Capturing dark in FCP

[Adam Taylor]

you cannot rely on the camera and a laptop to tell you the pictures are correctly exposed. You need to use a decent broadcast monitor.

Also, what format did you shoot?
Analogue or digital?
What video input method are you using(Kona? Firewire?)

it all makes a difference to what you can do during the input process.

Don’t forget you can always do a colour grade after the edit to really help improve the shots…just make sure you digitize to a format that will give you best quality with least compression such as 10 bit uncompressed – you want to retain as much info as possible without degrading the signal.

adam

Editor/Mixer
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Arnie Schlissel]

What kind of footage is it? How did you monitor on set? How do you monitor out of FCP? How did you capture the footage?

If you monitored with a properly calibrated broadcast monitor on set, & have a properly calibrated broadcast monitor connected to your Mac, then you do indeed have a problem. If not, then the odds are that you’re just not monitoring properly.

If you don’t have a broadcast monitor, you can use the video scopes in FCP to check. Open up the Log & Transfer window to check the original footage on tape against the scopes. Drop the same footage, after capture into a matching timeline to check that against the scopes.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Steve Alsip]

Hi and thanks for responding. The footage that is causing issues is unfortunately MiniDV I will also be using DVCAM. Can you offer me any help? I don’t believe I will be shooting any analog at this company.

It is captured firewire using the Firewire basic option in Final Cut Pro. Is there a different option that I should consider?

Editing using FCP HD on a mac G5 with two, Dual Core 3.0 xeon chips and 4 GB of RAM.

[Steve Alsip]

So the scope are just a check and balance. Operating like any vectorscope monitor. OR doI have the ability to make adjustments whil looking at the scope.

[Steve Alsip]

This is a billion dollar company on a shoestring budget. Currently looking to purchase some equipment but it will be limited. I ended up using a Television to monitor the shoot. Poor I know but it was all I had.

Any suggestions for the near term?

[Adam Taylor]

As i understand it, when you digitize a digital source with a digital codec you do not tweak the signal until after its digitized.

Analogue and digital signals are by their very nature, completely different. Digital is a stream of digits (no? really?) as opposed to a constantly varying electrical signal and so making changes during the data transfer, which is really what digitizing is, is not good idea.

You are gong to have to load the footage before making any corrections. The upside of this is that you will be working with the unaltered image, and you have the option to undo any changes you make. If you made corrections prior to input, then you could be working with an already compromised source.

Don’t forget its rare for even broadcast cameras to give you the finished image. Most video will go through a correction/grading stage prior to tx. I get material shot on high end HD cameras, and even though its really good quality, i still grade every shot.

If you are used to the analogue way of tweaking levels on input, you will just have to get used to a new workflow for digital. it may feel restrictive at first, but it actually gives you more flexibility throughout your edit.

adam

Editor/Mixer
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK