Color renders look darker back in FCP, and grainy footage
by chris Cummings
on
Jun 25, 2009 at 7:48:26 pm
Hi All,
Did some research on this and can't seem to find anything. I sent a timeline of various clips (HD 720p and some NTSCDV client clips rendered out in the Animation codec from AE). I did the corrections in Color, rendered and sent the sequence back to FCP. The clips all look much darker back in FCP. The sequence settings match the ProResHQ sent back from Color. However, on QT export out of FCP, the clips lighten back up. I'm saving up for an HD monitor, but right now all I have is an Apple Cinema Display calibrated with a Monaco Optix Pro.
Also, on the HD footage, it was shot at night on the Panasonic HPX 500. The footage looks great in Color's small window, but looks grainy on full size export. I would expect some graininess, and pushing the blacks likely worsens this, but on HD progressive footage from a decent camera with a decent DP, I thought the final output would have looked better.
Re: Color renders look darker back in FCP, and grainy footage by Joseph Owens on Jun 25, 2009 at 8:52:08 pm
I can't imagine how you managed to miss the discussed-to-death-ness of this topic plus all the complaints about how discussed-to-death it actually is.
This is an OS issue that Apple has made an attempt to fix in the next release -- Snow Leopard.
For the time being, try this: Open Quicktime... Preferences and take a peek at the dialogue. At the bottom you will see (hopefully) a radio button that will "Enable" compatibility with Final Cut Studio.
There are some more words about gamma gak... see if it makes a difference... and you will take the color profiling away from ColorSync.
Re: Color renders look darker back in FCP, and grainy footage by chris Cummings on Jun 25, 2009 at 9:56:01 pm
Wow, posted this in the search query and all that came up were some discussions on AE, and QT gamma tags/color mgmt. Sorry for the repost, but thanks just the same for the answer :-)
