I routinely will pass a shot through Final Cut, Shake, Motion and Color. Every app seems to do something different to the brightness/saturation/hue/color of a file when it exports. I'm not talking about gamma differences in terms of how apps display video - I mean if I just took a shot into Motion and rendered it back out, and did the same for Shake and Color, etc., then compared all the results (using the same codec & settings each time, ProRes 422) back in FCP with scopes, they all go off in different directions. This has become a real nightmare for me lately. I want to move freely from app to app and not spend all day trying to retweak colors and brightness levels. It is adding immense amounts of time and stress to doing things the way I want them - I now look for any way possible to just do it all in FCP and save myself the headache!!! But FCP is really lacking for things like tracking, roto, certain kinds of color grading (secondaries w/ selections & user shapes, etc.) Has anyone figured out a better way? Animation codec? Image sequences? Apple, HELP! Or I'll have to check out the Premiere/AE combo...
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Maintaining color fidelity throughout FCS
- Thread starter Oedipax
- Start date
Yes, I know what you mean. You can get very different results just be using different export codecs in Motion.
When it comes to Motion, I tend to stick with Animation. But if you use Animation clips from Motion in Shake you have to adjust the gamma (bring it up by 1.22), but not in FCP.
That's because FCP applies an automatic gamma adjustment to all RGB-based codecs (like Animation), but not to Y'CbCr codecs (like DV, ProRes, etc.). In order to compensate for this, Motion automatically applies a gamma correction in reverse to make it look proper in FCP. Shake doesn't apply the same automatic adjustment as FCP, so the Animation clips will all appear different (darker) and you have to adjust the gamma yourself.
I find Motion to be the biggest problem here. You shouldn't see VERY different results just by using different export codecs (and I have examples of this). I don't have any major issues with Color and Shake.
That might explain some of the differences you are seeing (in addition to possible color differences due to the re-compression). Maybe if you post images and explain your workflow maybe others can help you out as well.
When it comes to Motion, I tend to stick with Animation. But if you use Animation clips from Motion in Shake you have to adjust the gamma (bring it up by 1.22), but not in FCP.
That's because FCP applies an automatic gamma adjustment to all RGB-based codecs (like Animation), but not to Y'CbCr codecs (like DV, ProRes, etc.). In order to compensate for this, Motion automatically applies a gamma correction in reverse to make it look proper in FCP. Shake doesn't apply the same automatic adjustment as FCP, so the Animation clips will all appear different (darker) and you have to adjust the gamma yourself.
I find Motion to be the biggest problem here. You shouldn't see VERY different results just by using different export codecs (and I have examples of this). I don't have any major issues with Color and Shake.
That might explain some of the differences you are seeing (in addition to possible color differences due to the re-compression). Maybe if you post images and explain your workflow maybe others can help you out as well.
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Thanks for your reply, Cools. I've messed around with it some more and actually it seems Shake is the least problematic of the bunch; Color is not so bad either. Like you said, Motion seems to be the biggest shift currently. I've found if you export out of Motion you'll get one result, but rendering the .motn file in Final Cut Pro (in the same codec and everything) gets results much closer to the original, but still off a bit that can be mostly fixed. The real problem with just using the .motn on the FCP timeline is rendering times skyrocket - something that takes 2 or 3 minutes coming out of Motion suddenly takes 15 minutes in FCP. Even rendering transitions gets to be a few minutes of rendering.
Hopefully when Apple updates the Studio again, they'll address the massive shifts being seen currently in Motion. With Shake it seems like if you just manage your gamma properly when importing/exporting then it plays nicely. It really doesn't seem like too much to ask for Apple's pro video apps to export stuff the same way, assuming all are using the same settings.
Hopefully when Apple updates the Studio again, they'll address the massive shifts being seen currently in Motion. With Shake it seems like if you just manage your gamma properly when importing/exporting then it plays nicely. It really doesn't seem like too much to ask for Apple's pro video apps to export stuff the same way, assuming all are using the same settings.