Dark footage is darker in FCE than iMovie HD

using the same dv clips, iMovie HD displays brighter and lighter than FCE. I'm working in FCE and would like to lighten so its easier to see for editing. Suggestions?

Hey there,
Try playing around with the *Brightness and Contrast* filter. You can find it in +Effects > Video Filters > Image Control > Brightness and Contrast.+

Similar Messages

Capturing HDV worse in FCE than iMovie 08 - why?

I'm just curious why the capturing process of HDV material is worse in Final Cut Express 4.0 than it is in iMovie 08?
The latter has a proper capture window where it's possible to control the camera (forward, rewind etc.), while the former only has a simple "capturing window" that captures whatever is playing from the camera (a Canon HV20 in my case). No controls of rewind etc.?
So - why? Isn't FCE supposed to be a superior product to iMovie 08?

Hi(Bonjour)!
That's the way FCE HD capture HDV because there is a conversion to Apple Intermediate Codec upon capturing and because FCE HD is a stripped down version of Final Cut Pro that allows cam control on capture.
But this behavior is okay as you can position your tape with your camcorder remote and start the capturing process. You'll get a bunch of movie clips, like iMovie.
Michel Boissonneault

Why is so hard for FCE or iMovie to read AVCHD files?

I have some AVCHD files (.MTS) on a hard disk. No camera. And no, the directory format has not been preserved. The files were just copied, and renamed for backup purposes. "Log and Transfer..." in FCE gives me an error about the directory structure. And I can't import with iMovie (just won't let me select the files.)
Now, I think I would have a better chance of finding a solution, if I knew why Final Cut Express 4 or iMovie 7.1.1 can only read the AVCHD file format from the camera directly, or when the directories are setup in a particular way.
Why can't it just read the file? Like how any program can read a JPEG without having to plug-in a camera or create a folder called "PRIVATE" or whatever?
I've wasted several hours on this problem today, and the the only conclusion i can come up with is that Apple has some seriously incompetent or just plain lazy engineers.
There must be a proper technical reason... right?

Hi -
Jason Moore3 wrote:
It's just so weird that all FCE and iMovie can read the files - they just require you to "connect the camera". Why is the camera so important to reading the file?
It's not. It's just an easy way to insure that when FCE or iMovie are looking at the file storage directory, FCE or iMovie will see all the files, the metadata, the media, etc.. It also makes for an easier work flow- just plug in the camera, no need to off-load files and remember where the are stored, etc.. And, it helps develop a workflow where people are not just copying the media files to another disk without the metadata, as in your case, or make a mistake and copy the metadata without the media.
Imagine this: three big tractor trailers pull up outside your house loaded with stuff. As you go out to meet them a driver hands you a small package. You open it up, and inside is a complete description of what is packed, how each item is packed, where each item is in the container, and how best to unpack the containers for the easiest installation in your house. That is what the metadata does. Could you unpack the containers without it? Yes. Is it the optimal way? No.
Many threads discuss how it's possible to backup the whole directory and making a disk image and then "tricking" iMovie/FCE into reading the files, which leads me to think that this stupidity is intentional.
This is not a trick. iMovie has the "Archive All" button on the import window. To later access those files you would use the menu File > Import > Camera Archive. In FCE, where one would expect a slightly more computer savvy user, you can use Disk Utility to create a disk image of the contents of the camcorder files, then later, use Log and Transfer from within FCE to import the footage from that disk image.
Someone doesn't want people to actually have a HD video format that is easy to work with (OMG pirates!!) and so it's been crippled to make it a PITA to work with.
Hmmm, well, all you have to do is follow the recommended workflow - connect the camera, import the footage, and edit. FCE and iMovie take care of the footage conversion from AVCHD which is a format incredibly difficult to edit in to a format that allows easy editing, all without user intervention.
The end result is, I can't view my own content.
The system Apple developed of converting AVCHD to either AIC or Pro Res is probably the best way to make the editing process as painless as possible for the end user.
Having said that, Sony Vegas, a windows application, will natively edit AVCHD files, without any conversion. I don't have any experience with it so can't say what the experience is like, but it might be an alternative for you if the iMovie/FCE workflow is not working for you.
Hope this helps.
Message was edited by: Meg The Dog to fix typo

