Graphics render bug in FCP 6 and 7 - Dare to prove me wrong?

Question

I have an issue with an HD video that contains red and purple text and graphics in the edit. I've looked for an answer tirelessly online, with friends, and through trial and error for a good 7 hours before giving up. Here's the deal,
Sequence settings: HD 1440x1080 16:9, 23.98, HDV 1080p24 for editing the canon7d footage that came in - this however doesn't matter because i tested with every setting imaginable including animation raw and ended up with the same results for the graphics problem I'm having (kind of unrelated to the actual footage).
I need to output this 9 minute edit I have to an HD file 1280x720 for youtube upload. So, it has to be under 2gb (youtube's limit) but for client purposes, it needs to be crisp and great looking as you would imagine.
I have a bunch of PSDs, each show a different line drawing of a brush. For each one, the line is a different color. For any of the colors that aren't red or purple, they render crisp and wonderful in final cut pro over top the video. However, the graphics that have the lines that are red or purple, come out pixelated and blurry no matter how i try to render them. The only solution that worked was to render and output them with the animation codec. ProRes HQ worked too but not as well. However, this makes a file way too big. Whenever I went from animation to h264 or from FCP to h264, or any other web friendly format, graphics come out way pixelated. It makes me frustrated as to why all the graphics that were exactly the same except not red or purple came out perfectly crisp. Also, why is animation codec the only codec out there (besides uncompressed obviously) that will create clean edges in these red/purple graphics?
Conclusion: Found that reds and purples are the only colors that seem to be effected when rendering the graphics. Everything else comes out nicely. Animation and pro res codecs aside, any codec making the video small enough for the web (less than 2gb) resulted in the problem of pixelation with the red and purple graphics. Based on extensive research I did online, I was surprised not to find many people posting about the exact same problem. For the issues I did find that seemed related, people concurred that HD nor regular DV video do a good job rendering bright reds or variations of red. Because I found no solutions online or from all the things I tried in the list below
-re-rendered the PSD's in Final cut pro with variation of sequence setting to see if that would make any difference - it didn't. Tried all kinds of different settings in export for h264, keyframes, max quality, etc. no luck.
-tried rendering to "Animation/uncompressed" as far through the process as possible. For instance, I outputted a perfectly crisp "Animation" file that was perfect looking. As soon as I re-exported to h264, mpeg4, or sorenson, or any other codec dropping the file size down, all results returned pixelated results for the reds and purple graphics.
-made sure photoshop settings were all good, even copied and pasted psd into new 1920x1080 project, played with DPI up to 300 to see if it did anything, saved as different formats TIFF, png, eps, layers, flattened, 8-bit, 24-bit, 36-bit, etc., none of the formats worked correctly.
-outputted my own purple and red graphics and text and rendered in final cut to see if the file had anything to do with it. same problem with my red and purple graphics and text.
-Tried adding slight moving grain to the graphic in Final cut to try and trick FCP to thinking it was a video instead of a graphic and therefore render it smoothly.
-consulted with 2 other video editors/media experts, ended up frustrating them as well (and hurting their ego a little since they were sure they could figure it out)
-Ran the shot and graphic through after effects and premiere pro separately (different video programs) to see if final cut pro was causing the problem, same problem with those programs.
-tried rendering on a different mac, still the same.
-Actually upgraded my final cut pro version to the new version (now Final cut studio 3). Ran tests on new version of final cut pro, same exact problem.
-added black edge to purple graphics to see if that did anything different to the rendering. Didn't help
-Changed the hue of the graphic to anything other than red or purple. Wouldn't you know...That fixed it.
Here is a link to the Animation Output of a half second of the edit with a sample red graphic crisp as can be for you to test (12.7mb) -
http://www.robinsonhope.com/downloads/makeup_animationtest.zip
Here is a link to view screenshots before and after to show you what rendering does to the graphics.
http://www.robinsonhope.com/downloads/makeup_ss.jpg
In case you'd like to try and find a solution, please download the link to the HD animation half-second clip and output to h264 or any other web friendly codec that would show these red graphics clean and not blurry and pixelated. Other rule is after doing the math, a 9 minute video with the compression you choose would need to be under 2gb. This shouldn't be too much of a problem because even a 1280x720 h264 at max quality for a 9min video is still under 2gb.
The first person to show me that you are truly a FCP guru and can solve this, post a link of your successful solution, I will praise you as genius all over this forum. I will also be eternally grateful. Live in LA? I'll also buy you dinner, Haha. But seriously...

Answer 1

Welcome to this forum,
Sorry to hear you so struggling with this issue.
And I doubt whether I can solve this for you, but I can say a few things.
The title of this thread is:
Graphics render bug in FCP 6 and 7 - Dare to prove me wrong?
I'll prove you are wrong. Or actually you've already proved yourself wrong in your post:
-Ran the shot and graphic through after effects and premiere pro separately (different video programs) to see if final cut pro was causing the problem, same problem with those programs.
Seams that I try to annoy you, but I'm not. It's not a joke. The fact that other applications can't handle it as well AND the fact that Animation Codec (Which is pretty lostless) does not have this problem, tells you that the problem is likely the low compression you want OR the footage itself. And I dare say it's BOTH.
I downloaded your testfile and have opened it in FCP and I can see in the Vectorscope that your color Red is too hot.
[Click here|http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz356/rienkL/Screenshot2010-04-02at1324 20.png] to see the vectorscope of your picture?
You also see the small boxes (clockwise)
Red, Magenta, Blue, Cyan, Green, Yellow. The signal of your picture should stay somewhere between those boxes. You should read [this article|http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_scopes.html] (two third on the page) about the vectorscope. Also has a picture with the range to be broadcast safe.
So back to your picture and your vectorscope. You'll see that just along the right side of the R in the vectorscope there's a peak which goes way out of the range. And that's exactly the color of your graphic.
I tried isolating that color, reducing the saturation, and then do an export, but that failed. You should adjust that within the PSD's first and then see how exporting goes.
So now you are thinking: My client wants his own colors! Sure he does. But those colors were probably designed for print, which does have another colorrange. Simple technical story. You're bound to specific saturation. Going over that means troubles....
And I'm not claiming that your problem will be solved when you adjust this. It is still possible that h264 just doesn't like red too much. Maybe that's on purpose. Our eyes are most less sensitive to red, so that gives the compressor some extra room to compress in the reds (Don't know if this is what compression developers do; just thinking out loud, just an idea...)
Hope this helps at least a little.
Rienk