OSX 10.8 + QTX + FCPX fully color managed

[Walter Soyka]

Nice! Really good to see the player itself becoming more CM-aware.

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

[Erik Lindahl]

There are still some oddities. Rendering a clip out of After Effects CS6 on a OSX 10.8 machine give the following results:

No color management used
– QTX displays the file way off the target (AE).
– VLC displays the file relatively close to the target (AE).

Using REC 709 as our working space
– QTX displays the file relatively close to the target (AE).
– VLC displays the file way off the target (AE).

I also tried working in REC 709 16-235 as someone recommended in another, given older, thread. This just made the file less accurate in both QTX and VLC (QTX was closer yet lacked a lot of “umph” in the picture).

The below are samples from a 1920×1080 test-project done in After Effects CS6 v11.0.1. It’s a simple logo animation with a clear GREY, GREEN and RED area. I used Apples Digital Color Meter application to measure the pixel values.

Working in REC 709 the colors from application to application is as follows:

DARK GREY
AE: 89 89 89
QT: 99 99 99
VLC: 87 88 87

GREEN
AE: 90 155 75
QT: 95 165 84
VLC: 16 155 64

RED
AE: 180 30 39
QT: 185 31 40
VLC: 208 25 32

I don’t understand why this has to be such a huge problem. Consistency between After Effects and Photoshop isn’t a problem but consistency with-in the OS really seems to be still. VLC is completely FUBAR when working with the REC 709 profile which I’d imagine is what a lot of people working in HD would want to do.

Working in Adobe RGB the colors from application to application is as follows:

DARK GREY
AE: 89 89 89
QT: 99 99 99
VLC: 87 88 87

GREEN
AE: 90 155 75
QT: 123 164 90
VLC: 87 155 73

RED
AE: 180 30 39
QT: 161 39 43
VLC: 178 30 35

VLC is much more accurate now, almost dead-on what’s seen in After Effects. QTX however falls short here.

Last but not least working in sRGB, something Apple recommends for amongst other things – iOS media:

DARK GREY
AE: 89 89 89
QT: 99 99 99
VLC: 87 88 87

GREEN
AE: 90 155 75
QT: 95 165 84
VLC: 18 157 65

RED
AE: 180 30 39
QT: 183 32 40
VLC: 208 25 31

QTX is close again. VLC completely destroys the media once again.

QTX is consistant in how “wrong” it handles the grey’s (or possibly gamma). It’s always a notch brighter than what the original in AE is like. Tagging the file via automator as an RGB-file the grey-value is actually dead on, but the color value run rampage in the wrong direction.

What does one do to sort this out?

[Bret Williams]

Maybe I don’t get this. The colors should be constant. It’s just the ColorSpace they’re being displayed in that is changing them. IOW REC 709 should be altering the gamma and color curves to show how that image looks on a properly calibrated video monitor, right?

I would assume that exporting a freeze from QT and opening it in something like ps and sampling in there should reveal the same color values as AE, minus a little change from any compression that occured.

But still none of it matters. What matters, and what has to be the constant, is a properly calibrated video monitor. Not a TV, not a computer monitor. Ditto with print. All the color management in the world and and it might still be different on a certain card stock, etc.

[Erik Lindahl]

“The colors should be constant”

Agree and they are not between After Effects, QTX and VLC.

“REC 709 should be altering the gamma and color curves to show how that image looks on a properly calibrated video monitor, right?”

Agree, but the look differs between the above three apps. AE and QTX should both be color managed, VLC I haven’t found any proper information on.

“I would assume that exporting a freeze from QT and opening it in something like ps and sampling in there should reveal the same color values as AE, minus a little change from any compression that occured.”

Re-importing the exported file in AE shows identicle color values, yes. But this doesn’t really solve the problem of consistant video display in the system.

“But still none of it matters. What matters, and what has to be the constant, is a properly calibrated video monitor.”

I very much disagree. I’d say consistent colors across applications is extremely important.

1. Content creation
2. Content distribution

Point 1 is a given. If I jump from After Effects to Final Cut Pro X to Premier to Flame, things should look the same – look consistent much in the way I can jump from Photoshop to After Effects.

