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Color Space Question
UPDATE: I am asking a related question in the FCP forum. Since this issue spills over several programs I am not sure where to ask about this. If a moderator wants to close one of these threads they are welcome.
ORIGINAL POST:
I am not sure if I am posting to the right forum because I think the issue is a color space one and not necessarily Motion per se.I am using Motion 3. I have created something and when I export it out using Animation Codec it looks great. But if I export using h264 it looks awful. I am taking it into FCP and laying text over my motion graphic.
You can see the difference here …
https://www.extravaganzacreative.com/Milk/colorspaceIssue.html
This is driving me nuts! Once I get into FCP I have the sequence set up as animation and export that way.
This video is for a live event and will be run off a laptop with Quicktime Pro on a PC.
I am new to thinking about color space and video … if I should take this to a different forum let me know. Any help is appreciated!
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8 Replies
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You should never use H.264 for anything other than a final output version to web. Stick with the animation codec and you’ll be fine. Also you don’t need to export out of Motion to FCP you can drop a Motion project directly into an FCP timeline and save time.
Noah
Check out my book: RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera!
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Sony EX1 Guidebook, Panasonic HVX200, Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon 7D.
Watch Formosa- My indie movie shot with the SDX900 and finished with Final Cut Studio. -
Won’t an animation codec possibly choke the laptop playing it back? I did import the whole project in to FCP but still the same problem when going to H.264
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I can also export it as pro res and then in FCP did a pro res sequence and then exported as pro res. However when i go into compressor and compress to h264 it looks like garbage again. I have gone into the color tab and tried default for encoder and preserve source and they both get the same effect. Grrrr…. maybe now I should be in the codec forum.
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Ok … definitely a codec issue – it is the H264 gamma shift bug. I am heading over to the compression forum to see if anyone has any suggestions I haven’t tried.
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Yeah but once again- H.264 is a *distribution* codec- it has zero place in your general production workflow. I.e. do not use it… Stick with ProRes and add a faster hard drive. If you’re on a laptop an eSata card with an eSata RAID will do the trick.
Noah
Check out my book: RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera!
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Sony EX1 Guidebook, Panasonic HVX200, Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon 7D.
Watch Formosa- My indie movie shot with the SDX900 and finished with Final Cut Studio. -
Thanks so much Noah. I am editing in Pro Res now. I don’t have control over the laptop it will be played on so I still want to convert down to h264.
I still have had very strange anomalies with my motion sequence. I have a gradient and I have a generator moving over it (membrane). If I export it out as animation it looks really clean (or if I import project into FCP and then export as animation) but if I go out as Pro Res 422 (I don’t have 444) I get artifacts and banding. I have played with turning on and off dithering. I have been sticking with 8 bits for depth … should I go higher? Isn’t pro res 10 bit (and that isn’t an option in Motion is it?)
Sorry for all the questions but I feel like I am going insane with this. To add to the craziness some stuff looks great when I watch it on the web through firefox but when I look at it on stand alone player it looks like junk (example here https://www.extravaganzacreative.com/Milk/colorspaceIssue.html )
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That looks more like your video card than compression codec. Are you sure it’s set to million+ colors, etc.
Noah
Check out my book: RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera!
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Sony EX1 Guidebook, Panasonic HVX200, Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon 7D.
Watch Formosa- My indie movie shot with the SDX900 and finished with Final Cut Studio. -
Thanks Noah. Both images in my computer are from the same computer – why could it read one and not the other? This is just weird. Is there even a place where I can change the millions of colors setting – in preferences – display I see only profiles (and it has my monitor listed.)
I have exported a version with the bit depth looking good at 32 in Pro Res 422. Now I guess I just have to live with the banding when I bring it down
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