Final Cut Pro or Express. Colour Fades on still images.

[Alex Elkins]

Have you rendered your sequence? My guess is that Final Cut Express is just showing you a low quality version when you play back the unrendered video from your timeline.

[Bob Stephens]

Hi Alex! Thanks for your suggestion; I’ll try by using the “Render all” command in Final Cut. I usually render clips and transitions then save the file as I work through the editing process but don’t do a final “render all” prior to exporting the final product out to Quick Time for burning to DVD.

That could make a difference in the final quality of the product. I’ll try rendering everything and then re-exporting to QT. (The fade is quite noticeable in the final DVD production when it’s played back on a television set).

Thanks for your help; I’ll let you know via the forum how it works out.

Best Regards.

Bob Stephens.

[Jonah Lefkowitz]

Hi All,
Long time beneficiary of this amazing online resource. First time poster. Let me know if I commit forum fail.

I’m doing the exact same thing as Bob Stephens for a client and having the exact same problem with Final Cut Studio 6.0.2.

There seems to be a random element to when FCP decides to pass the saturation drop through to my render, not necessarily dependent on whether the drop appears in FCP. Maybe the codec I chose (Photo/JPG, H264, m2v), maybe what mood FCP’s crazed brain is in.

The most consistent cure seems to be:
quit FCP, delete render files on your scratch, reopen project, and as Alex suggested,
>Sequence, Render All, Both
Then try your export again.

Getting the little render state bars at the top of the sequence from green to blue seems important, although, I would question the professionalism of software that passes half rendered information to a final render… and then everyone in LA would shout me down and pelt me with iphones. 🙂

Bob, 2 questions for you, and anyone else reading.

Do you ever have problem with your m2v (to Dvd) renders trembling or twitching when your still photos aren’t moving enough? If so, have you found a fix?

Have you noticed that rendering your sequences to h264 (usually for preview purposes) produces a completely washed out render that lacks saturation throughout?

Cheers, Jonah

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Jonah,

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “Maybe the codec I chose (Photo/JPG, H264, m2v), maybe what mood FCP’s crazed brain is in.”

What codec are you editing with in FCP? Photo JPEG, h264 etc are not editing codecs, which might explain your odd renders. Are you seeing this issue in FCP or only in the self-contained file you’re exporting?

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “Do you ever have problem with your m2v (to Dvd) renders trembling or twitching when your still photos aren’t moving enough? If so, have you found a fix?”

Try adding a de-interlace filter to the still images.

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “Have you noticed that rendering your sequences to h264 (usually for preview purposes) produces a completely washed out render that lacks saturation throughout?”

Yes, and it’s so irritating! I compensate for it by boosting the contrast by 5% in the adjustments tab in the QT export settings. This tends to work alright.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

[Jonah Lefkowitz]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your fast response on an old thread.

>>What codec are you editing with in FCP?

My sequence is in AppleProRes HQ 29.97 720×480 CCIR 601 16×9 Anamorphic.
This is somewhat arbitrary given that all of my source material is 8-bit JPGs. I just wanted something that would match aspect on the 16×9 Progressive Anamorphic DVD I’ll have to deliver on eventually. I’d be very open to more efficient suggestions here.

>>Are you seeing this issue in FCP or only in the self-contained file you’re exporting?
This is where the voodoo comes in.
Sometimes the saturation problem will appear in the FCP timeline preview, but not in QT export.
Sometimes it will appear in both.
Sometimes the saturation problem will actually get ‘stuck’ in the ‘Render Files’ folder in scratch and your Sequence>Render>All trick will stop working until I’ve completely deleted the cache.
There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I’m willing to live with 3 pointless steps before each important QT export.

>>Try adding a de-interlace filter to the still images.
I’ll have to get back to you on this but thanks in advance.

>>Yes, and it’s so irritating! I compensate for it by boosting the contrast by 5% in the adjustments tab in the QT export settings.

My only guess is that it’s a color space problem. It is definitely worse because my monitors are spyder2pro calibrated to 2.2Gamma 6500k. (I don’t know if I should be doing this but I come from a photography background so it’s muscle memory at this point) Flipping though various color profiles under display settings causes the h264 video’s color to jump all over the place while an Animation or Photo/Jpeg render will shift only slightly.

The same h264 file will look almost correct when opened in VLC instead of quicktime.
It will look absolutely correct in QT with “Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility” checked under preferences.
That button doesn’t exist for windows quicktime users but from what I can tell in bootcamp, Windows QT looks a hair better than Mac VLC and a hair worse than Mac QT with Compatibility mode on.

There simply has to be a non-hack fix for this. Trailers from Quicktime.com look fantastic in H264 regardless of whether Compatibility is turned on.

It’s touched on here without conclusion:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1006780

Episode Pro will give you about 20 more options for rendering to H264 than Compressor or QT export, but only a few of them affect color space, and I wouldn’t try to answer your question by encouraging you to waste more money. This is Creative Cow, not Macforums! Amirite? 🙂

Thanks again, and sorry for this long winded response.
-Jonah

[Alex Elkins]

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “My sequence is in AppleProRes HQ 29.97 720×480 CCIR 601 16×9 Anamorphic.
This is somewhat arbitrary given that all of my source material is 8-bit JPGs.”

I’ve come across the same problem when editing with PhotoJPEG material. The only sure fix I could recommend is to transcode all of your PhotoJPEG clips into ProRes using Compressor, although that might not be very efficient depending on how much material you have. In my experience the problem was only when the playhead was paused, so it wasn’t a problem for me as it was just for a rough layoff to tape.

As to why your ProRes rendered files sometimes have the same problem, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps try selecting ‘recompress all frames’ on the export settings.

Let me know if any of that works.

All the best,
Alex Elkins