Color in Exported QT movie isn't the same as in FCP

[bgreenstone]

In my project I've got the color balance just how I want it in FCP, and in the Canvas the movie looks great. But if I then Export the movie to Quicktime and leave everything as the Current Settings and even don't make the movie self-contained, the resulting Quicktime movie looks washed out. The colors don't even come close to matching how it looked in FCP.

Why is it doing this, and how do I fix it?

Thanks,

-Brian

[Alex H.]

First, what you are seeing on your FCP canvas is not accurate color. To really know for sure, you need to have an accurate, external production monitor.

Second, QuickTime player has some of the worst color reproduction. If you watch a QT movie on your desktop, it will generally look like crap. Compress it to h.264 and put it on the web, or compress it and author to DVD, and the color is magically back to the general neighborhood where it should be. Bring it into FCP and export it to tape and it's right back where you had it, too.

[adkimery]

There are gamma handling/display inconsistencies between almost all of Apples Apps. Load the same clip in QT, DVD SP, and FCP and odds are you'll get three different looking images. And as C2V said, what you see in the Canvas window in FCP is just a proxy of what your image looks like and it should never be used to judge image quality/color.


-A

[bgreenstone]

I'm not sending this video out for broadcast. It's for viewing on a computer display... *this* display, so I'd expect what I see in the Canvas to be what I see after exporting it. Otherwise, what's the point of having Color correction tools if the output doesn't even come close to what I see in the editor?

I understand that there will always be color differences from display to display, but we're talking about the exact same machine here. Why would it look differently in the Canvas if that's not what FCP is actually writing out to the QT movie? It doesn't look different from app to app. It looks exactly the same in every app once the movie is exported to QT. There must be a way to tell FCP to not futz with the color - just write out what I see right now.

-Brian

[adkimery]

There is no way to turn off the gamma adjustments FCP does when it plays back a clip in the Canvas window. The point of having CC tools is to use them w/a properly calibrated broadcast monitor. If/when someone develops video profile standards for computers, like they have for desktop publishing, we can start 'trusting' our NLEs as WYSIWYG but until then the reference point for 'hey, what does my image really look like" for video will be a b'cast monitor.

In QT preferences there is an "enable FCP compatibility" check box (or something close to that) and it will make QT display video the same way FCP does. Try giving that a shot if you haven't already. Things might also change for the better when Snow Leopard comes out at the default gamma will be 2.2 instead of 1.8 (which is currently standard on the Mac). FCP assumes a 1.8 gamma on your display and changes the way video is displayed in the Canvas window to mimic what the video would look like under 2.2 gamma. If you have your display set up at 2.2 then the Canvas will look really wrong because FCP will always assume the display is set at 1.8 and 'tweak' the image accordingly.


-A

[bgreenstone]

Yeah, I tried that setting in QT, but it actually makes the playback in QT *worse*. It washes out the images even more.

It appears that FCP was not designed for web viewing of movies, just broadcast. So, hopefully the next version will fix that and the Canvas will not botch the gamma, but rather show exactly what the movie is going to look like on the computer. I'm amazed that this feature isn't already there considering how much stuff is created specifically for the web these days.

The closest I've come to compensating for this is to boost the saturation in FCP really high and then when I use Compressor to save the final H.264 movie I set the Gamma to 1.1. That combination comes pretty close to making the final movie look like what I see in the Canvas. Not exact, but close, and 10x better than what I get if I do nothing.

-Brian

[adkimery]

H.264 has a gamma bug all of its own. ProvideoCoalition (http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams) has a couple of good blog posts about it. Scroll down to the "Quicktime Conundrum" blogs entries to find out more about that specific problem and workarounds.


-A