Gamma for internet quicktimes

[zak forrest]

I'm curious to know what everyone is doing that shoots Red and then wants to put clips online.

Do you color correct in RedCine at Gamma 1.8 or 2.2? If you are working on something where the recommended gamma to work within is 2.2, when you want to upload a clip from that project to the internet do you have to do a separate version of color correction just for uploading? Is there some last step I can take to just convert all the footage I corrected at gamma 2.2 to upload to the net?

I'm trying to see what's best for when I email clips to people who don't have the "Enable Final Cut Studio Color Compatibility" checkbox in their quicktime..

Is it just always going to look bad for certain people?

Right now the way I've been doing it is correcting in 2.2 for the main project and then going back to RedCine with my monitor at 1.8 and doing grades for the clips I upload to the internet. Another thing I've done is just taken my 2.2 sequence in Final Cut and export it again with the gamma correction plug-in applied. I don't entirely understand how that plug-in works, so I have been doing it by eye and setting it to 1.2 which seems to make my 2.2 footage to look how it should when using a monitor set to 1.8. If my process could use some tweaking I'd love to hear what you think.

So, what has everyone else been doing?

(I am aware that Quicktime is basically broken, and that there might not be a perfect solution to this. But I just want to know what other people have been doing)

 

[zak forrest]

Surely you all are doing something...

 

[MichaelP]

I am not deliveryng quicktimes, but another factor to consider is when viewing on Mac, the monitors generally tend to be set up as 1.8 and on PC it is 2.2 which adds another twist to the issue.

Michael

 

[Chris Parker]

it will be a glorious day when this gamma issue gets solved.....go get Apple Jim!

 

[Joel Kaye]

Surely you all are doing something...

I remember doing about 20 different renders one day to try to get the look right.

I do know I set up my Mac for 2.2 gamma and I double check renders on both the Mac and a PC. I set up color bars as best I can so they are playing properly in the final player. I've toggled the Mac QT Player FCP Studio Compatibility on and off so many times I'm not even sure where it's currently set.

One thing I've resorted to is using Compressor to alter the gamma when it does the conversion. Talk about voodoo blackmagic I don't want to be doing. I haven't done enough stuff for the web to have this thing solved to my satisfaction.

I've even seen Hollywood trailers that looked like crap (gamma way off) so I'm pretty sure they don't even have this figured out perfectly.

Maybe Jim and the team can keep hammering on Apple to sort this thing out. There has to be a way for webusers and content creators get in sync.

 

[zak forrest]

Glad to know I'm not alone, Joel..

 

[Emmanuel Cambier]

it will be a glorious day when this gamma issue gets solved.....go get Apple Jim!

In fact, I'll open a bottle of champagne …or two.

Emmanuel

 

[Steve White]

I've been compressing some Cineform stuff from Premiere Pro CS3 to Quicktime H.264 for internet recently. I ran into the "gamma" issue, no matter what I did - whether I output through the Adobe Media Encoder, compressed in Quicktime Pro from PNG sequences - whatever. No matter the source, the Quicktime H.264 footage always looked washed out, and all the effort I put into colour correction was gone.

Then I ran across this:
http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/?p=197
which links to:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=10&t=643310

Implementing the simple procedures, and *poof!* my colour was back. In case the link goes down, this procedure worked for me:
"After rendering into a QuickTime/h.264 file, open it up in QuickTime and select "Show Movie Properties." Highlight the video track then click on the "Visual Settings" tab.
Towards the bottom left you should see "Transparency" with a drop-down box next to it.
Select "Blend" from the menu then move the "Transparency Level" slider to 100%. Choose "Straight Alpha" from the same drop-down and close the properties window and finally "Save.""