Quicktime Woes in a professional Workflow

[jfotter]

I wanted to post about the frustrations I have with using quicktime, and keeping consistent color throughout the process. Here’s the basics of my process

1. Uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 quicktimes captured from D5 or HD-CAM through final cut pro.

2. Take the quicktimes into After Effects (do some work) render back to Uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2. The problem is in Final Cut Pro these do not match the original source. It looks like there is a gamma shift of some sort and is very noticeable in anything that is red (Skintones!!!!)…..BUT If I load the rendered quicktime back into after effects there is NO shift and everything looks fine. Because We use Final cut to lay back to tape I don’t trust that this will be fine.

3. My Work-a-round is this.

A. Convert SOURCE Quicktimes to DPX files using After Effects.

B. All Compositing is done using the DPX source files with either AE, SHAKE, or NUKE, and rendered back to DPX files.

C. As a final step I use Shake to take the DPX files and render Blackmagic 10 bit 4:2:2 quicktimes. Shake will not render Apple’s uncompressed format or PRORES, but WILL render Blackmagic. What a mess!!! These files match exactly to the original source in Final Cut Pro. I did have a job that we delivered PRORES and I used Compressor to take the Final Blackmagic quicktimes and convert them.

I have tried many combinations of trying to use a Color managed workflow within After Effects but nothing has worked. I am currently using CS3 and hope to switch to CS4 soon. Obviously Adobe is reading files differently than FCP. I’m the kind of person who likes to understand what is going on, and when it comes to quicktime it seems impossible. I won’t even begin to discuss why H264 looks different on different computers!!!!!!!!!!

From doing some research I know I’m not the only one having this issue. There seems to be a similar problem in the DV/PRORES world as well. Has anyone had any revelations to what is going on here. Luckily I have a workflow that works, but it is not in any way ideal.

Jason

[Ricardo Catena]

I know what you’re talking about, it’s a %*!#@ pain in the #[email protected]&!!

I’m a compositor coming from a 3D background, and I was used to think that pixels is pixels and frame sequences are the best quality and most basic kind of video. But then I started working with FCP and quicktimes, and my happy world of frame stacks crumpled.

We use FCP + shake + color + (nuke) + (AE)

We work mostly with Uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 quicktimes captured from tape, and we just take those quicktimes into shake, do the comp, and render out again as 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2. It works fine for us, and it works with FCP, shake, color, and it also works with quicktimes in PRORES codec.
There have been color changes with nuke, but I think they have been working a great deal on quicktime implementation at the foundry, and I think the got it really close to correct. (they blamed apple and the way quicktime works)
I dont know why you have problems with 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 between FCP and shake, perhaps it could be because we have a different video card than you have. we have the AJA Kona 3 cards.

But that’s sort of the only workflow we can get to work without issues.
The AJA Kona card is making color and contrast shifts with 10 bit uncompressed 4:4:4 when I switch between applications, and it does a color/contrast shift between video in playback mode and video in pause mode. That has to be corrected by turning a LUT on and off in the AJA preferences and that is kind of uncool when I’m working with client.
When we contacted AJA about that issue, they blamed apple and the way quicktime and FCP works.

I have heard from our tech guy, that most of the issues should be because FCP handles gamma in a different way than some of the other applications, but that should be changed in the next version of quicktime + OSX + FCP. I’m not sure I remember the details correctly, but because of the rumors and because both the foundry and AJA are blaming apple and quicktime for the issues I know I’m looking forward to “snow leopard” like a little boy the day before Christmas. 🙂

-johs

[Enrie Estevez]

I hope I clearly understand the problem you deal with. Its a little bit difficult to me because I’m french speaking.

But I had a similar problem when I reimported a media from AE in FCP in a prores workflow : colors did not correspond any more to the source.

So in AE, I went in
“fichier (files)” / “paramètres du projet”
(alt + shift + cmd + K)
and I checked
“correspondance des réglages Gamma Quicktime After Effects existants”
and when I reimported my prores render in FCP, there were not problems anymore.

I use AE CS3 in french, and can’t find the good translating.
I don’t know if I help.
Lot of posts on internet deals with this particular subject, and it’s for now the simplest method I find to work with AE and FCP, while preserving the correspondence of colors (It is maybe better to say “the correspondence of gamma”).

And I agree, it’s a Íı∆Ê|∑⁄ԌŠpain of Ø”»”ı‚Â*Ëı∑∆Ê !!!

[Enrie Estevez]

I find some explanations here :

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/help.html?content=WS44E9CED2-117D-4c19-879E-D553BB88B886.html

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