Still image/RGB Video Gamma settings???

Hi everyone.

In FCP 7, there was a User Preference>Editing>Import Still/RGB Video Gamma Setting that could be user set.

I always found the default made my images look washed out so I ended up using 2.22 as my setting and the images looked much better, and I didn't have to adjust the level of each image with a filter.

In FCP X, there is no option for this (as far as I know). However my images look fine and I could easily tweak them if needed. So no real problem, just curious as to how X imports seem better than 7's.

So why the difference from 7 to X?

Jonathan

ColorSync is the secret sauce of FCPX color management. Unlike FCP7, FCPX automatically determines the colorspace (ICC Profile) of the source on ingest. It manages color through the rendering engine and then uses ColorSync to make sure that the representation on the display is accurate, whatever the type of display.

If you want to know every technical detail about ColorSync and FCPX, here's a good read for a rainy day:

www.philiphodgetts.com/2011/09/fcp-x-color-management-secret/

-Ronny

Great info as usual, Ronny!

it is frustrating that there isn't even a way to control the colorspace for still exports....for me it somehow defaults to a pretty limited srgb profile...

Paul,

Why would you want to export an image from FC?

because i am shooting 5k raw footage, so each and every frame can be exported as a 5000x2700 pix TIFF....plenty big enough for print....

Setting the color space of a still image on export isn't really a function of a video editing application. FCPs' never done this. It export that the video standard is.

i understand that it might not be an often used feature, but regardless....a color profile IS assigned to the exported file automatically by fcpx....i brought this up with apple fcpx support and they do not know how or why a specific color profile is chosen....
resolve does not assign a profile when exporting stills....
i really don't think this would be such a hard thing to implement....in my destinations i have to set up my prfes anyway.....there should be an option to assign a profile (if i wanted to)...just like there is an option which format i want to export as....
my problem is that the profile fcpx chooses for me is not what i would like to see....it is pretty limited....

When you export a 4k or 5k raw still image from FCP or any other editor, is that still image 16 or 8 bit?

16bit...

You can make a feature request for this, but honestly it's going to be very low on their list. If you need a still for promo purposes, it's way better to bump out something when you're near or finished with color timing so that would be from davinci or something else and not the NLE. Or more likely you had a stills photographer on set. Otherwise, REC 709 is where you want it to be most of the time anyway, so I don't really see it as much of a problem. It should look the pretty accurate on most modern Macs, which is as close to a "standard" as I've ever seen for computers. Almost all PCs I've seen are set at sRGB which is pretty close to REC 709. And of course REC 709 is the standard for TVs.

For print maybe you want more flexibility, but again, you wouldn't be outputting from the NLE like I said. Also, if it has a REC 709 or sRGB color profile it can be converted, so again no problem.