iTT captions appear too dark on Rec. 2020 HLG clip

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Level 1

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iTT captions appear too dark on Rec. 2020 HLG clip

I'm working on FCPX 10.6.1 with MBP 14" 2021, and editing clips from iPhone 12 Pro. Because they are in HDR, I changed the clip format to Rec. 2020 HLG. I added additional images and titles, and because they appeared too dark I used HDR Tools effect, changed the mode to "PQ to HLG (Rec. 2100)", and reduced Peak Brightness (nits) to 100.

The colors turned out nice, but the only issue I have now is with the iTT captions, which actually appear alright on FCPX (the white is still not very bright white), but when I export the final project clip they appear too dark (dark grey on a black background bar).

I tried to take a screenshot, but the clip's colors are entirely off, and the color of the subtitles is good. This HDR is so tricky and frustrating...

https://imgur.com/a/CI33voO

When I export the clip the colors are good and the color of the subtitles is grey as I mentioned before.

Is there any way to correct the color of the subtitles? By the way, I would also like to remove the black bar background and outline the letters if possible.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Mar 15, 2022 2:05 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

67,546 points

Mar 16, 2022 11:56 AM in response to tiktaktok

That is tricky, because with titles you can use color corrections to brighten the text, but with captions you can't do that.

I am not sure if there is a good option for doing this, except that probably you should convert your captions to actual titles.

There are tools for that by a frequent contributor here, spherico. Check out his X-Title Importer tool.

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Answer 2

Mar 16, 2022 4:01 AM in response to tiktaktok

In addition to terryb's great suggestion to watch the Mark Spencer videos:

Subtitles and iTT captions are not the same thing. You seem to be using the terms interchangeably.

Subtitles are burned into the video, and you will need to adjust them in FCP to make them look brighter, when working with HDR.

Captions, on the other hand, and separate from the video, and it is up to whatever program plays them back to decide how to display them.

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Answer 3

tiktaktok Author

Level 1

19 points

Mar 16, 2022 10:58 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

You are right, the captions are in iTT format and when I exported the clip, I burnt-in the captions as subtitles so they are fused with the clip. How can I adjust their color/brightness before that fusion?

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