FCP import problem. Dark detail lost!!!!!

J

jake stutheit

Active member
So in another forum, experts ( Barry and Thoff ) have deducted that I am losing luminance upon importing into FCP. I shot a horror short, and in the most important shot of the movie, the killer, who is masked in shadow, but very visible ( on the hvx viewfinder and ikan monitor ), is not visible after importing into fcp 5.1.4.

I shot 720PN using an hvx, and when viewed on several different monitors it appears as though the area where the killer is in the shot has crushed blacks. I still have the shot on the P2 card, and when I view it through the hvx viewfinder, the shot looks great. Also, when I view the shot on a hdtv it is also slightly darker.

Thoff and Barry mentioned a problem with FCP converting footage lower than 255 IRE or something. Has anyone ever had this problem. I'm going crazy over here.
PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!
 
Can you post a still- importing should not be affecting matters. You should be only gauging true image quality on a well-calibrated HD monitor, not your desktop.

Noah
 
And never trust your viewfinder on the set as an accurate representation either. An HD monitor connected to it would be the best way.

But look at it on an HD monitor...computer monitors can't be trusted for this....unless connected to a Matrox MXO.

And Color Correction can always fix this.
 
My guess on this is that there's some setting for keeping full-scale video (0-255) and there's some other setting for compressing to 16-235, and I'm guessing that jake has it set to do the compression to 16-235. Does any of this sound familiar and can you FCP gurus tell him what to check or change?
 
Just out of the blue...

Could be a monitoring/gamma problem as well.

DVCPRO HD performs bad in the darker areas (except Varicam and HPX 2100 which do shift some bits toward darker areas in a special setup)


Have you tried to push the footage with gamma-changes?
Or just in the 3-way CC?

What are you monitoring on?

Was your LCD flat when you recorded, or was it set somewhat bright?

Gunleik
 
Yup there's white/superwhite and force YUV etc. But if he touches none of the default settings it will be identical to the camera originals. The fact that he's talking about judging his lighting levels through the viewfinder says a lot. It sounds like a monitor calibration issue more than something FCP is doing. Let's hear back from the original poster with some screenshots please.

Noah
 
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