Compressor 4.0.3, Dark Video

Question

Compressor 4.0.3, Dark Video

Compressor 4.0.3, Dark Video; now any video I load into Compressor appears too dark in the Preview window and compresses too dark. QuickTime, FCPX, Motion, (and Avid) all play these files fine, but in Compressor, too dark.

Not a simple 1.8 vs 2.2 Gamma issue. All codecs and color profiles are dark, tested on 2 MacPros w/different monitors. Videos that I compressed a week and a half ago (PR422 files to h264) were fine, but now those same source videos (PR422) are dark in Compressor (only). Again, ANY video that I load into Compressor is extremely dark. I've tested this on two different Macs. I can't be the only one experiencing this... Help?

Compressor, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Apr 18, 2012 8:13 AM

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Answer 1

May 10, 2012 11:46 AM in response to Efvjnfjfjfjkfkf

I have noticed this also - the darkening of the Preview window is crazy and alarming. The good news is that it has nothing to do with the way your actual output will look. Go ahead and submit the job; the finished file will not have the same darkness issue that you see in the Preview window.

In short - it's screwy, but ignore and you should be fine.

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Answer 2

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

May 10, 2012 1:35 PM in response to Efvjnfjfjfjkfkf

Can't reproduce what (I think) you're describing…using both 3.5 and 4.0 daily and see no change in Preview over time and/or between the two versions.

Can you post a screen shot of QT Player vs Compressor's Preview?

Russ

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Answer 3

May 10, 2012 4:25 PM in response to Russ H

Using Compressor 4.0.3, I submitteda job from a ProRes Quicktime file. I have added a Timecode filter and Text Overlay filter (which you can see) and this is a screenshot of the Preview window.

After the h.264 compression, I get this result in Quicktime:

This shot is a little underexposed anyway, but you can see that the Preview image is noticeably darker than the resulting Quicktime image.

BTW, in Quicktime 7 I have the Preference "Enable Final Cut Studio Compatibilty" checked. If I uncheck it, the resulting image becomes even lighter - as seen here:

Finally, when viewing in Quicktime Player, it appears similar to the non-FCP-Compatibility enabled version of QT7 - seen here:

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