Redcine-x Transcodes to Prores 4444 look WASHED OUT

[Johnny Friday]

John,

In REC709, gamma level is not specified. People choose it according to the ambient light surrounding of the room. Safe bet is 2.2 in normally lighted situation, but if you darken the room then higher number like 2.3 or 2.4 is used. For example, for DCI, the gamma level is 2.6.

In my opinion, Dream Color is over saturated when you use it with Mac.

Kaku,
I believe it is set to 2.4 last time i checked. I can lower it to 2.2 easy enough and should try that tomorrow. You may be right that it is a bit oversaturated. It was also noted as too bright, but i lowered the luminence level from 250 to 130 to match better a plasma tv---that helped a lot already. Not sure if i can do anything about saturation, but I would also need to compare it to another cc monitor.

[Johnny Friday]

Ok, after further review i can only say that the QT movies are completely washed out using the new redcine-x, with the QT 4.1 plugin --- in my case.

They seem to look fine on my dreamcolor (slightly less saturated than original looks in RCX); but when i email them to anyone and they view on their macs with non dreamcolor or non cc monitor they look terrible. Really unsaturated. I can make a far superior looking QT file by taking them into FCP natively and outputting them. But i loose the Rocketcard and speed.

I also tested different ouputs and different monitor settings on my Dreamcolor:
*best results are: monitor "Full"(dreamcolor setting--choices are full; rec709) using Redcolor/Redgamma(in RCX)

**When i take the files into FCP they look a bit better, in fact really a lot better than if viewing directly from QT. But this is strange as I've never seen this before when making QT movies. Now that I am using much better monitoring and control using Tangent wave, the results seem to be disasterous.

Frustrating! Any chance this can be due to the QT plugin components just not working at their best ?

[Kaku Ito]

You have to sort out your system. Can you list up what you have?

If you monitor over saturated display to work on grading, then the result looks under saturated in other environment then simply you tend to lessen the saturation by looking at over saturated monitor, so the render becomes undersaturated.

Any of the presets of Dream Color with Mac Pro's ATI GPU did not satisfy me even with Eyeone Display 2 calibration applied (not saying it's impossible but didn't come automatic). I ended up adjusting the saturation and color balance using Matrox MXO"s DVI calibration but that is because I had it and I'm not saying you need one.

If you have the gamma setting to 2.4 then adjust the picture according to that, in normal situation, the output will become washed out if you monitor the results in 2.2 (Snow Leopard's default) or 1.8 (Leopard's default).

[David Battistella]

John

I ran some tests lady night and Mae presets for all the qt codecs.

My results:
these codecs were washed out:
dvcprohd 720 and 1080
apple uncompressed 10-bit
apple prores 4444

these looked good:
prores 422 hq
prores 422 lt
prores 422 proxy

I looked at all of the files in OsX Qt player. I'll look at them today in fcp.

David

[Johnny Friday]

You have to sort out your system. Can you list up what you have?

If you monitor over saturated display to work on grading, then the result looks under saturated in other environment then simply you tend to lessen the saturation by looking at over saturated monitor, so the render becomes undersaturated.

Any of the presets of Dream Color with Mac Pro's ATI GPU did not satisfy me even with Eyeone Display 2 calibration applied (not saying it's impossible but didn't come automatic). I ended up adjusting the saturation and color balance using Matrox MXO"s DVI calibration but that is because I had it and I'm not saying you need one.

If you have the gamma setting to 2.4 then adjust the picture according to that, in normal situation, the output will become washed out if you monitor the results in 2.2 (Snow Leopard's default) or 1.8 (Leopard's default).

Kaku, thanks for input:
I'm running as follows:
*Mac 2.26 dual (8core)
*OS-Snowleopard 10.6.3
*Quicktime Pro v7 (I canned Quicktime X) (monitoring setup for FCP)
*32gigs ram
*ATI 4870 Graphics card to Dell U2410 monitor
*Redrocket card running out of HD-SDI into AJA Hi5-3G converting to HDMI into HP Dreamcolor
*running RCX build 221
*QT Redcode component 4.1 installed
*coloring from Tangent wave

What you say makes perfect sense if i am grading on my Dreacolor in its emulation of REC709 that has colorspace setup as 2.4---the transcodes look seriously flawed (washed out) when viewing them on my Dell that is setup monitoring over DVI at Macs Gamma of 2.2 When i switch my Dreamcolor over to DVI monitoring (still emulating REC.709) and view that same QT clip, it does look more saturated and quality IS better, but still not what I was viewing when coloring from RCX---but i am now only in 8bit with DVI not 10bit when i'm viewing from HDMI on RCX. Can 8bit to 10bit REALLY make that much difference to see by eye?

