Gamma Settings 1.8 vs. 2.2

[Walter Soyka]

[Sean Kapleton] “I am trying to now calibrate a pair of ACD 23″ aluminum monitors to look identical”

This is one area where calibrating with a colorimeter could help. It may be very difficult to get two monitors to match by eye using only the Display Calibrator Assistant.

[Sean Kapleton] “clarify what my gamma settings should be not only on the monitors themselves but also for example in QT pro settings.”

I’d leave the gamma at the system default of 2.2. When enabled, the Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility checkbox will make the appearance of a clip in Quicktime Player match its appearance in FCP.

I think Rafael’s advice in the last thread was right on — you have that Dreamcolor for critical color reference specifically because you know not to trust the FCP Canvas.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Sean Kapleton]

Hi Walter
thanks for the reply much appreciated.

So just to clarify I know not to look on my regular computer monitors for any color critical stuff – yes that is why I have the Dreamcolor However, I do want the dual ACD 23″ monitors to look as close to each other as possible. One standout thing i notice is in the Conclusion Window which I took a grab of there is a difference in the “Native Gamma” settings:

The Brighter / whiter monitor is 2.42 while the darker / yellowish monitor is 1.86 – could this be the problem and if so how can I adjust? Otherwise the settings were done identical in both calibrations (i.e. Target Gamma 2.2 & D65 w/ Native White Point checked).

My second question is when you talk about leaving the QT preference unchecked – why wouldn’t I want QT to match what I see in FCP – why would I want to see a shift between them and have them not match?

thanks

sean

[Rafael Amador]

[Sean Kapleton] ” I do want the dual ACD 23″ monitors to look as close to each other as possible. “
If both monitors are of the same brand and same model, you should be able to calibrate one, and apply that Profile to the other one. They should look identical.
With different monitors things get more complicated. Some times you can’t access even the basic controls.
On your ACD, you can tweak Gamma and White Point, but what about the Brightness, Contrast, Chroma and Hue? Impossible to try to tweak that to match other monitor.
I think that only with, as Walter points, a third part solution you may get something. Otherwise you will have to rely on your eyes.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Sean Kapleton] “So just to clarify I know not to look on my regular computer monitors for any color critical stuff – yes that is why I have the Dreamcolor However, I do want the dual ACD 23″ monitors to look as close to each other as possible.”

That’s why I’m recommending a colorimeter (like the i1Display 2, hueyPRO, or Spyder 3) — to try to get your two displays consistent.

Sorry if I didn’t come across well on this before — it’s very clear from your previous posts that you understand not to use your computer monitors as color reference, but a lot of other people on these forums think they can get a color calibration system and use the FCP canvas in lieu of a real reference monitor.

Unfortunately, color/gamma management in Quicktime and the Apple pro apps is a disaster. It’s totally inconsistent. Adobe has a very nice profile-based color management implementation which really shows how much room for improvement there is within QT/FCS.

[Sean Kapleton] “One standout thing i notice is in the Conclusion Window which I took a grab of there is a difference in the “Native Gamma” settings: The Brighter / whiter monitor is 2.42 while the darker / yellowish monitor is 1.86 – could this be the problem and if so how can I adjust? Otherwise the settings were done identical in both calibrations (i.e. Target Gamma 2.2 & D65 w/ Native White Point checked).”

Those are huge differences. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are completely different panels internally. All the more reason a calibrator would be helpful.

[Sean Kapleton] “My second question is when you talk about leaving the QT preference unchecked – why wouldn’t I want QT to match what I see in FCP – why would I want to see a shift between them and have them not match?”

I was surprised to see that this checkbox still has an effect in Snow Leopard, since I had thought it was to correct the 1.8/2.2 gamma issue. I suppose it’s just there as a matter of personal preference. If you leave it on, your system will be internally consistent. If you leave it off, you’ll see the file the way a default QT install (and possibly your clients) would. With either setting, the color is most likely wrong and the broadcast monitor is necessary.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Rafael Amador]

[Walter Soyka] “I was surprised to see that this checkbox still has an effect in Snow Leopard, since I had thought it was to correct the 1.8/2.2 gamma issue”
This shouldn’t be there anymore. With a native 2.2 Gamma this option only miss leads people.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Rafael Amador] “This shouldn’t be there anymore. With a native 2.2 Gamma this option only miss leads people.”

That’s what I thought, too — but it still affects the image! I’m running Snow Leopard 10.6.5, FCP 7.0.3, and QuickTime 7.6.6, and the standard “Cinema HD” profile for a 30″ Apple monitor, and unless that box is ticked, clips look different in QT and FCP.

The more I think about it, the less I am able to understand what is going on under the hood with QT, FCS, and color management — and the more appealing a proper finishing system like Smoke looks to me.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Matt Lyon]

[Rafael Amador] “This shouldn’t be there anymore. With a native 2.2 Gamma this option only miss leads people.”

[Walter Soyka] That’s what I thought, too — but it still affects the image! I’m running Snow Leopard 10.6.5, FCP 7.0.3, and QuickTime 7.6.6, and the standard “Cinema HD” profile for a 30″ Apple monitor, and unless that box is ticked, clips look different in QT and FCP.

I’m kinda late to the thread here … but this issue has been bugging me and I had some thoughts:

What is important to remember is that while Snow Leopard changes the colorsync behaviour on an OS level, the “guts” of FCP and quicktime player 7 haven’t changed significantly in a long time, at least when it comes to the display engine.

