Footage comparison difference

[Andrew Clark]

Hi all -

I've attached a screen shot of footage in WMP and QT. The screen shot was captured in Windows.

The footage in the QT player was captured into FCP X.
The footage in the WMP was captured into PPRO CS6 (Windows 7 64bit).

Same footage, obviously, but I noticed a difference between the two. The FCP X capture seems lighter than the PPRO one does.

My questions as to what causes this are:

- Is it just a QT or WMP playback setting?
- Is it a "capture" setting ... in either application (FCP X or PPRO CS6) that I would be able to adjust?
- Is it an OS platform issue?

If more info. is needed, please let me know.

Appreciate any insights as to why this is.

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

Appreciate any insights as to why this is.

REC709 coding levels define 16 as black and 235 as white whereas full swing levels define 0 as black and 254 as white. The picture on the left looks correct. The picture on the right looks like REC709 played back incorrectly as full swing. As I recall this is a known bug with Quicktime player for Windows. The fact that this bug has never been fixed is likely one of the reasons Quicktime never caught on for delivery of web video.

[William Hohauser]

There are many variables here to get into. Why are you comparing the footage this way? Have you tried the reverse on a Mac?

Video editing programs are designed for broadcast video therefore use Rec709 color space. There are many posts at DVInfo about how to get the same color when going from video edited to be viewed on a TV set to video to be viewed on a computer monitor. Many conversion programs will adjust the color space adequately when making web files in QuickTime, WMV or h264.

[Andrew Clark]

Originally Posted by Eric Olson

REC709 coding levels define 16 as black and 235 as white whereas full swing levels define 0 as black and 254 as white. The picture on the left looks correct. The picture on the right looks like REC709 played back incorrectly as full swing. As I recall this is a known bug with Quicktime player for Windows. The fact that this bug has never been fixed is likely one of the reasons Quicktime never caught on for delivery of web video.

Hmmm .... makes sense what you stated, regarding the "bug" in QT that would make the difference. I never heard about that, so thanks for that bit of info.

[Andrew Clark]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

There are many variables here to get into. Why are you comparing the footage this way?

Why? Because I want to edit the footage (that was captured in FCP X) in PPRO CS6 (in Windows). So, while in Windows, I opened up the FCP X footage along with the PPRO captured footage .... and that's when I was comparing / noticing the difference.

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Have you tried the reverse on a Mac?

How do you play .AVI files on a Mac?

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Video editing programs are designed for broadcast video therefore use Rec709 color space. There are many posts at DVInfo about how to get the same color when going from video edited to be viewed on a TV set to video to be viewed on a computer monitor. Many conversion programs will adjust the color space adequately when making web files in QuickTime, WMV or h264.

OK...so if NLE's edit in the same color space, would that imply that there is an issue with the players .. as Eric stated in his post?

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

Hmmm .... makes sense what you stated, regarding the "bug" in QT that would make the difference. I never heard about that, so thanks for that bit of info.

Search on "Quicktime gamma shift" for many similar problems.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=quicktime+...ft&t=canonical

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

Why? Because I want to edit the footage (that was captured in FCP X) in PPRO CS6 (in Windows). So, while in Windows, I opened up the FCP X footage along with the PPRO captured footage .... and that's when I was comparing / noticing the difference.



How do you play .AVI files on a Mac?



OK...so if NLE's edit in the same color space, would that imply that there is an issue with the players .. as Eric stated in his post?

The reason I asked was that the screen captures were in player programs not PPRO. And yes, some player programs do have color space issues with REC709. QuickTime 7 is one of them, QuickTime X may have the problem solved. Open the same file in PPRO and see if the issue remains.

It's easy to play AVIs on a Mac with VLC or you can install Perian and view AVIs in QuickTime Player (but Perian has some issues with certain programs).