Fcpx 10.4 issue transcoding HLG GH5 footage

I found the solution to my problem. Transcode your media always before you make any changes in "Color Space Override" settings. It's the only way to keep the original color profile of your footage.

On this link https://we.tl/yLf0jwURaF you can download the following short clips shot with a Lumix GH5:

A001.MP4 (skin tones, hevc, HLG color profile)

A002.MOV (skin tones, h264, HLG color profile)

A003.MOV (skin tones, h264, V-LogL color profile)

B001.MP4 (scenery, hevc, HLG color profile)

B002.MOV (scenery, h264, HLG color profile)

B003.MOV (scenery, h264, V-LogL color profile)

The hevc files are very light for the quality they have. To watch HLG media correctly on a Rec.709 project I set “Color Space Override” to Rec. 2020. Instead for V-Log L media I set “Camera LUT” to Panasonic V-Log. In my opinion HLG has more faithful colours compared to V-LogL, especially in skin tones. Also I can see a magenta cast on the clips shot in V-LogL and converted in Rec. 709 with the original LUT. This is the reason why I prefer to shoot in HLG instead V-Log.

I discovered that if you apply the color space override before transcoding your footage, when you make the optimized media something wrong happens. I know optimized media should keep the same color profile of the original one… regardless the color space override applied from Fcpx for a particular circumstance. It was right in Fcpx 10.3.2.

it would also be great if Fcpx could read metadata from Panasonic cameras like GH5 and Varicam LT, for example lens used, aperture, ISO etc

Thank You

Mauro

You're welcome Tom! Good job!

All the files I sent you come from the camera. If you set the GH5 in HEVC MP4 record format you can shoot only HDR videos (HLG in this case)... if you set the camera in MOV record format you can choose different color profiles like HLG, V-LogL and many others.

Quicktime doesn't work with these MOVs but Fcpx does it. The reason is because the original clips from GH5 use a particular video codec called AVC1... at least this is what appears in the inspector :-)

It's strange because I tried to set your same parameters in Fcpx, also using HDR tools, but as you can see I have a totally different result...

But if I set in Media Browser the color space override to Rec. 2020 it looks right... I mean it's identical to the footage I recorded for what I can remember. In my opinion it's also a good point to start for the color correction, more natural as you can see.

But your result is very cool :-) so I want to understand how you achieved it in just one step... as you can see the color rendering is just perfect for a such small camera, what do you think?

Yes the original MOVs are really heavy to digest for Fcpx. In Premiere Pro they play a little better but the exported files are awful... so optimized media in Fcpx all the life :-) Interesting the highlights lift in optimized media.

OK that's right!

Thank you for the compliment. So you have no problem to optimize media right? Anyway it's always better to make transcodes during import... and then make anything else.