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but FCP was initially coded with the assumption that every mac would use a 1.8 gamma. That’s why the FCP viewer would “darken” the image … it was trying to fake an “TV” like gamma (2.2) on the computer monitor (I’m talking FCP v1 here, using the DV codec).

If you select the “Enable FCS color compatibility” option in QT player, it is mimicking the way the FCP viewer works. Read the fine print underneath the option; it DOES NOT use colorsync, instead doing a straight display of the 2.2 gamma color in a 1.8 gamma colorspace (Truth be told, I find the wording of this to be totally confusing and open to so many different interpretations so as to be meaningless). But the important point is that it makes QT player behave like the FCP viewer.

BUT, this is just changing the way the player INTERPRETS the pixels in your video. It is not solving the underlying problem. You can still send your video to another machine and it won’t look right.

So I don’t think the move to Snow Leopard has solved any of these issues at all. If anything, it is even more confusing.

But I’m also a little put off by people’s expectations that one should be able to magically export a quicktime that somehow matches perfectly what you see in FCP.

I’m probably gonna sound like an old curmudgeon here, but I still remember when you had to manually remap your 16-232 8 bit video space to 0-255 RGB computer color space to get web videos to look right. So I guess I’m just used to doing some extra tweaking to match my exported quicktimes to what I see on the broadcast monitor.

But having said all this, having to remap colors is a thing of the past and the h264 codec supports proper gamma flags. The issue seems to be the inability of FCP to properly set that flag. Have you tried using the x264 plugin? Here’s an interesting article:

https://byteful.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-fix-the-h264-gamma-brightness-bug-in-quicktime/

I’ve also had some success using the “filters” setting in the QT export options:

Select “adjustmenst>colorsync.” The next part is a little tricky and I haven’t gotten consistent results. You need to pick an input and an output colorsync profile that bakes the proper gamma curve into your video. Try using “Adobe RGB” as your input and “Adobe sRGB” as your output. I’ve had some luck in the past getting it to work with these settings, but YMMV.

But at the end of the day, we still have no control over how the end user’s computer display is calibrated! No matter how perfect we refine our output, we’ll still get calls from directors/producers/parents/bail bondsmans saying their video is too bright/dark/saturated/washed out, etc. (not much different then broadcast television, eh?)

Hope these ramblings are somewhat helpful!

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Walter Soyka]

[Matt Lyon] “If you select the “Enable FCS color compatibility” option in QT player, it is mimicking the way the FCP viewer works. Read the fine print underneath the option; it DOES NOT use colorsync, instead doing a straight display of the 2.2 gamma color in a 1.8 gamma colorspace (Truth be told, I find the wording of this to be totally confusing and open to so many different interpretations so as to be meaningless). But the important point is that it makes QT player behave like the FCP viewer.”

Great post, Matt — and thanks for clarifying. I guess this gets back to the very old problem that FCP does not use ColorSync, so you shouldn’t expect consistent results with anything that does?

[Matt Lyon] “But I’m also a little put off by people’s expectations that one should be able to magically export a quicktime that somehow matches perfectly what you see in FCP.

I’m probably gonna sound like an old curmudgeon here, but I still remember when you had to manually remap your 16-232 8 bit video space to 0-255 RGB computer color space to get web videos to look right. So I guess I’m just used to doing some extra tweaking to match my exported quicktimes to what I see on the broadcast monitor.”

Hardly an old curmudgeon — those days weren’t THAT long ago… were they?

That said, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation as we approach 2011 that applications which all use the Quicktime libraries would each render video properly and consistently.

ColorSync has been around for years, and soft-proofing has been practiced in print for years. Adobe’s color management system works beautifully in video. Why not FCS, too? All of the color inconsistencies that QT/FCS suffers from — and I’m talking about the various problems roundtripping video through multiple applications, not just how video appears in the FCP canvas — are major problems for people producing digital video.

[Matt Lyon] “But having said all this, having to remap colors is a thing of the past and the h264 codec supports proper gamma flags. The issue seems to be the inability of FCP to properly set that flag. Have you tried using the x264 plugin? “

I’m a big Matrox CompressHD fan — I’ve been using the card since it was released — and it’s another option for handling H.264 gamma encoding properly.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Matt Lyon]

Thanks Walter, I definitely agree with what you are saying. It is a shame that FCP has not kept up with the times in terms of color management. At least there are some workarounds for the time being.
The more I think about it, the more it seems to make sense to me to leave the \”enable FCS compatibility\” option DISABLED in QT player. At least this way you are viewing your output the way it will appear to most end users.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hey all,

This topic has been bugging me since the thread started, so I’ve been doing more testing!

I’m now almost positive that for the most accurate colors in the FCP viewers (at least as far as that is possible), it is optimal to set your display profiles to 1.8 gamma. FCP will darken the images into a pseudo 2.2 gamma space. If your monitors are set to 2.2, then the images in FCP will appear too dark.

This is all in FCP 6.0.6 + Snow Leopard (and regular Leopard, for that matter) … I’m not sure if FCP 7 changes things.

Of course, the problem still remains that most of the world works in 2.2 gamma land. So I guess the solution is to toggle between 1.8 and 2.2 display profiles all the time? One for editing and one for QC’ing?

Of course, the usual disclaimers apply: test for yourself, etc

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto