Color/Brightness change from FCE to QT

[Darin Boville]

O.K., I'm stuck. Searched the forums and the advice seems to be "use a broadcast reference monitor"--but I'm not sure that applies.

I need to get the colors that I see in FCE (Express) to match what it outputs to Quicktime.

My footage will *only* be seen in Quicktime--never on a NTSC monitor, almost never on a HDTV. (I know desktop monitors vary but I can't even get it to match on my monitor.)

Right now the footage in QT looks brighter, etc than it does in FCE. In my most recent effort, a bright red that was just shy of blowing out is fried in the QT.

Here's the weird part: When I choose "export" to "Quicktime conversion"--right then when I'm looking at the dialog box, I can see in the background my frame change to the QT colors--if I could see *that* when color correcting I'd be all set. (This doesn't happen with other menu dialog boxes--weird.)

Footage is HDV; FCE is most recent version, QT is most recent Pro version; computer is most recent 17" MBP.

Help!

--Darin

[Matthew Johnston]

Compression to different codecs always changes things.

In the "Using Quicktime Conversion" dialog box there are options for filters to be applied to your selected codec and compression settings. You can adjust contrast, brightness, volume and so on. A few tries and you should be able to get it close.

At least that's what I do, perhaps there is a better way? Every codec will look a little different as well (.mp4 looks different than h.264 for the same video on my system)

[Darin Boville]

Originally Posted by Matthew Johnston

Compression to different codecs always changes things.

In the "Using Quicktime Conversion" dialog box there are options for filters to be applied to your selected codec and compression settings. You can adjust contrast, brightness, volume and so on. A few tries and you should be able to get it close.

At least that's what I do, perhaps there is a better way? Every codec will look a little different as well (.mp4 looks different than h.264 for the same video on my system)

Hi Matthew,

I'm with you there. Another part of the puzzle is that when I save it as a Quicktime Movie without any compression I get the same color problem. And then, as I said, is that weird part where you can see the change in the colors when the "export" dialog box is opened...

Still puzzled...how on earth can you color correct for the web when colors/brightness change dramatically on the same screen?

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

Might this be a FCE vs FCP issue? All I have is an "Easy Set-up" as far as I can tell--there is nowhere to tell the software what my destination color space is...is that right?

--Darin