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A Nice Plus
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[Mark Bein] “What kind of TV?
Plasma, TN-LCD, IPS-LCD, VA-LCD, RGB-LED backlit LCD, color-tube?”That’s right…what will they be using? That’s why we color correct to a properly calibrated broadcast monitor, so that we get the colors to be what they SHOULD be. Then it is up to the consumer to have their TVs set right.
And a computer display isn’t a broadcast monitor. An HDTV connected to an IO device is a better solution.
But FCX doesn’t allow external monitoring…PROPER monitoring… (yet)
Shane
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[Shane Ross] “So you are color correcting for air using your computer display? Since X doesn’t output to a broadcast monitor. And it looks exactly the same as when you DO output it to a broadcast monitor? Or are you only judging what you see in the viewer with what you see when you open it up in QT? Because neither is the proper way to judge broadcast colors.
(Yes, I’m being snooty and elitist. One has to be when one does stuff for air)
“Shane you can be as snooty as you like, but it ain’t gonna impress me.
The majority of my work is done for broadcast and has been for 20 years, nationally and regionally.
I’ve signed checks for monthly studio costs that exceed most people’s annual budgets.
I’ve built some of the most high profile film and recording studios in my part of the world.I have broadcast monitors on set, in the field and of course in all my rooms.
There’s no such thing as broadcast monitoring from the FCP X timeline right now though, as I assume you know.
Every spot we send to broadcast, in every market, is sent digitally and compressed for the engineering standards of those networks/groups (Cable Vision can be different from NBC NY can be…)
I don’t use tape anymore, unless de-archiving or doing documentary work.
Similar to my experience as a music producer, you learn over years of producing, editing and mixing for CDs and DVDs, radio and TV and projection, what works in different media and how to adjust and allow for those differences. You don’t just use monitors you understand the difference between how NS10’s sound versus Genelecs with the same material in a different studio. You understand the gamma settings your DP needs for CCing and how to tweak compression for any medium.
That’s what I mean by knowing how things look or sound when they leave my studio.
I don’t know of any producer that thinks differently.With the previous gamma issues with FCP and QT that was simply not like anything else I’ve encountered professionally.
This is now different. The implementation of ColorSync in FCPX works exceptionally well for our professional needs.
I hope this helps clarify my point for you.
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[Shane Ross] “And are you telling me you used FCP 7 and your computer display to judge color for on air spots? No wonder they didn’t look the same. Totally different color space.”
That’s the point of using Color Sync — to translate correctly between color spaces, which FCP7 could not do.
After Effects, for example, does color management brilliantly.
Any color management system will be limited by the display device. A well-calibrated monitor which contains the entire gamut of the intended color space (Rec. 709 for Jim, I’d assume) will show accurate color. This may not be practical with soft calibration on an 8-bit panel, but a hardware calibrator on a deep color monitor should work nicely. Of course, it wouldn’t help with judging field issues.
That said, I still use my FSI.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Jim Giberti] “I’m surprised I haven’t seen this discussed, or maybe I’ve just missed it, but there’s something really big about fcpx that was a real and constant issue in all precious fcps – remotely reliable output from your timeline to any and all flavors of compression.”
There were four features I was really excited about, because I thought they’d let me use FCPX for finishing: resolution independence, ColorSync, linear compositing, and floating point processing.
FCPX 10.0 didn’t have a lot of promise for me, but 10.0.1 was a step in the right direction. I’m curious to see what the next version brings.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
OH…so Color Sync allows what you see in FCP to closely resemble what you WOULD see on the broadcast monitor, if you could? I can see that as being useful.
And the QT export doesn’t shift gamma? Because that is what the issue was, wasn’t it? I mean, what I saw in my FCP Canvas was better looking than the QT export…the QT export looked washed out. Have they fixed that? So if I have FCP 7 in Lion, the QT and the FCP interface will look different, but FCX and QT will look right? Does it make FCX look bad, to match the QT? Or make QT look better? Because we always had to check FCP COLOR COMPATIBILITY with the QT export in order to get it to look right.
