ProRes Plays Back Brighter in Viewer and Darker When Paused

Have you noticed this?

Load a ProRes clip into the Viewer in Final Cut Pro and it looks a little dark. Hit play and it brightens (gamma) until you pause, then it goes a little dark again.

I'm not sure why this happens but I see it regularly with ProRes clips. Some say it's the data rate being lowered for slower drives, others say it's the type of compression the timeline is using (highlight the sequence in the Browser, hit Command + 0 (zero) then look at QuickTime Video Settings in the lower left).

There's a brief discussion of it here on the Apple boards.

For me the difference in a clip that does it seems to be the size.

A ProRes clip which is 854 x 480 does have the brightness playback issue.

A ProRes clip which is 720 x 408 does not have the brightness playback issue. (Inconsistent though; some clips have the issue while others do not)

A ProRes clip which is 720 x 480 does not have the brightness playback issue.

That's the only difference I can determine between the two clips.

Playing the clips in QuickTime Player does not show a gamma shift.

Gamma while Playing in Viewer

Gamma while Paused in Viewer

I don't know a solution to this and really, it's just an annoyance overall; but it's good to be aware of it.

ProRes Cheat Sheet

I ran across this the other night and thought it was kinda handy.

ProRes Cheat Sheet

It's from here and can be handy when someone asks what all the different types are good for.

ProRes vs ProRes

For the record HP ProRes 1200 has nothing to do with Apple ProRes 4444.

A client just emailed me and it took me a second to realize what they were talking about.

Ripping DVDs to ProRes

ProRes is really great but it has some limitations you should know that can trip you up later.

A friend called me tonight saying they were getting an error in Final Cut they'd never seen before which was this:

"Codec not found. You may be using a compression type without the corresponding hardware card."

I knew this wasn't true after talking to them a bit so I asked from step one what they did and discovered a big gotcha when ripping DVD content to ProRes for use in Final Cut Pro.

They'd used MPEG Streamclip to rip video from a client's DVD of old footage. Since my friend wanted to use the footage in Final Cut they set MPEG Streamclip to export (transcode) the .VOB file to ProRes.

(No, I'm not sure why MPEG Streamclip lists ProRes twice in it's export options. They're likely HQ and non-HQ but I'm certain.)

When it was done the file was great, imported into Final Cut and they happily edited away. Until they needed to render something and saw the above error. Any kind of rendering produced that error which we knew wasn't true because they had used ProRes many, many times before. Something else was different.

Dissecting the project I started to jot down all the settings and media types in the project and ran across something not readily apparent unless you know to check.

The resultant ProRes file from MPEG Streamclip wasn't a compliant size for ProRes. It wasn't either:

1920x1080

or

1280x720

If it's neither one of those sizes Final Cut pro runs and cries in a corner. My friend had left MPEG Streamclip to create a file that was 854x480 because next to it, in MPEG Streamclip's options, it reads "(16:9)" which this footage was and their thinking was that since it's a DVD they didn't need to rip it as an HD file.

I suggested they re-rip the bit of video they needed with MPEG Streamclip set to "1280x720 (HDTV 720p)". They did and after substituting the file for the renderless one Final Cut behaved as expected and rendered away.

So if you rip something to ProRes make sure it's a size that ProRes and Final Cut are expecting.

For more info check out this page in the FCP 7 manual.

Perian versus AVCHD to ProRes

Apple mentions a problem I've had people ask me about.

AVCHD clips you transcode to ProRes from the Log and Transfer window are sometimes jumpy or distorted.

The solution from Apple is as follows:

This may happen if you installed the Perian QuickTime component. To temporarily disable Perian while using Final Cut Pro:

Open System Preferences.
Click the Perian icon at the bottom of the System Preferences window.
Select the General tab in the Perian preference pane.
Click Remove Perian.
If you would like to enable Perian after you finish working with your AVCHD clips, return to step four but click Install Perian to enable it.