With the ever growing source of digital distribution – NetFlix, iTunes, iOS content consumtion, YouTube, Vimeo – you name it – having consistent output is vital. Say you’ve graded everything against your $20,000 Sony LED reference display and want to output it for these channels. Then what?

For print there is a similar situation but they’ve had ICC-proofing since the late 90’s and it works. You soft-proof in Photoshop and correct your output against what “should come out of the printer”. You do a test-print to validate things and you’re good to go.

[Walter Soyka]

[Bret Williams] “Maybe I don’t get this. The colors should be constant. It’s just the ColorSpace they’re being displayed in that is changing them. IOW REC 709 should be altering the gamma and color curves to show how that image looks on a properly calibrated video monitor, right?”

Different color spaces may use different RGB values to represent the same color, and they may use the same RGB values to represent different colors. The same color may have different RGB values in Adobe RGB and Rec. 709, and the same RGB values in Adobe RGB and Rec. 709 may produce different colors.

The purpose of color management is to translate your intended color from one color space to another as accurately as possible.

[Bret Williams] “I would assume that exporting a freeze from QT and opening it in something like ps and sampling in there should reveal the same color values as AE, minus a little change from any compression that occured.”

Not necessarily. AE’s color picker should be showing RGB values from AE’s working space, which may be defined separately from its output profile. I’m not sure how the system color picker works in conjunction with ColorSync — if it’s showing the RGB values in their native color space (before display management) or in the display’s color space.

[Bret Williams] “But still none of it matters. What matters, and what has to be the constant, is a properly calibrated video monitor. Not a TV, not a computer monitor. Ditto with print. All the color management in the world and and it might still be different on a certain card stock, etc.”

If you have a good computer monitor and if it is accurately profiled, and if you have a good end-to-end color managed workflow, then you can use it to simulate the output of a calibrated Rec. 709 video monitor and you can trust the colors. If your monitor is lousy or if you haven’t profiled it, then color management can’t do its job and you will not get accurate or predictable colors from your display, so you won’t be able to simulate other devices or profiles.

In the print world, you can profile specific inks on specific stocks, and with color management, you can simulate this on your display. If you change inks or stock (or both), of course you would need to use a different profile for simulation.

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

[Walter Soyka]

[Erik Lindahl] “QTX is close again. VLC completely destroys the media once again. QTX is consistant in how “wrong” it handles the grey’s (or possibly gamma). It’s always a notch brighter than what the original in AE is like. Tagging the file via automator as an RGB-file the grey-value is actually dead on, but the color value run rampage in the wrong direction. What does one do to sort this out?”

I don’t think VLC is color-managed (though I am quite surprised to see that it looks closer with Adobe RGB than Rec. 709 or sRGB).

Desktop playback is a constant pain in color-managed workflows.

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

[Oliver Peters]

This is all well-and-good, but it only matters in so far as someone else viewing your content using QT X on a Mac with a similar display. It won’t be accurate for other media players, PCs, other displays or broadcast video. I find FCP X closer than FCP 7, but for my concern – video – I get a closer representation within the GUI using Premiere Pro to what I see on a broadcast monitor, than what I see in FCP X. And Premiere Pro supposedly isn’t using color management (I think).

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Walter Soyka] “I don’t think VLC is color-managed”

I can confirm VLC is not yet color-managed:

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=61142&sid=704ea329c7b2c5c6ddbb895a2f47daa2&start=40

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

[Erik Lindahl]

It’s a head-ache! I would love to recommend clients “view this file in application X or it will look like something your dog barfed up”. But now I really can’t… Given the above tests I don’t have a reference monitor at home so I can’t say if perhaps VLC actually looks more like a “proper” REC 709 in one of the above cases, the inconsistency, especially between QTX and VLC on the same Mac is very discouraging.

[Walter Soyka]

[Oliver Peters] “This is all well-and-good, but it only matters in so far as someone else viewing your content using QT X on a Mac with a similar display.”

IF QTX is now fully color-managed, then it should be accurate for anyone using it, regardless of display (IF that display is profiled).

Practically speaking, no one profiles their displays themselves. However, if Apple ships new computers with decent preloaded profiles and color-managed software, this problem will eventually diminish on the Mac platform.

[Oliver Peters] ” And Premiere Pro supposedly isn’t using color management (I think).”

True.

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