[Ken Robinson]

I forgot to mention that there is a nice blur tool in Resolve…. Stick a bit on the higlights only.

Ken

[Ken Robinson]

Blacks are too crushed for my liking…. Push up the gamma… Watch the sky, its pumping luminance…

To get the right B&W look, you will need to play with the RGBYCM levels to get the nice luminance tones from the existing chroma.

Try exporting to Resolve Lite… You will have more control… (presuming your final output is HD and not 2k)

Ken

[Ken Robinson]

You are right… Except that you can get away with FCP and Color in the way that we are using it, it without a high end monitor and some sort of breakout box.

If the amount of money that is being paid in this part of the world to actually do the post production was sufficient to support all this ancillary gear, then I wouldn’t be using Color at all!

The point is: that if you are on a budget and you can check your o/p in a post house and it looks in the ball park, all is well.

I would never in a gazillian years attempt a D.I. or anything more than low budget work using this type of work flow.

Saludos, and thank you for your extremely helpful input!

Ken Robinson
Flight4 Media

[Ken Robinson]

[David Roth Weiss] Not true! There are professionals all around the world using Color who do not share that experience, myself included.

Then there are many that I have found that do have the gamma issue between FCP and Color.
Why do I have an issue of calibration? It doesnt have anything to do with the gamma shift. May I state here that I am talking about a luminance change NOT a colour change.
I have tested my calibration by checking on calibrated HD Plasmas and HD CRT’s via Scratch. More than pleasantly surprised I was!

[David Roth Weiss] To properly calibrate computer monitors to get them even close to the proper settings on a broadcast monitor or TV, you absolutely have to have a properly calibrated reference monitor nearby for comparison, and you have to spend a lot of time adjusting the computer monitor to get it closely mirror a true video monitor, as the two types of monitors display both color and luminance quite differently.

What reference monitors are you using? We could have a very long debate on that one as well, as they have spectral issues between manufacturers….

[David Roth Weiss] No one, I repeat, no one uses Quicktime 10 professionally.

Agreed, my bad.

[David Roth Weiss] You’ve already stated that you’re seeing enormous discrepancies between FCP and Color, which indicate that the way you’re working is not as okay as you may think.

No, I said that there is a gamma shift, NOT HUGE discrepancies, which I take account for in Color, when grading.

[David Roth Weiss] Calibrating computer monitors for color grading is a real bitch, I assure you, but it is possible. I’ve had the guys here from Flanders Scientific whose monitors are calibrated with a probe costing $28K, and my Dell computer monitors were adjusted so closely to the FSI broadcast monitor that I could grade with them if forced to, and certainly without adjusting for any gamma issues between FCP and Color.

Agreed that calibration is tricky, but not impossible…. My system (apart from the Color FCP gamma thing) works well, as I can take my images to any PP house and they stand up to the test.

[David Roth Weiss] The bottom line is, the output of Apple Color is not forked-up as you’ve stated, and I would say with great confidence that you and the original poster are both clearly suffering from improperly calibrated computer monitors that have you guessing where the problems lay.

Totally disagree… Most of the problems lie in the non standard codecs and playback software that people use. It’s impossible that a gamma curve change between FCP and Color, when using the same computer and monitors for both, is down to monitor calibration.

Right… I am off to reinstall QT7… So thank you for jogging my memory on that one… And solving my problem!

Ken Robinson
Flight4 Media

[Ken Robinson]

I would like to throw another bomb into the mix!

I am working on a TV series here in Patagonia. You can imagine what the budget is like, so its FCP to Color using Apple Prores 422. I am using some LG computer screens calibrated with a Spyder 3 elite (well at least I have something!!).

All well and good if you take the following into account:

There is a gamma shift between Color and FCP, and now the BIG one… Render all to APRes 422, playback in Quicktime 10… AND CRY… It all turns magenta-er-ish! The file isnt corrupt, becuase if I reopen with FCP, its exactly as it should be.

So what codec are you rendering and in what are you playing back?

Having spent the last 30 years as a pro colourist on daVincis, Pogles, Lustres… The way I am working is ok, even without an expensive monitor (here they cost more than double than the US).

Ken Robinson
Flight4 Media