Shane
Little Frog Post
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[Shane Ross] “And the QT export doesn’t shift gamma? Because that is what the issue was, wasn’t it? I mean, what I saw in my FCP Canvas was better looking than the QT export…the QT export looked washed out. Have they fixed that? So if I have FCP 7 in Lion, the QT and the FCP interface will look different, but FCX and QT will look right? Does it make FCX look bad, to match the QT? Or make QT look better? Because we always had to check FCP COLOR COMPATIBILITY with the QT export in order to get it to look right”
No offense Shane but can I assume that you have no experience with FCP X except on the forum?
I assumed you would understand the value of correct color management had you experienced it in X. versus the lack of such with all previous versions of FCP.
As I said in my original post, what I see in my studio, in my viewer, is what I see on broadcast monitors, is what I see when I see our work on network TV, is what I see on clients websites – of course allowing for given variables.
It’s totally different from what you experience in FCP 7, hence the title of my thread.
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[Shane Ross] “OH…so Color Sync allows what you see in FCP to closely resemble what you WOULD see on the broadcast monitor, if you could? I can see that as being useful.”
Yes, subject to the calibration and physical limitations of your display.
[Shane Ross] “And the QT export doesn’t shift gamma? Because that is what the issue was, wasn’t it? I mean, what I saw in my FCP Canvas was better looking than the QT export…the QT export looked washed out. Have they fixed that? So if I have FCP 7 in Lion, the QT and the FCP interface will look different, but FCX and QT will look right? Does it make FCX look bad, to match the QT? Or make QT look better? Because we always had to check FCP COLOR COMPATIBILITY with the QT export in order to get it to look right.”
I’ll leave the specifics of how well FCPX’s output is working to Jim and the others, but both gamma and color space handling using QuickTime APIs was an absolute nightmare. QuickTime Player itself is sort of half-color managed, making guesses about what space and gamma it should use for movies based on their codecs and gamma flags.
I think it’s pretty telling that Adobe’s Media Core gets more consistent color out of QuickTime media than applications that use QuickTime APIs directly do.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “That’s the point of using Color Sync — to translate correctly between color spaces, which FCP7 could not do.”
If you read the Glue Tools docs for their Alexa LogC to 709 filters, they say that fcs3 won’t show accurate colors (the whole suite) due to Color Sync issues (it also sounds like if you are using this without viewing on external hardware).
They also say they hope FCPX and motion 5 finally fix it. From Jim’s perspective, it sounds like they are on the way.
Still, external monitoring is a huge need in FCPX. If color sync locks down the accuracy everywhere, that’s fine by us, right? (Except for you, Shane. Please disregard anything I say about X.)
Jeremy
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[Jim Giberti] “No offense Shane but can I assume that you have no experience with FCP X except on the forum?”
Oh, none taken! No, I do have experience with it. I downloaded the demo, and tried for 3 days to cut a show promo. But gave up due to the sheer stupidity of how it worked. I didn’t understand how it did things. Nothing made sense. The skimmer annoyed me, single viewer annoyed me, not saving my IN and OUT points, not being able to SEE my source footage properly. And most off, the lack of tracks. Sorry, I’m a track based editor and will be for as long as NLEs support it. It makes sense. Apple changed something that didn’t need changing.
ANYWAY…that’s besides the point. I did use it. I hated it. And I never ever in all my 15+ years of editing judged the quality of my footage from what I saw in the Viewer/Canvas/Preview/Program monitors. Not one NLE I use shows an accurate image. It isn’t designed to. It is designed to allow me to see what I am cutting. And resolution lowers so that I get smoother playback. If I wanted to see how things really looked, I needed the external monitor.
But I do see the total need to have what you see in the NLE match your QT exports. Because QT exports aren’t broadcast quality…they are web and computer based, so completely different. I get that. I just don’t get using the image you see on the computer display (and the FCX interface) as a guide to what your image will look on TV. Because computer displays and TVs have different color spaces.
[Jim Giberti] “As I said in my original post, what I see in my studio, in my viewer, is what I see on broadcast monitors,”
How do you know? Because FCX doesn’t allow for external broadcast monitoring. So how do you know what you see in FCX is what you see on your broadcast monitor? If it does match…that’s cool! Neat trick. I guess I need to know how you are comparing the shots in order for my head to wrap around it.
Shane
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[Jeremy Garchow] “(Except for you, Shane. Please disregard anything I say about X.)”
I can’t poke fun at you anymore for being the only trusted broadcast professional I know who actually likes FCX? Man…fine, I’ll ignore you.
🙂
Shane
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Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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