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Pro Res 422HQ renders of my feature film render too dark!
I need some urgent help. I just received the reels of my first feature film back from a reputable color correction house in NYC for delivery to a huge film fest.
I am tasked with rendering out final reels with effects and text added in order to deliver the files back to them in Pro Res 422 HQ quicktimes for layback to HDCAM tape.
EVERYTIME I render ANYTHING from my FCP sequence using the Pro Res 422 HQ codec the footage comes out darker.
From my googling, this seems to be a common problem that is fixed by a setting in QT preferences that unifys how qt and fcp interpret the footage. This fix didn’t work for me and i’m at a loss for what to do. I need to send this to them today or my film won’t play at the festival. How do I set my machine up so I can export my project to pro res quick time without the codec darkening everything?
Additionally when simply viewing the pro-res color corrected masters delivered to me by the colorists the footage is at least a stop or 2 darker than what they showed me on the Davinci when we did a watch down of the film.
I’m working on an Imac with a core i7 2.93ghz processor and 8gb of ram, I’m using FCP 7.0.4 the problem persists with both QT conversion and compressor. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do to fix this. Please help.
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5 Replies
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[Terence Nance] “when simply viewing the pro-res color corrected masters delivered to me by the colorists the footage is at least a stop or 2 darker than what they showed me on the Davinci when we did a watch down of the film. “
Terence, this says to me that your home viewing environment is not properly set up to evaluate the footage. You have to trust what you saw at the facility, on their very expensive, presumably frequently calibrated monitor.
It might be helpful for you to do a test render of a ten second section, with your effects added. Send it back to the facility, and have them watch it on their DaVinci, next to their original export. Only then will you be able to say for sure what adverse affects your renders may or may not be having on the footage.
Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto -
Hi Terence,
I think this could be a result of the dreaded QuickTime Gamma shift. Quicktime shifts the Gamma of footage that should be viewed at 2.2 to 1.8. Throwing the QT through through After Effects to raise the gamma should help (After Effects us a different scale so you want to go from 1.00 to 1.22).
Gaz
Gaz Evans
Workflow Technician
The diROOM
https://www.diROOM.com -
In what situations do you see this happening Gaz? I’ve round-tripped ProRes HQ footage I’ve received from Color Correction facilities and not had this problem. Last time was a Pablo though, not a DaVinci.
There’s a “gamma correction” setting in the codec options that might affect this behaviour…
Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto -
Hi Terence, Hi all
has anyone found any solution to this issue?
I am rendering a Apple ProRes 422 HQ file to Apple ProRes 422 HQ output file, from a Apple ProRes 422 HQ timeline and it renders out darker!
The software is FCP7 on a 10.7.4 mac.
In the Video Processing options of FCP, I have flag ”render 10bit material in high precision YUV”.
The coloris confirmed that the output is darker than what he provided.
How to fix this?
Thanks
sil -
Uh quite simple finally, it looks fine exporting with “quicktime movie” instead of “using quck time conversion”. Cool, I was just using the wrong export.
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