Washed out color on compressor export
by Steve Komen
on
Oct 9, 2008 at 2:17:10 am
Hi Everybody-
This is my first post and I hope y'all have some answers, because I'm going mad. Really appreciate that your collective wisdom is available to me.
I have a project that looks great in FCP, but when I compress it, the color is washed out, blacks aren't deep,chroma is down. It looks a bit like footage from an old VHS camcorder.
When I view the export through FCP it looks fine, when I view using QT it has the look described above. I have shipped it to other folks, and they are seeing the same problem.
The project is 960 x 720 16 x 9 widescreen. That is how I received it, already set up. When I export a QT, the aspect ratio is 4 x 3. I have changed the aspect ratio within QT and that is working fine, but still would love to know why my exports don't have the same aspect ratio as my Canvas and Viewer windows.
Regarding the color issue, I have tried numerous codecs including 422 pro res HQ, H264, uncompressed 8 bit, and just a good old export as Quicktime Movie, all with the same result.
Re: Washed out color on compressor export by Rafael Amador on Oct 9, 2008 at 4:42:31 am
[Steve Komen]"I have changed the aspect ratio within QT and that is working fine, but still would love to know why my exports don't have the same aspect ratio as my Canvas and Viewer windows." Because by default QT read all the pixels as Square.
[Steve Komen]"I have a project that looks great in FCP, but when I compress it, the color is washed out, blacks aren't deep,chroma is down. It looks a bit like footage from an old VHS camcorder. " FC Canvas shows the picture with a 2.2 Gamma, while QT display with the default Apple Screen Gamma of 1.8. Go to QT preferences and check "Enable Final Cut Studio Color Compatibility". QT will play with the 2.2 Gamma.
Rafael
Re: Washed out color on compressor export by Steve Komen on Oct 9, 2008 at 6:19:08 pm
Hi Rafael-
Great! Thanks for getting back to me.
I found that I could fix the aspect ratio issue within Quicktime by changing the dimensions of the aspect ratio to 960 x 540 for true 16 x 9 and then saving the QT with the changes.
As to the gamma issue, I changed the preferences to the FCP setting and it looked great. Thanks for the tip. My new question is, how can I export so that the gamma is embedded in a way that will look normal on a QT player with default settings as my clients are likely to do.
I trust that any project that goes up on the web will be a fairly accurate (with compression artifacts if turned into Flash) reflection of what my final QT looks like in terms of color and image density. Am I right in my assumption?
Re: Washed out color on compressor export by Rafael Amador on Oct 10, 2008 at 1:56:44 am
Hey Steve,
This is an old issue because MACs work with a different Gamma than PCs and Monitors.
What you get in the FC canvas is what you will get in a PC or Monitor screen. Think that what you get in QT player with default setting, will look much darker in a PC or monitor. Or what you get in a PC will look much lighter in a MAC. If you are making videos for the web you will need your videos look well in PCs because the most of the people uses PCs. But there is no way that the movie will look the same in both platforms with the default settings.
If your customers use MAC they should be aware of this. The only solution is to change the QT Prefs as I told you, or change the Screen Gamma (in the System Prefs). This second solution will change the gamma of everything you have in your screen, not only the QT movies.
Rafael
