[Jon Vargo]

I think your right about the error in the way that FCP 4.5 processes the DVCPro 100 codec. I did another test where I captured the same footage uncompressed and dropped it into an uncompressed timeline. I rendered a simple reverse and low and behold no white level clippping. Then I added my color correction and rendered that out with no issues.

So has it been confirmed that this problem no longer exists in FCP 5?

[Jon Vargo]

Thanks for all the tips.

We are running FCP 4.5 & QT 6.52 on a dual 2.5g g5. I have gone through all my sequence settings and am rendering in 8 bit yuv and processing white as white. I tried the other settings just to see what would happen as well. No luck there.

I was looking to see if there was a way to tell FCP not to clips the whites but it looks like thats not going to happen. Since an upgrade is out of the question for now it looks like me best solution is to bring down the white levels before I get into FCP. Unless of course there is a hidden check box in FCP to disable this “feature”. Is there a magic number it clips at? 105 ire? 108? 100? or is it just random?

This is one of those things that I would like to take care of with the color corrector in FCP rather than messing with the field tapes because each shot is different and levels are all over the place.

thanks again for all your help

jon vargo