Dark video in FCP but ok in iMovie

Bit of a newcomer to this but as I have Final Cut Pro 7 thought I'd use it rather than iMovie which seems a bit primitive.
Shot a video of someone in the studio yesterday on a Nikon DSLR at 1280x720 25fps
Then ran it through Compressor to transcode it to Apple Pro Res for editing.
All ok so far
Viewed the footage in iMovie and it looks fine but what a horror in FCP7 !!!
It is so dark
So what's wrong ?
Have seen an earlier discussion which seemed to think the monitor calibration is off but how can that be ?
iMovie displays the footage fine but FCP doesn't.
Any thoughts guys ?
See the attached screen grab
As you can see: FCP Viewer on top and iMovie below

This is the forum for FCP-X, but . . .
In FCP-7 go to the menu Final Cut Pro > System Settings.
When the System Settings Pane opens, click on the Playback Tab.
Set Gamma Correction to Approximate:
MtD

RED ONE 4.5K footage is darker when paused

Computer: Macbook Pro 2.5ghz Intel Core Duo
OS: 10.6.4
Running: Final Cut Pro 7.0.3
Using footage transcoded from RED ONE Rushes
When I import .mov files that are half-res 422 ProRes HQ compressed file of a RED ONE 4.5k Wide original, I find that my footage is darker when paused. When I press play the film lightens a bit while playing until I stop it. I feel like this has something to do with the quicktime Gamma Shift from the new version of Quicktime X. I do not notice this problem when I open the files in quicktime pro 7.6.6. I had Quicktime X, but deleted it because I thought it may have been causing the problem.
This problem does not happen to my half-res 422 ProRes HQ compressed file from 2k footage, only the 4.5k wide. This is weird because the same footage playing on the same version of FCP on a tower works fine at my school. It is only this computer that seems to be weird.

This isn't the gamma shift issue, this is typical of playback on footage that is high res played back on slow drives. This won't show up on an external monitor connected via a capture card.
#2 Blurry Playback
Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry/Low Quality playback
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL BROADCAST MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.
Video playback requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the video data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or broadcast monitor.
Shane

FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?

I have been using iMovie HD and it looks like its corrupted and cannot re-install it since I lost the disk image.
I am thinking of going to FCE over upgrading to iLife 09.
Does FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?

Eswar M wrote:
... Does FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?
if your source is miniDV/Standard - yes.
if your source is 720p or iFrame - no.
in terms of speed and simplicity - iM09 is 'better'.
in terms of options and feature - FCE is by far superior.
note: iM09 is no 'upgrade' of your version, but a from ground off new app.
another note: FCE has a very steem learning curve, but after managing that is a fantastic tool!

Footage is dark when played in FCP 7

Footage is Dark in Final Cut Pro 7 when played in both Viewer and Canvas. The Footage is "Normal" when paused. The moment I play the footage, it becomes significantly darker. I'm using Final Cut Pro 7.03 and OS X 10.8.1.
I've attached two screenshots. The first is the paused footage, the second is the same shot, just darker when I hit play.

It's less subtle when editing darker, moodier scenes. When I hit play, I lose about a stop of light. Areas that are somewhat illuminated are completely black the moment I play the clip. It makes it difficult to see the actor's eyes, etc.
Another example is attached.
Paused . . .
Played . . .