I had tried a variety of monitor emulation modes as well as transcode outputs as recomended by David and found i get slightly better looks if the Dreamcolor is setup in its colorspace "FULL" and luminence is turned down from 250 to 130-150 range. But i still have same washed out looks in the QT transcodes. I'm presuming that this SHOULD NOT be the case or would this be correct? My Dell's are not color correction monitors and nor are the Cinema display, but never have i seen such a washed out look while viewing a QT transcode on other folks systems. I was thinking that maybe since I am working on a color correct monitor for the first time then this could be the case, but I have my doubts.

[Johnny Friday]

John

I ran some tests lady night and Mae presets for all the qt codecs.

My results:
these codecs were washed out:
dvcprohd 720 and 1080
apple uncompressed 10-bit
apple prores 4444

these looked good:
prores 422 hq
prores 422 lt
prores 422 proxy

I looked at all of the files in OsX Qt player. I'll look at them today in fcp.

David

Thanks David,
I also tried Prores 4444; uncompressed 10bit and 422HQ: they all yielded a similar washed out look for me. What i have not yet tried is to go back to build 104 RCX to see if i get a different result. BUt i think i also need to change the QT component if i do that in order to take that out of the equation because my suspicion is that the beta QT component might be the culprit (i'm hoping). Also, i'm looking at all underwater shots with a blue background and dark subjects....So the washed out look is even more exagerated under those circumstances. ---I'd be glad to email you either a tiff from RCX or even a QTprores clip for review so you can see just how exagerated the washed out look is. I think posting here will not show the full resolution of the Tiff and how washed out it is. I'm anxiously awaiting the next build since i believe that red seems to be aware (prior posts from others) that there is some difference in saturation on transcoded clips, but some of the clips i saw posted were minor, but they also were not in the environment i work under where background of blue can seriously highlight the washed out effect.

I'll try some land shots today since all i had been working on for past few days were underwater.
Thanks David

[Kaku Ito]

Make sure the export gamma choice not to be "auto". I think Apple still is kinda messing with what they think it is proper to process gamma shifting.

Also, some cases REDCINE-X ouputs 0 to 1023 video range file with the picture mapped to 64 to 940 range, then when such clips is imported to FCP, FCP automatically adjusts and display correctly, but when you send the timeline to Apple Color, it opens as 0 to 1023 video range then the black area gets lifted up (this might be you are calling washed out?).

[Johnny Friday]

Make sure the export gamma choice not to be "auto". I think Apple still is kinda messing with what they think it is proper to process gamma shifting.

Also, some cases REDCINE-X ouputs 0 to 1023 video range file with the picture mapped to 64 to 940 range, then when such clips is imported to FCP, FCP automatically adjusts and display correctly, but when you send the timeline to Apple Color, it opens as 0 to 1023 video range then the black area gets lifted up (this might be you are calling washed out?).

Kaku,
have my export settings within RC-X set to Gamma "NONE" and that does show a marketed difference. As for the remainder of your post, that's a bit beyond my simple abilities....but i get it conceptually, however not sure how to make adjustments for this. Basically the QT should look fairly close to the color corrected image no? This should just be basic yes? As long as i have all the settings correct in RC-X and new QT component to read new color science and flut.

I'll post a tiff next so you can see how washed out...

[David Battistella]

Looked at all the files in FCP and here are the results.

Correct gamma compared to RC-X

PR4444
PR422 HQ
PR LT
DPX


Raised GAMMA (blacks) compared to RC-X

DVPROHD
UNCOMPRESSED 10 bit
SHEER
PR Proxy
PR 422


What a Charlie Foxtrot this is.

If I open all of these files in QT the reverse happens with ProRes.

Advice.
Before creating a deliverable. Know what software the files will be edited in. Test. test . test.

David

[Johnny Friday]

i thought i would test a tiff output vs a qt output to see if there was any difference. BUT, the TIFF matched the QT. So guess that at least there is conformity in that respect. I'm going to continue on with testing here.