Problems importing alpha channel video into FCPX.

[Mike Gurfield]

I tried that at first too. No dice unfortunately… But Simon solved it with the Saturation issue.

[Simon Lewis]

Mike-

It is one of FCPXs many ridiculous quirks I’m afraid. I’m not sure if there’s some sort of import setting you can change, but it doesn’t do it with me all the time, just now and again. It is rather daft isn’t it. I had the same problem when I was importing R3D Footage through Red Cine X, so it’s not a quirk limited to FCPX it seems. With that though, I could just batch everything to up the saturation. Surely there’s a way to do that on FCPX?

I hope it doesn’t waste too much of your time!

Simon

[Mike Gurfield]

When I decided to do this particular project in X instead of legacy FCP, I knew there would be an adjustment period, and a few unfamiliar things. But I wasn’t really prepared for basic media management gaffes. Paste Attributes should do the trick though… It’s just a pain.

[T. Payton]

So you can confirm that there is a color correction added with exposure with desaturation applied to the clip when it is imported?

Weird indeed.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Mike Gurfield]

Well, in essence yes. The thumbnail in the Event browser is correct, but playing through it in the Event viewer or Viewer/Timeline it is not correct. Going into the color correction tab, clicking on Saturation, and boosting it to 100% brings things back to normal. No telling what happens if I actually wanted to over-saturate something, but luckily I don’t have to worry about that now. The exposure setting is fine. The media retains all of it’s lighting and shading data from After Effects, but for some reason, just isn’t displaying properly. Haven’t had that trouble with any video clips, so maybe it’s something about the way they are interpolating a blank Alpha channel. I sent a message to Apple, so maybe they can look at it and scratch their heads too.

[T. Payton]

Mike,

Would you mind posting a file? Change the text around so it isn’t a problem with your project. I’m curious to see if I can reproduce it.

Maybe post a screen shot too.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Mike Gurfield]

I’m gone for the day, but I’ll try to upload something tomorrow morning if we aren’t totally slammed…

[Mike Gurfield]

Here’s the file if you want to play around. As I said, the solution seems to be cranking the Saturation of the clip up to 100%.

6351_whatcoloristhis.mov.zip

Let me know if you get any better results. FWIW, I have sent the file to Apple as well, as my discussions with them have led to a similar query.

[T. Payton]

Humm. Not seeing the issue on my end (as far as I can tell) tired a bunch of Apps.

As a side note. I had not idea how low res scopes in FCP7 compared to FCPX. Click to enlarge.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Mike Gurfield]

Yeah that’s what I was afraid of. Simon I think had a similar issue with FCPX occasionally doing this, so it seems like it may just be random. When I get done this eve, I’ll try importing a bunch of other titles and share the results. Thanks for taking the time, by the way. Hopefully all our combined efforts will help make bugs like this fewer in future versions…