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Capturing HDV to FCP7 – clips are dark!
Hi Follicles,
I’m having trouble capturing off a Sony Z7 HDV camera and playing them correctly in FCP7.
The capturing seems to go fine but once captured, the clips – when played back in the FCP viewer, canvas and timeline – seem dark and contrasty, as though the gamma has been turned all the way down and all the colours are somewhat askew.
I’m assuming my problem has something to do with my capture settings.
I’m pretty much a newbie at FCP but I was hoping to be able to capture in Apple Pro Res 422 (HQ) PAL and then stay working in the timeline with Apple Pro Res 422 (HQ) PAL. I have been told then to output the final product as H.264.
So in the Audio/Video settings, I set the Sequence Preset and Capture preset to various forms of Pro Res 422 (I’ve tried a number of different variants with the same outcome).
When all that failed, I tried to change the settings to Sequence Preset as HDV 1080i50 and the Capture preset to HDV while the device control preset is at SonyHDV 1080i50 Firewire. But still the same result!
I’ve gone to the actual .mov files and they seem to play a little better in QT but still the brightness and colour representation seems out.
Any help plzzzzzzzzz….
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9 Replies
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Further to the above and sorry for all the details but I thought it helps tell the complete story – I’m running off an 15″ MBP i7 8GB RAM with external FW800 drive, using an external monitor, although when I disconnect the external monitor, the images in FCP on my laptop screen still looks as bad. All other video whether I watch on You Tube, through the internal DVD player on in Quicktime looks fine.
Tx
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How does it look when monitored through the firewire cable/camera/monitor? If it looks fine there (and fine in distribution) then it’s soley the way your mac is setup – you might want to play with the Colorsync for the LCD screen in the Monitors system preference.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
New- my book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
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Thanks Jeff – yes, when I compress to quicktime, and play the quicktime back on the same computer, monitor, it looks ok but in FCP it still looks crappy.
I’ll play around with the colorsync and see if that makes a difference, but I would have thought that would affect the overall look of video in general in all programs and formats, not just how it looks in FCP?
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Grrr, I’m afraid I’m still stuck – if I open the clips up in QT, they look fine. I’ve tried exporting as well – they look fine BUT the clips when viewed in FCP7 still look weird.
Help!
Anyone.
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Jeremy,
There are several things possibly going on here that I can think of.
For years there’s been a struggle with the gamma values on the mac – Apple has picked 1.8 (the same as broadcast tv) where PCs are 2.2. And QuickTime/fcp are caught in the middle.
Your video card may not be handling the video correctly – what version of OSX are you using? 10.6.8? FCP 7.0.3?
Your system may be calibrated incorrectly.At the end of the day, if you shoot it, edit it and it outputs fine, it may not be worth tracking down.
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Thanks Jeff – I’m using OSX 10.6.8 and FCP 7.0.3 I’ve tried calibrating my external monitor with the internal mac calibrating facility in Systems Preferences.
The issue is pretty important to me because I won’t be able to do any color correction, so the shoot, edit, output unfortunately is not satisfactory.
hmmmm
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I’m sure you know this – but you can’t really color correct on the LCD display, right? You need to use a calibrated external broadcast monitor (like the ones made by FSI)
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
New- my book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website -
Um…err… no… didn’t know you couldn’t colour correct on an LCD and I’m afraid I haven’t the $$ for and fancy monitor : (
I guess I mightn be able to do a proper color correction, but surely you can get a (very) rough idea of how the picture should look – contrast, brightness, etc – which at the moment I can’t because the picture just looks so crappy. Again, it’s just in FCP that the images look like the gamma (or something like gamma) is incorrect. Instinct tells me that it’s therefore something to do with FCP settings rather than the monitor, although happy have my instinct proved wrong… no?
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actually, you should acquire that FCP’s native format is Apple Prores, so how about first converting it to prores 422. then, FCP must read it well and you can do some editing fluently.
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Laura
Laura Wood
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