Color change after H.264 Compression

ramsaur

ramsaur

Veteran
This has happened to me before but I never thought about trying to fix it till now. Look at the pictures here. Before pic is what I have in FCP while after is what happened after I exported the footage at H.264. I can't have my colors like that... anyone know how I can fix this problem?

Before
before.png


After
after.png
 
H.264 is very highly compressed, and can introduce hue changes easily, nature of the beast. I've rarely seen such harsh changes like you're showing here, though. What are your settings, how are you making the H.264 files, and for what purpose?

There are filters you can apply when making the H.264 (not in FCP, in the QT transcode settings) to adjust for hue changes. But I'd want to know your transcode process and settings first.
 
That looks like a colour shift rather than a simple gamma change, but it's possible my browser is doing something weird. Google 'Final Cut Pro gamma shift', but be aware that Snow Leopard and Final Cut 7 do things differently to previous versions. It's a royal pain in the behind, and it remains to be seen if the end-to-end colour workflow being touted for Final Cut X actually, you know, works.

Personally, however, I've not had many problems. I cut ProRes on FCP 7 (on Snow Leopard) with all system colour settings at default. I export ProRes masters, compress with Episode, and everything looks as I expect. The only time I see gamma shifts is when I have to compress with Handbrake/x264 for one particular client.

However, as I said I'm not quite clear this is the known gamma shift issue, or something else.
 
Also, in QTPlayer 7, in Preferences, at the bottom, make sure that "Enable Final Cut Studio Color Compatibility" is checked.
 
Well I figured out that it's just a quicktime problem and it works on everything else it can be played it. And that switch in QT7 did the trick, thanks BenB!
 
Not a QT problem. All apps handle gamma/color space differently. There are half a dozen standards, each app developer goes with what they want to go with. Broadcast is "usually" RGB, but not 100% of the time. Film is pretty much CMYK. Which way is FCP supposed to go?

Oh, you CAN change what gamma you're working with in FCP, it is a customizable variable. It is by default film. QT is broadcast, which matches web video better.

AE and PS do odd things, too.

It's an industry problem, not a QT problem. Thanks to so many different "industry standards" for software developers to chose from. It's a universal mess.

Not to mention how many editors who claim to be professional are NOT using approved broadcast monitors. Ugh, please...
 
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