This answer may seem a little long, but believe me, it is actually way too short! Not all video renderers honor the 709 flag by default, or don't do the right thing with it. Sad but true. You can either flag the video properly and hope the viewer sees it correctly, or choose a selected render target (eg YouTube) and work backwards, trying to get a good result mainly on that target, "sacrificing" the others. There are many complicating factors you have not mentioned, such as which decoder you are using (Fraps' default codec always converts YV12 to RGB, but FFmpeg-derived decoders do not), what options you have set under Video, Color Depth, and whether you use any Filters that force RGB<->YUV In my tests, using MPC+MadVR, MPC+Haali and YouTube+Flash as target renderers, I have gotten good color fidelity with: source = Fraps YUV open with default Fraps decoder (Vdub open AVI or AviSynth+AviSource) video mode = Fast Recompress Video Filters = none (no filters allowed in Fast Recompress) Color Depth = (N/A in Fast Recompress) x264vfw flags = --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 There are many other ways to get an equivalent result, but this is the least complicated. Finally, note that when previewing YUV (but not RGB) video in VirtualDub, Rec609 is assumed; Rec709 will have bright greens and dull reds. Once the video is encoded (depending on the renderer as I said) the video should be OK.