PHOTO-JPEG BROKEN IN FCP 6??

I'm finding it impossible to use media encoded with the Photo-Jpeg codec in FCP 6. I originally posted in the Cafe LA forums (old post), and found that several others are able to repeat my woes. So, I'm posting here to declare it a real bug and hope for a fix in the near future.

Basically, when I have a photo-jpeg clip in FCP 6 (at any percentage of quality) the gamma changes from when the play head is parked to when you're actually playing down. Hit play and your image "pops" to a different gamma, hit stop and the the image "pops" back. This gamma shift occurs on my external display AS WELL as in my canvas AS WELL as when I'm previewing clips in the viewer.

Additionally, applying effects or transitions across photo-jpeg material is resulting in a gamma pop between rendered and non-rendered material. This is definitely a NEW BUG, as I used to use photo-jpeg quite a bit w/ FCP 5 - 5.14. It's our archive codec of choice and we've been using it for several years (we have over 1 TB of data encoded at photo-jpeg). I'd realllllly like to not have to recompress all that data, but I've yet to find any solutions.

I'm seeing this on several different G5s (haven't tested on MacPro) w/ OS 10.4.10 & various QT versions. I've got a variety of Blackmagic cards w/ a variety of Blackmagic drivers all repeating this bug.

I've done some further testing since my initial post and have found a few interesting behaviors that may or may not help the diagnosers out there:

ALL MOVIES ENCODED @ PHOTO-JPEG w/ FCP 5.14 or EARLIER (either via capturing or converting) - HAVE THE GAMMA SHIFT BUG IN FCP 6

ALL MOVIES CAPTURED @ PHOTO-JPEG w/ FCP 6 - HAVE THE GAMMA SHIFT BUG IN FCP 6

SOME MOVIES CONVERTED FROM A DIFFERENT FORMAT (say uncompressed 10-bit) to PHOTO-JPEG - DO NOT HAVE THE GAMMA SHIFT BUG IN FCP 6!!!

I say "some" movies because I've tried a few formats and not all results are the same.

To help explain this issue a bit, I've created a link w/ some examples. What I've done is created a gray solid in After Effects and I've rendered it out as three seperate codecs: ANIMATION, UNCOMPRESSED 10-BIT, & PHOTO-JPEG 100%. If you open these in QT you'll see that they appear to be identical, BUT if you open them in FCP 6 and play them down you'll see that the animation & UC 10-bit files are fine, but that the photo-jpeg pops into the wrong gamma when you hit play and pops backwards when you hit stop. What I did next is convert the UC 10-bit and the Anim movies into the photo-jpeg codec using QT. When you bring these into FCP you'll see that the "pjpeg_from_uc" works great (no popping), but the "pjpeg_from_anim" still has gamma popping!

You'll also notice that in this test the gamma is correct when the playhead is parked, but wrong when you actually start to play. IN ANOTHER TEST, where I CAPTURED photo-jpeg material, I had the opposite result. With the playhead parked the gamma was wrong, playing down the gamma is right. I would post these clips as well, but they're not free of copyright.

Still, check out the gray solid footage. Should be a good place to start:

[agency.curiouspictures.com]

user: pjpeg_test
pass: test

Any insight would be much much appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

Did you try the 'full' render, since the problem partially resolved when overlays were turned off?

Did you do an out-to-tape with live pausing to see if the gamma shifts translated to tape, or were only a function of monitoring?

hi,

We have this problem as well. Our system is dual 1 Gig G4, Decklink SP, 1.5Gig Ram, FCP 5.1.4. We use Blackmagic Photo-JPEG at 75% as offline codec for editing feature films transferred from 16/35mm to Beta SP. I don't remember when I noticed the Gamma-Shift bug for the first time, but somehow I have the feeling that it doesn't always occur. For the last few weeks it's been present though. First I thought that it has to do when switching from viewing the video out from 8 to 10 bit, but that was not the case. We are really clueless at this point, and it's a very annoying thing.

As of next week we will start to use our new Mac which is a 8-core 2.8GHz, 8 Gigs Ram with a Decklink Mutibridge Pro New, and FCS 2. I was wondering if any users have experienced the gamma shift in this hardware/software combination or not. We find the Phgot-Jpeg a really good codec, with a low data rate but high quality images.

My best to all,
Thomas

Is your rendering settings set to "process RGB values to white" instead of superwhite? Are there any effects applied to the clips and do they require a render?