Issues with P2 imported footage black levels

S

statman

New member
I rented a P2 for a shoot this weekend and ran into this problem.

The footage I shot looks great when played from the camera on its LCD screen and on my Sony HD Flat Screen TV, colors are good, lighting is fine and the black levels are standard. However, after importing into Final Cut Pro on my Mac Pro, the footage is 2-3 times darker, especially the black levels which according to a friend who is a P2 owner that I showed some samples to, are "crushed."

Any ideas what is happening? I am a newbie when it comes to the P2 but I have used it before and never had any issues. Hoping that my computer is messed up and not the footage or I will have one unhappy client.

Thanks, Jae
 
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I noticed that as well. Everything was lit well and looked great in the LCD of the P2. We had a primarily African American cast. Transfer to my iMac and now all of the cast looks like shadows, no eyes, no facial features. Considerably darker. I know the iMac has a glossy screen, but it is basically an HD monitor.

I'd like to find out what this issue is as well. Thanks
 
This answer pertains to ANY issue with quality you have with your footage:

Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback

ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL BROADCAST MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.

The Canvas shows you what happens after the codec you are working with has been applied. The Viewer shows you the material in its native format. Once you drop the footage from the Viewer into the timeline, it inherits the attributes of the sequence. If it is a DV sequence, the footage will render out as DV.

1. Disable overlays on the Canvas.

2. Make sure you've rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline).

Video playback requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the DV data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the DV footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or broadcast monitor routed thru your camera or deck.

And the LCD on the camera is NOT a broadcast quality image. That is a reference monitor only...for framing...and for general exposure level.
 
Shane,

Thanks for the feedback and taking the time to answer my question/issue. I do recognize what you are saying and realize that the LCD screen is not a great way of checking your visuals compared to a monitor or TV. However, I have filmed with various cameras for the past 10 years and never seen this much of a drastic change in black levels. On my HD TV, the footage going component out the camera looks fine as it does on the LCD screen.

Once into FCP though, even in the browser, not even in the timeline, looks dark overall and the black levels are crushed. I have never seen this before. I have shot with the P2 twice before and didn't have this issue. And all of my other footage from recent shoots from HDV tape looks fine as well. It's just this particular P2 footage from this one shoot. Doesn't make sense to me.

(edited, got help from the posters...thanks!)
 
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If it looks fine on TVs and other LCD monitors, then it is fine. Your computer monitors need to be adjusted. I see the screen grab and it looks fine on my end. I'll see what others have to say.
 
burn a test DVD with a few different scenes that look dark... play that back on your tv. that'll give you a better idea of what it looks like (better, but still not accurate).


but like shane says, you can never EVER EVER judge the look/quality of footage from any window inside FCP (actually any video app). you MUST look at it on a calibrated broadcast monitor.
 
Thanks for the feedback, I was able to look at the footage in its raw form on a Panasonic HD monitor and it looked pretty decent. The levels could be brought up a tad but overall (like you both said) much better than inside FCP. That totally makes sense, for some reason I have just been lucky so far in that my footage has matched most of the time, this I guess is the first instance where it did not. Thanks again though!
 
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