While exploring a second camera to use with the Canon C300 I came across this potentially serious problem with FCPX, I could not understand why the Panasonic AC160 footage looked great via HDMI into the monitor then look soft and peelie wally in FCPX. You may not even be aware of the problem if you are only editing using FCPX. NOTE : The footage in both cases was brought in via card and not via the HD encoders.
This frame is from a Panasonic AC160 shot at 720 50p and look how different the same footage is being handled by FCPX…the picture is far softer and the gamma has been lifted (NOTE : Both sequences were set to 720 50p 422 10bit). I need to do some more digging but it seems the Matrox MX02 might be partly to blame, saying that these pictures were taken off the timeline so my take on this is pre Matrox processing which is even more serious. Note : FCP-7 output to monitor via the AJA io HD and FCPX is with a Matrox MX02 Max.
The good thing for me is that no clients footage has been edited on FCPX and I will remain editing with FCP-7 till Apple resolve this problem.
Two matching cameras :
Here are my initial findings with the Canon C300 and a Panasonic AC160-A, the “A” is the newer version which films in 1080 50p and fixes a focusing problem but FCP-7 does not handle 1080 50p footage so I had to see how the Panasonic handles 720 50p. As you can see the AC160 is almost a perfect colour match for the C300 in fact its far better matched than Canon’s own XF100 !
Are you hitting the same 100% vs 109% bug?
Looking at the FCPX rushes, would like to see the WFM that goes with it.
FCP7 was not colour or gamma matched, and it did its own thing in a sort of wild and uncontrolled way.
FCPX is colour managed, and I hit the same wall as you seem to have done – things look bad, either too dark or too light. The bottom line is that whatever the footage has, you need to trust the FCPX WFM, and the Colour Board is nothing but a Proc Amp – and it’s applied AFTER all you do with filters.
So, for quick and dirty stuff, just lower the FCPX footage exposure by -9, then lift the blacks to between 0 and 3, or even 7.5 if dealing with American SD.
For proof, I even blogged it – http://bit.ly/Nf1fY6 (sharing, not marketing!)