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ColorSync Question… Matching FCP colors with QT and DVD
I am using FCP 5. I edit mostly for web download and occasionally to be put on DVD. Basically I use the color corrector to make the colors in the preview window the way I want them, as I do not have a broadcast monitor. But when exporting to H.264 and played back in quicktime the colors always look washed out and too light. This happens both when not using the FCP ColorSync filter and when using it (using Generic sRGB). Here are some screen captures, as you can see FCP shows the colors much darker (the way I want them).
What is the best way to get the two colors to match? I need the Quicktime colors to look the same on all computers (Windows or Mac, Calibrated Screen or not) or at least as close as humanly possible. I understand that each codec has a different gamma, but there has to be a way to do this. Also how should I do this for DVDs to be played back on TVs (again without a broadcast monitor)?
–Thanks!
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3 Replies
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What you’re asking for really can’t be done very easily. The gamma response on a PC is different than a Mac’s which is again different than a TV set’s response… so if you use h.264, you cover the problems between Mac’s and PC’s, but of course you have no control on how each person’s monitor is set up, which would change the way your video looks from machine to machine.
The same thing can be said about TV sets of course too…
Without an external video monitor properly set up, you really can’t see what you’re video will look like on a TV set either.
All that said, you can set your preferences in QuickTime Player to match what you see in FCP… it’s on the first window you open in QT player prefs… at least that will work so you can see QT playback as you would in FCP.
Jerry
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I seem to have come up with a solution. I have connected another computer monitor to my laptop, and set FCP to display the video output on that screen (acting like a broadcast monitor would). The colors on the external monitor very closely match what the colors look like when exporting to QuickTime, so I am just color correcting on there. When exporting to the QT file I am adding a ColorSync profile to match the calibrated one of the external monitor.
I think I have come up with a solution for DVDs as well, but I don’t know if it would work. OS X has a color profile built in called NTSC (1953) so I plan to set the external monitor to that profile when color correcting for DVDs and exporting to QuickTime (reference movie, non compressed) with the ColorSync profile (NTSC (1953)) for use with DVD Studio. What do you think?
–Thanks for your help
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That will not even be close to a real NTSC monitor. To do what you want, you really need something like a Matrox MXO or one of the AJA Io products, connected to a real production monitor.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog
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