The Color Wheels Mystery – Demystified

[Steve Connor]

Can I just add it’s great to see Simon back, I was about to stop visiting but this debate and the return of Tim has kept me here 🙂

\”Traditional NLEs have timelines. FCPX has storylines\” W.Soyka

[Simon Ubsdell]

Thank you so much, Jeremy and Walter and Steve, for your kind words.

Tim would not forgive me if I failed to point out that I only started out on the journey of making tutorials because of all of you here and the fascinating discussions we have had on this very forum dating back quite a few years now.

There is nothing remotely as interesting as a good question and that is what this forum has so often thrown up.

So my thanks are owed to you. When this forum is good, it is very, very good.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Andrew Kimery]

Yes, thank you to everyone that’s contributed to this discussion. You all have taken something that can be pretty complex and broken it down so that the info is accessible to non-experts as well as experts. And that’s not always an easy thing to.

[Claude Lyneis]

Beautiful demonstration of the math right and wrong behind the gamma curves in the color wheels. Obviously not a bug. As a professor of physics at Stanford said many years ago, that is not a mistake it is a blunder. I am hoping Apple sees the light and fixes it, because the color wheels have great promise and are much more convenient to use than the available plugins.
Thanks Simon. This is the best explanation I have seen as to how gamma should work. For me the math is easier to grasp than to do great looking color grades.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Claude Lyneis] “Obviously not a bug. As a professor of physics at Stanford said many years ago, that is not a mistake it is a blunder.”

I guess I would group “bug” in to “blunder”, but I guess that is incorrect nomenclature.

I still feel like this particular problem is something that was overlooked and not QC’d.

I’m not sure what the ‘proper’ terminology would be, but I know as a user, I would file a bug report as it is something that behaves correctly sometimes, but not other times. Obviously, as nearly everyone agrees, it has nothing to do with full and legal RGB ranges as the Facebook crew seemed to espouse.

Wikipedia describes a bug as an error, of either human or computer, in a program:

“A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways…Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made in either a program’s source code or its design, or in components and operating systems used by such programs. A few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy (defective). Bugs can trigger errors that may have ripple effects. Bugs may have subtle effects or cause the program to crash or freeze the computer. Other bugs qualify as security bugs and might, for example, enable a malicious user to bypass access controls in order to obtain unauthorized privileges.”

I would guess that we would never have any bugs if all software problems were “simple” blunders, mistakes, or miscalculations. I guess “Bug reports” if using the tall tale origin of the word “bug” should be saved for hardware, where a bug literally crawls in to the system and short circuits the entire operation? Does this mean we should change what we know as “bug reports” to “blunder reports”?

https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/
https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

The magnetic timeline is a decision. The skimmer is a decision. Roles and other tags are decisions. Having a compound clip the grinds the system to a halt, as in the very early days of FCPX, is not a decision, that’s a bug or at least what I would call a bug.

Having luma values that scale out of a typical range in one color space, but not another while using the same tool seems like it would not be a decision. It would be a “bug” that produces an incorrect result depending on what tool and color space (color wheels or color board, 709 or 2020PQ). I would also think it would be something that Apple (the landlord?) would fix in an update.

Bill Davis, if you want to see the RGB range in action look here, please note not a color wheel was touched: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/49874

[Claude Lyneis]

Jeremy:
Sorry if I didn’t take the discussion of whether it is properly labeled a bug or not too seriously. Whatever it is labeled it needs to be fixed by Apple and I think Simon’s explanation of what is going wrong is crystal clear. Shouldn’t take too much effort for it to be sorted out. This is not rocket science.

So, bug, blunder, mistake whatever, I hope Apple fixes it soon.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Claude Lyneis] “Simon’s explanation of what is going wrong is crystal clear.”

Absolutely.

I was just trying to divert this discussion in to another debate, as always happens in this forum, to:

What is a bug if it’s not a bug? 🙂

[Shawn Miller]

[Jeremy Garchow] “What is a bug if it’s not a bug? :)”

An undocumented feature. ☺

Shawn

[Greg Janza]

As someone who has been following this thread simply out of curiosity, I want to thank Simon ( and Oliver) for the very clarifying information and explanations of the FCPX color wheel anomaly.

This demonstrates how helpful these forums can be for the entire professional community.

I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles

[Bill Davis]

And please don’t forget you have a DIRECT LINE to the Apple FCP X Team in the form of the report plumbed directly into the FCP X menu bar.

If this bothers you, I would expect you to have reported that fact directly to the X development team.

The more reports that arrive at the OFFICIAL problem reporting system, the faster things get fixed.

Let your voice add to others and be heard.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.