FCP 7 suddenly video in Viewer & Canvas incredibly dark/severe gamma.

[Bryan Rowland]

Exact same thing happened to me yesterday – mid project. Attached is what the same file looks like in FCP & in quicktime. This goes way beyond the ‘Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility’ issue in quicktime. I have reset my Pram- Deleted my FCP pref files. No luck. i exported an xml to Premiere & the files look great. I then opened the same project file on a different mac and everything looks fine – no CRAZY gamma color shift. A can’t seem to find a resolution! I tried switching System Settings/Playback control/Gamma Correction from Accurate to Approximate (in FCP) but it still does not look right – Why would this happen mid project!?

[Joshua Sandler]

Yup we’re having the exact same problem. I could upload a comparison image but trust me its the same issue, and it affects all my FCP projects. I have no lead on a solution yet. I have done everything you have to no avail. I have been trying to identify what could have set off this problem but nothing comes to mind. I use a colormnki monitor calibrator about once a week and was wondering if that might be linked to some sort of corruption but i really don’t think so. This is incredibly frustrating as i was just sitting down to start cutting a new green screen project. Let me know if you find a solution and I will do the same.

[Bryan Rowland]

Ya – this seems isolated to FCP. I am going to try to reinstall FCP & see what happens.

[Eric Browne]

Did you gentlemen find a solution the this dark redish video showing up in the viewer and canvas for FCP? I am experiencing the same symptoms on a new iMac. The video appears to be fine outside of FCP in quicktime, in Compressor and even DVD Studio Pro. I re-installed FCP Studio3 as well to no avail. Let me know if you have found any way to solve this. Many thanks.

[Bryan Rowland]

No fix a of yet. I have not tried the reinstall like you did. disheartening that it didn’t work for you. I have been cutting more and more in Premiere and have not missed much from FCP so far.

[Matt Lyon]

Hi guys,

I’ve posted about this issue in other threads, but basically FCP 1 thru 7 darkens the gamma of the viewer windows because it assumes a system gamma of 1.8, and is trying to achieve a net gamma close to 2.2 (which would be roughly equal to a broadcast monitor). This is mentioned briefly in the manual:

https://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutpro/usermanual/index.html#chapter=85%26section=8%26hash=apple_ref:doc:uid:TempBookID-ReplacedWhenAssociatingWithMessierRevision-44034RND-1019474

In Leopard OS, most people didn’t notice, since the default system gamma was 1.8. But in every OS since Snow Leopard, the system gamma is now 2.2 by default, so the viewer windows end up being way too dark (since the gamma multiplier is still being applied).

So on any system I run FCP on, I switch the display gamma (in system preferences>Displays) to 1.8. I also keep a 2.2 gamma setting, when I need to work in other programs that expect 2.2 gamma.

hth,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Joshua Sandler]

Hey Matt thanks for trying to help. there have been a lot of posts about this subtle gamma problem, but this newer problem that these guys and myself are referring to is not subtle but actually a very drastic gamma shift that happened suddenly, that is to say for the first few months i was running FCP on my mac everything was fine and than one day out of nowhere, i am suspecting as a result of some bug connected to a software update, the video in my viewer and canvas appeared incredibly dark and with heavy gamma, so that skin tones almost look like bright orange. More and more people are popping up in forums with this problem but on one seems to have a real solution as of yet. Some people have suggested changing the gamma correction in the playback control from Accurate to Approximate, which makes it better while the video is playing but once the cursor stops moving the video goes back to being very dark. I dont really consider this a real fix to the problem but more of just a bandaid. I was going to reinstall but now that people have said it does not fix the problem i don’t see the point. I have spoken with apple and they have no awareness of or solution to the problem. I am at a loss for words. I mean I have been using FCP for years and for over a month now my FCP7 has been unusable and apple can’t help me fix it. Pretty incredible.

[Matt Lyon]

hmm, that does sound like a different issue then I’m describing. There’s a lot of moving parts when it comes to display gamma so it makes sense that a software update could have changed something.

But did you try my solution? I’m curious if it made any difference at all.

FCP will do the gamma correction in hardware or in software, depending on the graphics card you have installed. So maybe an update to a display driver might have “broken something.”

I’m not using Lion, and haven’t seen this issue, but I know that in Snow Leopard, you can open the “software update” control panel and open the “installed software” tab and look back at your update history. You can reference the dates and hopefully figure out which installer might have caused the problem. I think you are right that an FCP re-install won’t fix this issue, but if you can revert the OS to before the patch was installed, that might do the trick. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to “un-install” whatever patch caused the problem, or if you’ll have to re-install the OS from scratch.
But I don’t have direct experience with this bug, so consider my advice to be speculation 🙂

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Joshua Sandler]

Matt that is very insightful Yes i did try your tip and it only slightly adjusted the already totally messed up/dark gamma in FCP. I am in Lion and you cant really access the gamma adjustment as you could in snow leopard. I have to go into “calibrate profile” in order to mess around with the gamma and by doing so it automatically wants to re-lcalibrate your color, and since i am using a colormunki to calibrate my monitor I don’t need apple screwing around with colormunki’s calibrations which i assume are much more accurate. Anyway think your right, I am going to call apple again and see if they have any new information about the problem and see if reinstalling the operating system helps out. Besides that all i can really do is wait until someone identifies a solution. Every day i troll the internet to see if anyone has come up with a solution. UG. Thanks for your input. j

[Joshua Sandler]

Ok i figured it out. First of all, the problem was mostly Colormunki related. this post explains it:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3135195?start=60&tstart=0

when creating a monitor profile using the colormunki software you need to go into the preferences and set the ICC Profile Version from version 4 back to version 2. This gets a little techy for me but version 4 is what is causing this glitch and going back to version 2 and creating a new profile fixes the problem of the extremely dark viewer and canvas in FCP. I also set my gamma setting from 2.2 (default) to 1.8.

I think Colormunki was the culprit. But i must say I am still a little confused about this 1.8/2.2 Gamma issue. As I am running Lion, should my display always be set at 1.8? Should it be set at 2.2? or should it be set at 1.8 when i am running FCP and than to 2.2 when i am running other programs such as photoshop? If you dont want to repeat an answer that has been explained a gagillion times than maybe just point out a good thread that explains. thanks for all your help. and to repeat, if you are a FCP user who also calibrates their monitor with a Colormunki, the colormunki is the Culprit!. Switch the ICC profile version to 2 and that should solve the problem.