Excellent tips Oliver. One point on stills if I may?
Still images being used in FCP will always look best if they are CONVERTED to sRGB from whatever RGB colour space they are in.
There are a wide range of RGB spaces with different properties. The term ‘converted’ is critical, because, for instance a file in Adobe RGB looks horribly desaturated if opened into a another RGB space without conversion (effectively this means wrong colour values are assigned to the Red, Green and Blue - think relabelling a bottle of fine Bordeaux with AN Other wine label - who know what is in it or what it will taste like?).
sRGB represents the colour space of the internet, the lowest common denominator.
Posted by Nick WB on 11/29 at 03:13 PM
Thanks for the tip, Nick!
As to your Bordeaux example, I think we get what you mean, but you might want to read this: http://tinyurl.com/WineRatingsFlawed (posted with tongue firmly planted in-cheek…I really do appreciate the sRGB info 
-Matt Jeppsen
Posted by Matt Jeppsen on 11/29 at 07:54 PM
Fascinating article Matt. I put together a whole series of articles on Colour Management for Photographers for Canon Europe 3 or 4 years ago - the information is still valid and applicable to other products than just Canon. If it is helpful, it can be downloaded here as a single PDF.
http://sn.im/t60tj-do7
The PDF, entitled ‘The Language of Colour’ describes screen calibration and making prints match screen + setting up DSLRs - all the more relevant with cameras such as the EOS 5D Mk II.
Screen calibration settings for Video (to link up with the PDF) are: 100cd/m (luminance), 6500 Kelvin and Gamma 2.2
Posted by Nick WB on 11/30 at 03:42 AM
Nick,
Good comments. One issue though. sRGB is primarily a factor with Adobe Photoshop. There are plenty of editors that don’t own the application because of its price. FCP works in a color space of Rec 601/709. As a general rule, I tend to not embed color profiles and prefer to make final adjustments of color inside Final Cut. Of course, when things are really critical, a broadcast-grade monitor is important.
In the issues I encountered, the problems were more about gamma differences that did not fall within the ability of FCP to properly correct - using the normal gamma import settings. This was an easy test as some of the images used were grayscale charts. These issues also affected files rendered with the Animation codec.
Interestingly enough, the same files imported correctly with proper levels in Avid Media Composer.
Thanks for reading and the feedback.
Cheers,
Oliver
Posted by Oliver Peters on 11/30 at 06:39 PM
Oliver,
Firstly please excuse the long post. The original article is great BTW.
I appreciate the feedback and the points you make (especially about the cost of Photoshop!). There is a convergence of two similar, but different technologies. I am closely involved with a FCP user group here in the UK (the only one!) and made a presentation on ICC colour management just the other week. It was fascinating to compare the two ways of working (stills versus video) and I think we have differnet perspectives on a similar topic.
What I would say is that the stills world went ‘colour managed’ back in the mid-90s and I have been working with ICC colour management since that point, whereas the video world has yet to make the transition. It has been a long battle because many printers did not understand or want to understand how colour management worked and affected their own and their client’s work. Some still don’t
I will forever remember a quote from a printer in response to my question “What RGB space would you like that in?” The answer came back “I don’t effing know, standard effingRGB” This was cover of a brochure for a $200k automobile.
There are huge variations between different RGB spaces. There is a common belief that ‘RGB is just RGB’ but the reality is very different.
My goal as an advertising photographer has always been to ensure that what my client sees is reproduced on my monitors, on their monitors, their magazine ads, billboards and the product packaging. Making excuses to a corporate when their brand or products colour are not right doesn’t cut it.
The relevance to video? I am hearing the same comments from videographers that I heard from printers in the 90s, but the writing is on the wall. ICC colour management is finally creeping into the video world with Canon and Nikon DSLRs, RED and others too. Certainly with Canon products, colour management cannot be avoided and shooting images in the Adobe RGB colour space gives a flat looking clip in FCP.
FCP and Avid users are going to be forced to work with colour management because modern cameras are not shooting to the old standards and rely on ICC colour management to ensure that colour reproduces properly. This is far from being a Photoshop only thing; many other applications deal with colour and respect embedded profiles including Apple Quicktime (7 onwards) and indeed the Apple OS (ironically perhaps, OSX does not correctly display an image with an embedded Rec 709 profile)
While I appreciate that the true colour space of FCP may still be Rec 601/709 at this moment in time, adding a file in sRGB (or Rec 709) gives a correct rendition of the image, whereas adding the same file in the Adobe RGB space gives a washed out looking image that does not do justice to it. Adding a file in Apple RGB gives a darker looking image due to the gamma difference of the space (1.8 as opposed to 2.2). Why colour correct the image in post. when a simple conversion in PS or GraphicConvertor before adding it to a project will ensure that it displays accurately?
Embedding colour profiles in images really is essential; they are the label to tell the OS what values each colour has. Without the label, the system will guess and mistakes will be made (as per my previous point about wine).
The following link shows screen grabs of two colour space comparisons: sRGB and Rec709 and below, AdobeRGB and Rec709. You will see that sRGB and Rec709 are very similar; the difference I believe being caccounted for by the video world working to 16-235 as opposed to the stills world’s 0-255? Please correct me if I am wrong.
By contrast, Adobe RGB is a huge colour space (the grid containing the Rec709 colour space). Images captured in this space need converting down to sRGB (or indeed Rec 709) before using them in Final Cut to ensure that the colour is rendered correctly.
At the bottom of the page is a quick screen grab of two uncorrected images (blue cast from early morning light) in FCP. The left is in sRGB, with density and saturation intact, to right the same image, converted to Adobe RGB and placed in the timeline.
http://clients.nickwb.com/video/rec709.html
Nick.
Posted by Nick WB on 12/01 at 07:16 AM
I should have added that conversion between colour spaces and especially from larger to smaller spaces is controlled by the rendering intent. This allows decisions to be made on how colours are squeezed into smaller spaces, eg Adobe RGB into sRGB / Rec709.
Typically perceptual or relative colorimetric intent will be used as each of these intents treats ‘out of gamut’ colours (those that will not fit into the smaller space) in a different way.
The choice is made visually, as most photographic apps allow the preview of images with a proofing profile or in some cases, direct preview of colour space conversions.
Posted by Nick WB on 12/04 at 04:10 AM
Skimming through the Oliver Peters article, it looks like it’s going to be an excellent read. I didn’t realize that I could apply Optical Flow right from within FCP, so I’ll definitely be using that.
I’ve only been using FCP for a couple years, so my powertips are still relatively basic, as you’ll see from my 80’s music video tribute to FCP that also throws in some handy workflow tips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW754Cy7FxY
Posted by Jeff Underwood on 02/08 at 06:31 PM
