose detail. When you send Partial it has been clamped to 16-235, it think it also color converts, when the browser receives it it pulls the colors back to Full (Explained in a less technical sense, it converts it)

VLC is attempting to do the same thing which is why it shows up dark.

This is my understanding, partial is the H264 broadcast standard.

 

[FAQU]

Browsers are expecting Partial, if you send them Full(0-255) they will pull everything from 0-16 down to 0 and 235-255 up to 255, which causes it to become super dark and lose detail. When you send Partial it has been clamped to 16-235, it think it also color converts, when the browser receives it it pulls the colors back to Full (Explained in a less technical sense, it converts it)

VLC is attempting to do the same thing which is why it shows up dark.

This is my understanding, partial is the H264 broadcast standard.

I can agree that VLC pulls everything from 0-16 down to 0 and 235-255 up to 255 , and that's why it looks so dark when playing the Full color range file with that player , but if i upload exactly the same file to youtube , then the video will look exactly like in the Partial screenshot i uploaded (meaning that the image will not be darker , but it will look like the video has lower color depth) , fact that confuses me.

Also , for streaming it looks like Twitch is using the entire Full color range , and the stream will look like in the Full screenshot. (meaning that it will look good)

The only thing that i cannot understand it's why the Partial file doesn't look washed out compared to the Full file . In my driver settings (AMD) , if i go from Full range RGB to Limited range RGB , then the image will look washed out . In OBS , if i go from Full to Partial , then the only difference is that the Partial file will look like a lower color depth one , while the blacks and whites are looking the same as in the Full file , fact that again , it's confusing me.

 

[koala]

Partial doesn't look washed, if implemented correctly in the player, driver, monitor. Partial has 235-16+1=220 distinct colors, which will be distributed to the 0..255 range of a display device at display time.

16 will be pulled to 0, 17 to 1, 18 to 2, every 7th or 8th color will be skipped, 234 to 254, and 235 to 255. This way you have 35 colors skipped, but actual colors displayed by a device start with 0 and end with 255, just like full. The contrast is as high as with full. There are only 35 colors in between that are missing with partial in comparison to full, but this is only visible if you compare it to the original full range picture with an image processing software - not really by the human eye.

 

[DEDRICK]

The color depth issues you are describing aren't from Partial, they are from going RGB 4:4:4 to YUV 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, this also causes color shifts

 

[FAQU]

The color depth issues you are describing aren't from Partial, they are from going RGB 4:4:4 to YUV 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, this also causes color shifts

But then why the color depth issue is not present when i am using Full color range ? Since the full color range file is still converted from RGB 4:4:4 to YUV with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling ? If i am misunderstanding something just let me know please .

Mediainfo from the full color range file :
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Color range : Full

 

[FAQU]

Partial doesn't look washed, if implemented correctly in the player, driver, monitor. Partial has 235-16+1=220 distinct colors, which will be distributed to the 0..255 range of a display device at display time.

16 will be pulled to 0, 17 to 1, 18 to 2, every 7th or 8th color will be skipped, 234 to 254, and 235 to 255. This way you have 35 colors skipped, but actual colors displayed by a device start with 0 and end with 255, just like full. The contrast is as high as with full. There are only 35 colors in between that are missing with partial in comparison to full, but this is only visible if you compare it to the original full range picture with an image processing software - not really by the human eye.

Thank you so much for the detailed answer !
If you don't mind , can you please tell me why when recording with Partial there appears to be a low color depth issue look-a-like ? (see in the Partial screenshot)

Again , thank you so much for your help !