Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality??
by jay lee (Jay Lee)
on
Jun 25, 2008 at 6:20:27 pm
Hi guys,
We are shocked at the poor quality of monitoring and playback in Apple Color. Jaggies and overall soft noisy image. We are working on 23.98FPS 10 Bit uncompressed Quicktime files that other wise look beautiful in After Effects and in Quicktime.
We are not using Proxies and the Color project settings match our footage specs.
Is this normal? If so how can one judge subtle tweaks let alone grain and sharpness assessments??
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by walter biscardi on Jun 25, 2008 at 6:26:29 pm
[jay lee]"We are shocked at the poor quality of monitoring and playback in Apple Color."
What are you using for playback? Are you using an AJA Kona board connected to a high def monitor?
Playback is never realtime, which has been documented many times on this forum.
When you are playing video, it will always appear degraded, but when you stop playback, you will see a full quality frame output on your display so long as you are using the proper hardware.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by Arthur Puig on Jun 25, 2008 at 6:34:55 pm
Actually I have the opposite problem, it looks better for me when I'm displaying it than after rendering it, it seems it loses a little bit of highlights, the image looks softer, and I'm using a kona 3 with the last build of Color, or maybe is my imagination...
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by walter biscardi on Jun 25, 2008 at 7:04:27 pm
[Arthur Puig]"Actually I have the opposite problem, it looks better for me when I'm displaying it than after rendering it, it seems it loses a little bit of highlights, the image looks softer, and I'm using a kona 3 with the last build of Color, or maybe is my imagination..."
You mean after you go back to FCP and look at it?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by Stuart Ferreyra on Jun 25, 2008 at 8:20:08 pm
Check with your scopes...
the signal coming out of a frame from Color and then the same frame coming out of FCP. If the scopes show the same exact values then it could be your eyes.
I don't trust Color's nor FCP's software scopes. They are unable to show the complete highlights range.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by Arthur Puig on Jun 25, 2008 at 9:17:54 pm
yeah, after I go back to FCP, I noticed that when I was trying some grades on a DPX sequence. But about a couple of years ago I remember a client complaining about that to me as well, and we were working in uncompress 10 bit HD, and that was in Final Touch. I'll check with the scopes and see what I get.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by jay lee on Jun 25, 2008 at 11:20:07 pm
Thank you for your reply Walter.
For the time being we are testing Color on 2 x 23" LCD's until we decide on a broadcast monitor output setup. Of course we understand the ramifications of not referencing an external monitor for crucial correction but what good is a still frame in Color to asses grain and sharpness? These attributes by their very nature require movement in order to judge.
Also the absolute lack of gamma/chroma management between Final Cut, Color and Quicktime is enough to send you over the edge.
Our work flow is very very simple. 10 Bit Uncompressed QT captured from Digi in to Final Cut.
Final Cut to Color and back (Color set to render same codec as source) & then a final export (Quicktime Movie) with codec 'Current Settings' (10 Bit Uncompressed 422).
This final output Quicktime (viewed in QT Pro) looks nothing like the Final Cut Canvas view which in turn looks nothing like the Color display. One piece of footage in three apps all look very very different? Gamma and chroma all over the place!!
Are we missing a crucial piece of this puzzle?
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by walter biscardi on Jun 26, 2008 at 1:36:49 am
[jay lee]"This final output Quicktime (viewed in QT Pro) looks nothing like the Final Cut Canvas which in turn looks nothing like the Color display. "
The Final Cut Pro Canvas is a degraded image. This point has been covered thousands of times in the Final Cut Pro Forum. Under absolutely NO circumstances should the Final Cut Pro Canvas be used to judge video quality. Period. Apple fully expects you to have a proper external monitor to view proper quality.
The display within Color is a degraded image. This has been covered on this very forum dozens of times and is also covered in at least one of my tutorials and my training DVD.
[jay lee]"One piece of footage in three apps all look very very different? Gamma and chroma all over the place!!"
Correct, unless you have a proper video output card feeding a proper broadcast monitor or calibrated projector. Then your image will look the same across FCP and Color.
[jay lee]"Are we missing a crucial piece of this puzzle?"
An AJA Kona board and a properly calibrated external monitor or projector.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by Doug Cooper on Jun 27, 2008 at 12:33:11 pm
I just ran into similar problems with color matching between Color and After Effects - for a project that's destined for the web anyway (not video)
After reading this thread, is it safe to assume that the Color preview on the desktop isn't useful for anything other than knowing what frame you're on and drawing geometry shapes?
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by walter biscardi on Jun 27, 2008 at 12:54:24 pm
[Doug Cooper]"After reading this thread, is it safe to assume that the Color preview on the desktop isn't useful for anything other than knowing what frame you're on and drawing geometry shapes?"
Precisely. You must have a high quality external monitor connected to a video card like the AJA Kona series for proper playback viewing.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by Doug Cooper on Jun 28, 2008 at 5:21:46 am
That makes sense for monitoring broadcast colorspaces. In this particular case though, what I'm seeing is a gamma difference between applications (Color, Quicktime, and After Effects) when displaying the same media on the same monitor. I think this is a Quicktime, problem (not actually Color), since I've seen reference to this kind of issue on other forums. I'll poke around and see what I can find. Thanks anyway.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by walter biscardi on Jun 28, 2008 at 1:41:24 pm
[Doug Cooper]"That makes sense for monitoring broadcast colorspaces. In this particular case though, what I'm seeing is a gamma difference between applications (Color, Quicktime, and After Effects) when displaying the same media on the same monitor. I think this is a Quicktime, problem (not actually Color), since I've seen reference to this kind of issue on other forums. I'll poke around and see what I can find. Thanks anyway."
Again, this is normal if you are simply looking at a computer display looking at the Canvas of FCP, the Quicktime Player and the display within Color. The Canvas in FCP will generally be darker in pause, brighter when playing back. Quicktime Player will look the most like the actual output from FCP to a broadcast monitor. The viewer inside of Color will look somewhere in between.
This is normal. The only way to see consistent color and gamma across all the apps is to properly monitor it via a high quality video card to a proper calibrated projector or monitor.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Apple Color Playback Display BAD Quality?? by Doug Cooper on Jun 30, 2008 at 6:25:31 pm
I guess it's just something I have to get used to -- not a workflow issue I've encountered before in the world of CG production using color calibrated monitors for a film CGI workflow. I've never worked in an environment where each application would show me a different color using the same images. But I guess video is a whole different world, and requires a different way to display things ...
