[Dean Isaacs]

Cory:

I agree that rendered videos should match the FCP Viewer and they don’t.

But I’m not sure about the conclusion that the FCP Viewer is “right” and the h.264 render is wrong. This is the part I’m still testing.

Here’s a test I would suggest to verify. Take some HD video with a colorful background and white balance so that the video you view on the video camaras screen is pretty close to what you see in real life.

Now put this into FCP and render to H.264. How does the H.264 render compare to what you see in real life or on the camera?

I’m just wondering whether the washout is occurring in comparison to what you see in the FCP Viewer or is it also in comparison to real life/or as viewed on camera.

Dean Isaacs

[Dean Isaacs]

Back from the Apple Store, where I tested on fcs 3.0 and Snow Leopard. Nice way to kill lunch.

1. Can’t use Preview to change color profiles on video. Preview doesn’t open videos. So much for an elegant fix.

2. Although I couldn’t figure out how to change the color profile of an existing movie, when you export using quick time conversion under options > filter you can choose another color profile. Some of the profiles make the colors look staturated again. But I don’t know if this is a rendered filter or just a different color profile tag. Interestingly, no matter what color profile is chosen in the filter menu, when I play the movie in QT X and use the get info, the color profile info is the same, “HD (1-1-1)”–whatever that means.

3. I know I can adjust the gamma in compressor. But if ones does this and Apple ever fixes this problem in QT, the “corrected” files may no longer display correctly.

4. Way too complicated for my small brain. Typical Apple. Beautiful products with irritating flaws they won’t bother to fix.

Dean Isaacs

[Dean Isaacs]

Apple has a new support page which addresses gamma 2.2 in snow leopard.

Here is the link. https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3712.

This has me thinking: Perhaps it’s not the “values” that are being desaturated, but its the information code about how to display those values. Caution #1: I may have no idea what I’m talking about.

But a few things started me thinking this. (i) I have read in scattered places on the web that there is a “gamma tag” that causes the gamma shift and (ii) the above support page suggests that it is possible to open a Movie in Previews and using the Tools menu change the Color Profile. I don’t know what the correct Color Profile would be, if this works at all, but maybe this might work. I will try it when I get in front of a snow leopard system running fcs 3.0 –maybe at an Apple Store.

Caution #2. The support page says chaging the color profile is NOT reversible, so only do this on a copy of a movie or oe a movie made just for this experiment.

Dean Isaacs