Exporting R3Ds - Brightness never correct

[Kamal Kyrala]

I've tried exporting R3D's to Uncompressed Quicktime in the following software:

RedCine-X Pro Beta 64 Bit
Adobe Premiere CS5.5
Adobe After Effects CS5.5

And with all of these, the resulting quicktime file looks completely different than the source. It's mostly the brightness - I'd have to turn down the Gamma on all channels to like 30% to get the programs to have the same brightness as the quicktime file, but that messes up the contrast. I've tried exporting to H.264, and that is just as bright.

In After Effects I tried changing the color space to Rec. 709, and setting the footage to that as well - no dice.

I'm pretty much at a loss as to what I'm doing wrong. I can understand maybe having a Premiere or After Effects setting off, but I can't imagine RedCine having this color space issue, so what could it be?

 

[Marc Wielage]

What monitor are you using? How was it set up? What color profile are you using? Are you using any LUTs? What settings of RedColor and Red Gamma are you using for export?

Monitor set up is really critical for judging any kind of picture quality. No question, Quicktime files are a land mine of problems when it comes to gamma settings. Apple has this to say about gamma 1.8 vs. 2.2:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3712?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

[Kamal Kyrala]

Marc, I'm using RedColor2 and RedGamma2. The resulting quicktime file looks more like RedLogFilm. I just have a BenQ G2400W, set up by me, and I am not using any LUTs.

I guess my confusion is that on my monitor, I would expect it to look the same in RedCine as it does in QuickTime Uncompressed. I didn't expect converting to RGB space would change brightness in any way. What other format could I try exporting it from in RedCine if it is just a QuickTime issue?

 

[Kamal Kyrala]

Uh.. strange. I exported to TIFF, and things look like they do in RedCine, unlike QuickTime files. Now I'm really confused.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Uh.. strange. I exported to TIFF, and things look like they do in RedCine, unlike QuickTime files. Now I'm really confused.

It's most likely a quicktime gamma issue.

 

[Kamal Kyrala]

So when the quicktime video gets transcoded, say by youtube, will the gamma be less bright?

 

[Matt Ryan]

So when the quicktime video gets transcoded, say by youtube, will the gamma be less bright?

I dont believe so but dont quote me (i believe both Youtube and Vimeo encode with h.264). It's frustrating when every time I color in Redcine or Resolve and export a prores 4444 timeline the output clips always look slightly darker than what they appeared and how I colored them. I always have gamma correction off in the transcode options but I still have the problem...