Video much too dark in FCP compared to iMovie

Question

Video much too dark in FCP compared to iMovie

NB I mistakenly asked this question in the Final Cut Pro X forum and should really have posted it here

Bit of a newcomer to this but as I have Final Cut Pro 7 thought I'd use it rather than iMovie which seems a bit primitive.
Shot a video of someone in the studio yesterday on a Nikon DSLR at 1280x720 25fps

Then ran it through Compressor to transcode it to Apple Pro Res for editing.

All ok so far

Viewed the footage in iMovie and it looks fine but what a horror in FCP7 !!!

It is so dark

So what's wrong ?

Have seen an earlier discussion which seemed to think the monitor calibration is off but how can that be ?

iMovie displays the footage fine but FCP doesn't.

Any thoughts guys ?

See the attached screen grab

As you can see: FCP Viewer on top and iMovie below

The latest reply I have received was the following from Meg the Dog and it certainly helps but is not a complete solution so I'd appreciate any further views:

In FCP-7 go to the menu Final Cut Pro > System Settings.

When the System Settings Pane opens, click on the Playback Tab.

Set Gamma Correction to Approximate:

Posted on Feb 4, 2014 3:17 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Studio X

Level 7

27,229 points

Feb 4, 2014 5:53 PM in response to David Graeme-Baker

Since iMovie does not do ProRes, what are you using to convert the material so it "sees" it?

FWIW I prefer the image in FCP. You can do there is a greater density of color there (and it doesn't look like video). Tweek it with the 3 way color corrector or (much better) using the app Color and life can be good.

In any case, trying to decide the quality of the images with out a calibrated output device is a total "he said/she said" mess. There is no way of knowing which is the real deal.

x

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Answer 2

Feb 5, 2014 2:08 AM in response to Studio X

Well iMovie seems to "read" ProRes fine as I made no additional adjustment to the image clip to view it (and after all it is an Apple codec so iMovie should be able to read it).

As I am a professional photographer my monitors are regularly profiled and I have no issues with the colour range, gamut and birghtness - indeed the iMovie output very closely matches the still shots that I did at the same time.

Of course I have no control over the monitor conditions you may be viewing it under.

Having made the adjustment that Meg the Dog suggested has indeed brought the FCP image more into line with the "correct" out put as displayed by iMovie but not all the way there - see the new image here:

You can now see that the player's hat is now visible but the gamma is still off - needs a higher gamma and possibly a little more brightness (exposure) too.

It is however workable and I will attempt to edit the footage now and if necessary tweak it to ensure a good output video.

When I compare this odd discrepancy with what I have come to expect from still photo editing programs I am a little bemused; If I make image adjustments in Lightroom, save the file, and then open in Preview/ Photoshop/ Aperture the image appears much as I expected it to (ie like the Lightroom output)
Why then am I having this enormous difference between iMovie and FCP7 ?

Come on Apple - there must be a simple solution to this.

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Answer 3

Feb 5, 2014 2:19 AM in response to David Graeme-Baker

iMovie " sees" the ProRes because you have FCP installed on the same machine.

You can drag it into iDVD as well.

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Answer 4

Feb 5, 2014 2:24 AM in response to thesurreyfriends

Hmmm - I'll take your word for that but I don't understand it ! 😕

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Answer 5

Jim Cookman

Level 7

23,435 points

Feb 5, 2014 8:27 AM in response to David Graeme-Baker

What Studio X means by "monitor" is a properly calibrated video monitor, not a computer screen. Therein lies the problem. Final cut was never designed to properly display video. FCP is essentially an addressable database: it keeps track of your clips, sequences, filters applied, etc, all in real time. Instructs the computer to play this clip with these two filters applied, right after that clip, for such and such a duration. If you try to add proper video playback, you've overloaded the system. If FCP hadn't been discontinued, they might have added that with 64bit upgrade, but we'll never know, more's the pity.

The only solution is a capture/output card and a rather pricey video monitor. Always been that way for final cut pro.

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Answer 6

korobi

Level 1

0 points

Sep 11, 2015 6:57 PM in response to Jim Cookman

This particular issue–where the clips are suddenly too dark and contrasty in the Timeline–can often be fixed by going to System Prefs>Displays>Color and changing the color back to whatever it should be (iMac, Mac LCD, personal calibration, sRGB, whatever) because some app install has hijacked the monitor prefs and installed its own calibration.

I had this issue today with some BlackMagic apps that I had installed last month. I had not opened FCP since then, and i had the same problem with dark clips that looked fine elsewhere. My prefs had been hijacked to HD-709 rather than my standard calibration. i put it back and everything was fine.

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