bug tracking

I am evaulating FCP to decide whether to move from Premier Pro to FCP. I am an underwater cinematographer and one bug I have found is that when you balance the color in HDR footage for an HDR deliverable video (not using a Rec.709 coversion) is that FCP burries the brightness way down and I have to spend a lot of cycles bringing it back up. The images is WAY darker than the original image. White/color balance is one of the most important adjustments in underwater film making as you use it to clean up the water. This problem does not happen when you use HDRTools to convert to rec.709 and work with that. I filed a bug but how do I track it to see if Apple has corrected it? For me this one is a show stopper as I only deliver HDR video now on our YouTube channel A Diver's Life. I also want to assess how responsive Apple is vs. Adobe to problems like this. Is there a way to track the bugs you flied and to speak with a support person about it? I can do this with Creative Cloud.

Anyone else experienced this? I am relatively new to FCP so perhaps I am missing something. The project is wide gamut rec. 2020 HLG.

Posted on Jul 7, 2023 4:33 AM

Top-ranking reply

Clint Gryke

Level 2

179 points

Posted on Jul 7, 2023 1:28 PM

Yes I normally use ProRes Raw with my Ninja V and Nikon cameras, as it is actually way better than ProRes 422 for grading in Final Cut. However, I shot a few clips in ProRes (HLG and Log) with the Ninja to see what might be happening here. It seems that Final Cut (and Quicktime) interpret HLG and Log Pro as Rec.709 and if Color Conform is left on automatic some strange and probably undesirable transformations occur. There are too many permutations to go into detail but it is easy to fix any problems by modifying the Color Conform or just turning them off. I don't think there is any bug though. It is probably down to the way the cameras / recorders write the metadata.

If grading HDR only as the OP says he does, I think it is better to work in a Rec.2020 PQ project than in HLG as the waveform scopes give the correct ranges whereas the waveform scopes in a HLG project are effectively SDR. If an SDR version is required, it is probably easier to do a second grade rather than hope HLG works as it is supposed to (I have never managed to get it working properly). Unless the OP has a particular reason to work in ProRes, it might be a lot easier to work in ProRes Raw which the Sony A7Siii can do with the Ninja V with no modification (unlike the Nikons which need a paid firmware upgrade)

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