Re: A Nice Plus

[Daniel Frome] "
If I might ask a further question: If a computer without FCPX watches your h264 outputs, is the color still properly calibrated for them? I ask this because I found that many quicktime movies actually did contain the proper color information -- it was quicktime that seemingly didn't interpret it properly. "

Hey Daniel, I'll give it my best. For one, finally using a native 2.2 gamma gets us all in the same relative space - Mac PC monitor wise. So while our work will always be subject to the vagaries of individual monitor quality and calibration (or lack thereof) it's just nice to have the issues reduced with native gamma. What's great about X and what shocked me when I put out our first masters just a few weeks ago, was how accurate the movie was and honestly how much better the image looked on the same Apple 27" monitor.

Just a quick caveat. Our workflow is to export from X as Pro Res master and then use that to drop on compressor for .h264 480, 720 and 1080 for a typical project.


[Daniel Frome] "For example, we could watch a 1080p quicktime movie in VLC player and get a more accurate view than if we viewed it in Quicktime 7. This indicated to me that the problem wasn't necessary the exported file, but the "player."
"

No doubt about it, Apple lost it with FCP and Quick Time. And for some unfathomable reason it got worse with QT 10.

I remember when I was in my first recording studio session, I couldn't understand why the producer/engineer kept listening to these tiny little 4'x4" cubes when there was a wall of really expensive monitors in the control room.

That was my first lesson in mixing for the "common denominator" or at least that's what I call it. Those little Auratones, that I then saw in studio after studio as I grew, were the way to make sure that your final output would sound great even on the cheapest speakers in the worst aural environments...and retain the bass. That's why we all have them...and NS10's (really sonically deficient speakers, but they are in every studio, so we all have reference).

That's when I realized how subjective all of what we produced was and how to compensate for it as best as possible.

Sorry to digress but it's how I immediately perceived monitoring for film and video when I became a producer in this world.

So the whole QT gamma mess threw any reliable "absolute" reference out the window. Worse for me in the last few years was the growing importance (now pretty much exclusive) of delivering compressed broadcast files.


[Daniel Frome] "
My question is 'how did they fix it' I suppose: since it seems like the weak link is equally the quicktime playback engine... which would still inherit these issues on the client machine? Hopefully I'm asking this clearly enoug"

I'm not smart enough to speak to the technology, just that ColorSync is something that I'm familiar with as a designer, but that has meant nothing with FCP until X. Now it manages the content within your workflow and keeps it beautifully consistent right through multiple variations of Compressor output.

And again, working with a native 2.2 gamma makes it much likelier to look the way you want on web based content as well.

The combination of the two has made all the work we've done in X much easier.