[Matt Lyon]

Hey JS,

I don’t know if there is much more I can add. Without being able to see what you’re describing, anything I say is going to start veering into Wild A– Guess territory.

My advice is still the same: get a second opinion! Find an expert who can sit with you from grading, through output, through projection and tell you where things are going wrong.

As for the waveform monitor (I’m assuming this is an external box you are talking about, not the built in monitors in FCP) … I can’t offer too much help because I haven’t done much work with HD video with the benefit of an outboard waveform monitor.

But when it comes to SD video, if you are working in NTSC in North America, your blacks should line up to 7.5 IRE, NOT 0. Anything below 7.5 will be crushed on a properly setup playback device.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Joey,

The fact that your film has looked dark at every festival points to a problem with the source material, not the theaters in question.

As we said before, until you’ve watched your master tape on properly calibrated equipment, (and hopefully with a colorist or HD video tech in the room), you can’t really assess what steps to take to fix the problem. That should be your first move, imho.

But I have found that small screens are subjectively more forgiving of material that is on the cusp of being too dark. Still, you can’t really make judgment calls of the picture quality based on DVD playback on a random television.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Joey,

You can read a (rather old) article about 7.5 IRE here:

https://www.glennchan.info/articles/technical/setup/75IREsetup.html

But right off the bat, was your master tape color corrected and QC’d on a properly calibrated broadcast monitor? If it wasn’t, you can’t necessarily trust that the tapes you sent to festivals will reproduce the way you expect them too.

The trick your projectionist did might just be addressing the symptom of the problem, not the root cause.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Ha ha, you beat me to it, Dave. Good catch!

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

That is a bit of a head scratcher. Do you have any funky color management turned on in Photoshop. Are your computer displays calibrated properly (and set to 2.2 gamma)

Can you upload the file anywhere? I could try opening it on my machine… (I’m only on FCP 6.0.6 though)

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

What kind of TIFF is it? Could it be 16 bit or 32 bit per channel?

Did you try converting it to a JPEG or PNG and seeing if that helps?

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Frederic,

I’ve definitely experienced similar problems, but not that often, to be honest (but I also almost never mix formats/timebases and rarely use plug-ins).

“Control-B” is a handy shortcut to toggle the visibility of a clip and force a refresh of the render in question.

I also find the problem can be exacerbated by bad ownerships/file access permissions on the render directory in question.

Make sure you are set as the owner of all the files and folders in your render dir(s) and everything is set to read/write. (Same could be said for your stills too)

It is also a good idea that your user account has admin privileges (if it doesn’t already).

I’m not trying to be an apologist for FCP, but this problem isn’t unique to it. I used to have similar issues back in my Media100 days.

But I think that clearly the issue is made worse by the burden FCP places on the users to do the heavy lifting as far as file organization and figuring out “best practices,” etc.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Thanks for the detailed post Peter! I’m also hoping that Apple steps up it’s game with an overhauled FCP.

Although I’m pretty wedded to FCP at the moment, I’m trying to keep an open mind for newer/better tools for the job.

That being said, my choice of editing package is largely determined by the people hiring me, not the other way around. I’m guessing it will be a while before I start hearing producers ask “can you cut in Premier?”

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Man, who would’ve guessed 15 years ago that today Apple would be setting record profits and Premier would no longer be a POS 🙂

But performance aside, which do you prefer cutting with?

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Yeah, that’s the way it’s always worked for me too. Are you seeing an line at the bottom of the EDL event similar to this:

M2 AX -025.0 00:08:38:15

(this is from a PAL timeline. The “-25.0” indicates the reverse speed effect)

But yes, the timecode will run forward. That’s always been the case for me too. I’m not sure if it a limitation of EDLs or of FCP. In any case, as I mentioned, I edit the out point to reflect the “real” out point.

I’ve never had a complaint from any online house when using this trick, but then again, this may cause errors in their software that they are not telling me about…

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto