FCP shifts color, slightly.
 

I have some miniDV progressive PAL footage I captured direct to disk from my Canon XL2 (anamorphic) using DVRack. The color of the clip darkens slightly when I bring it into FCP and when I export as TIFF I the histogram shows that the color has been resampled. How can I get FCP to leave my footage alone so that I can simply export my clips as TIFF sequences (I'll be brining them into Shake).

Any advice would be very welcome. I am stumped on this. I've tried the Render controls for the sequence, but it looks like a global color setting that is biting my butt. Thanks in advance.

If I could figure out how to get FCP to do a screen grab I would show you the difference.

You can do a screen grab by typing command-shift-3 which will grab your wholoe screen, or command-shift-4 and then you can select a window to capture.

Is it possible you have 'safe' colors activated? This would bring your footage in line with broadcastsafe levels. I don't cut on FCP, I cut on Avid... so this is just a guess.

I wonder where command-ctl-shift-3 (4) goes? Makes the same noises, but nothing on the desktop. Thanks!

My bad, command shift 4 gives a cross hair that you click and drag to draw a selection of where you want to screencap.

I've found that adjusting the gamma settings for FCP under System Settings->Playback Control to 'Approximate' looks more like the original source footage than 'Accurate'. The above posted attachment that I uploaded used 'Approximate'.

It really seems that when you go to write out TIFF data from FCP that things get weird when the QT engine gets its paws on the footage (or in this case the single frame) and it gets munted. Just a little, but enough to cause concern.

BTW - I have FCP set to work in RGB and not in YUV and my Sequence Settings->Video Processing is set to 'Always Render in RGB'.

No worries. Thanks!

DV material, indeed almost all video footage uses YUV colourspace so that could be your problem.

FCP seems to apply gamma "correction" when you export or import stills.

Not sure how to disable this, sorry.

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage..._nattress.html

2- Can't Shake import video formats such as no codec, DV codec, animation, etc. ?

This would avoid the gamma correction I would think.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93794

The above is an interesting article that Apple Tech support pointed me to this morning. I think it may be that moving out of DV color space has unavoidable effects. The plan is to do only go out once and don't go back into DV.

Good info in that link, Chris. Thanks for posting it.

-gb-

That is very good article to have on hand as well. Thanks!

Hmm, apparently the gamma "correction" happens with the animation codec too. :(