FCP Movie Desaturates on Output

Hello,

Have a quick question. I'm cutting a series of short 24fps, DVCPro50 edits for a web-based client. After the cut leaves me it goes to a compression guy for online deployment. I have been exporting a self contained FCP Movie (with it's native settings) for him but the output movie seems to be desaturated. Not a lot but enough. I know that the color information is still there because if I pull the file back into FCP the color is recovered.

Is this desaturation a by-product of FCP Exports? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Chad
chadgalloway@gmail.com



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Chad Galloway
Cine | Post
chadgalloway@gmail.com
www.chadgalloway.com
--

Sounds more like a case of "computer monitors not showing you what's really there" to me, but I'm no expert.

I tend to agree with Derek.
The only way to check the Final product is out thru a properly adjusted professional video monitor.
BJ

<<<the output movie seems to be desaturated.>>

How are you viewing the work? Talk about the steps you're taking.

No, that's not normal and yes, calibrated or at least predictable monitors are a big deal.

Koz

Thanks for the feekback guys. That's a good point as I have only seen the output on 3 different LCD monitors. I do not have a proper monitor for color right now. But the part that confuses me is that inside Final Cut the picture looks colorful with proper saturation and then after output the edit it becomes milky and desaturated. So if the monitor was doing this I wouldn't see a difference would I?

I've tried exporting using both "Current Settings" and also the actual sequence settings but have found the same desat with every attempt. Does a FCP Movie not output all the color info? Should I export in another codec?

Thanks for the help!

Chad

One additional note,

I just brought in a clip into my FCP machine at home and looked at it here. I have a Lacie 20" CRT and BenQ LCD 20" And there is noticable difference between the two. But why would it look saturated in FCP but not in QT after export?

C

<<< Lacie 20" CRT and BenQ LCD 20" And there is noticable difference >>>

The shift between Glass monitors and LCD is a pain in the butt and we're all fighting that. A lot of that is the LCD screen inability to do good blacks.

That's the milky thing. That can cause the colors to seem to desaturate when all you're really doing is messing up the range of brightnesses that the colors have to play in.

Put a little of the colorbar signal in your show somewhere temporarily and display that. See the three dark gray bars in the lower right? Those are the pluge pulses and they are used to set black level. On a properly operating monitor, you should only see one of the three stripes, and it should be surrounded by dead black. On an LCD screen, you can set the screen to only see one, but the screen isn't black when it does it. Nothing on the LCD screen will ever look good.

Having beaten that to death, are you saying that the canvas display and the exported QuickTime display *in QuickTime* and *on the same monitor* look different?

Koz

That's what I'm saying. The lack of true black on the LCD is a problem but what's really got me confused is that in FCPs canvas colors look great and after exporting a FCP QT Movie (no conversion) there is a desaturation effect when I view the file in QT.

However, if I bring that file back into FCP and watch it the color is back. WTF? Does FCP have a different color/gamma display then QT Pro?

Also, I just did a series of tests where I exported QT Conversions using "None" and "Video" Compresions. And they retain the color when viewed in QT Pro. I also made a FCP QT movie with the Uncompressed 8-Bit Setting and that looks pretty good.


I'm going to try the color bar advice right now!

Thanks again!

Chad

<<<I'm going to try the color bar advice right now!>>>

Yes, well, don't knock yourself out. That's not going to help this problem.

The QuickTime Export to try is Animation. That's one of the uncompressed codecs least likely to damage the picture.

The codecs inside Final Cut and QuickTime play games. It's not at all straightforward. If you try to cross the line between PC, or Linux, or Anything Else and Final Cut, you would be shocked at the damage that occurs.

Let's see. Are you using that matching set of FCP5, QT7 and Tiger? Mixing those up may reduce the happiness in your life significantly.

Koz

Animation is RGB though, so the image will go through a YCbCr to RGB transform. I'm guessing the other person has the wrong gamma on their monitor or something.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

But he's saying that Quicktime on the same monitor plays the clip differently to how it looks in the FCP canvas. Same clip, same machine, same monitor, different saturation.

Um. I've got nothing though.. unless.. quicktime corruption? Trash Quicktime preferences?

Could you upload a tiny section of the clip somewhere so someone else here can check it on their machine? Just a few seconds should do it.

Well...let's check the two most straight-forward possibilities just to rule them out:

1. Is High Quality enabled in the QuickTime movie when played back in QuickTime Player?

2. Did the Brightness, Contrast and Color settings get changed in QuickTime Player? Press APPLE-K to check.

Hi Again,

Thanks for all the advice. To answer a few questions, yes I'm running all the newest software, FCP 5.1, QT7, OS10.4x. High quality playback is enabled for QT Viewing. I will check the QT Prefrences and picture settings as soon as I get to work. That's something I never thought of.

Here's something I'd like to ask and I'm sure you'll all roll your eyes when you see this but does FCP show set it's gama/color settings independent of the OS Color Profile?

By that I mean if I have my monitor settings set to the monitors factory set profile would final cut automatically display the color in a different profile like NTSC or Apple RGB? Because Originally I had my monitor set for it's BenQ preset. I never ran a calibration. And that's when I noticed a difference between the two environments. I now have my monitors color profile set to the AppleRGB setting and am hard pressed to see a difference between the FCP and QT where as before it was a night and day difference.

Am I crazy or what?

Thanks again. You guys are amazing!

>>does FCP show set it's gama/color settings independent of the OS Color Profile<<

No. What you see in FCP should be the same as what you see in Quicktime on the same monitor. These will both be different to a TV or a 'glass' production monitor though. And different to how they look on a PC.