FCE Vs iMovie. Quality Difference?

hello there.
i'm just wondering whether such emphasised phrases as "high quality effects/transitions/rendering/etc" in the FCE manual or general description mean that, for instance, iMovie's quality, as far as rendering, effects and transitions are concerned, is worse. am i correct in understanding so?..
the problem i am facing is that, although i'm in the middle of switching to FCE from iMovie for doing all/most of my video work, i still find that i've got much-much more effects and transitions in iMovie than in FCE, due to having 7 of the 10 Slick-GeeThree packages. so what i'm thinking is that i could share the work between the two applications, using the best features of each to the benefit of my projects.
however... the thought that suddenly occurred to me was - would the quality of my video footage suffer in iMovie? or has iMovie got the same quality parameters as FCE?

thanks for your replies.
i don't think i'll be having any problems with audio, as most of my projects are music videos, which means i won't be using the sound of the original footage: the soundtrack is added separately.
as for the quality of some effects. yes, that's exactly what i meant. the captured video looks great in iMovie. but as soon as i add such effects as colour correction, for instance, or saturation, the sharpness of the picture disappears and it starts to look edgy. for example, if it's a human face, the original oval curve of a cheek or a chin will look slightly saw-edged, i.e. i can spot square pixels...
which is why i thought that perhaps the "high quality" bit in the FCE official description meant that i won't be encountering similar problems in FInal Cut?

Follow-up question to FCE vs. iMovie

When I asked yesterday for a comparison of FCE to iMovie, and how they were different, I realized what I really I want to know is why FCE is considered better than iMovie. And what can FCE do that iMovie can't do? Thanks.

Please don't start another thread on the same topic when you have one that you haven't responded to.
The question is mostly answered in the thread that was linked in your original post. What about the discussion in that linked thread is not clear?
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13175828#13175828
x

Backing up unedited family video: Should I capture using FCE or iMovie?

I have >50 hours of family video (kids) that I'm not ready to edit yet. I would like to capture the footage in order to back it up because it is priceless. My plan is to buy some large hard disks and save video there, and then when Blu-Ray comes out, I'll buy a Blu-Ray drive and burn Blu-Ray disks as an additional layer of safety.
The captured files will need to be in a format that lasts. As far as I can tell, both FCE and iMovie save captured clips as Quicktime files, which I'm guessing will be around for a while and compatible with future video editing apps. Both FCE and iMovie can import Quicktime clips. I'll be importing the entire hour of video from each tape, in a single capture.
My question is this:
If...
(a) rendering doesn't bother me (like importing clips using iMovie then editing using FCE)
(b) timecode isn't important to me (iMovie doesn't save timecode)
... is there any reason to capture the video using Final Cut instead of iMovie?
The only feature that FCE has that iMovie doesn't, is the ability to detect dropped frames during capture. Are there other reasons?
I like the fact that iMovie splits the capture into individual clips at each break and saves each clip as an individual file. If you're willing to do the work, FCE/FCP can do this to, using DV Start/Stop detect, making the segments into subclips, then exporting them as individual clips. FCP makes this a practical possibility using batch export, whereas FCE lacks that feature and exporting each clip one by one is impractical (I have maybe 200 individual clips per hour of tape). But this is a task I plan for later. Right now my concern is finding the "best way" to capture and save all this video for later editing.
I guess I could also ask, should timecode be important to me? My tapes contain a lot of timecode breaks, so recapturing video from tape automatically isn't likely to work well. I don't know any other reason timecode might be important for consumer-level family video.
PowerMac G5 Quad 2.5 GHz 3GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7) NVIDIA GeForce 7800GT

Anthony,
while I fully agree with Al answer, let me add one note in favor of iMovie in answering your original specific question (note: I'm a quite happy user of FCE for all its advantages over iMovie, but for the point I'm going to make).
The basic difference between FCE and iMovie in scene detection (based on the same principle of using date/time breaks as dividers), is that iMovie creates as many media files as clips during capture itself, while FCE Subclips are created AFTER the capture of a unique media file, using DV Start/Stop Detect and Make Subclip, that does NOT splits files.
So you'd better consider now if recovering unused disk space, by trashing unused clips, will be a major issue for you in the future, when you'll be editing your movies. If so, keep in mind that this job is very simple if you captured with iMovie and then imported its clips to FCE (and if you confirm you don't mind about TC and audio rendering), while it is quite complex if you captured directly with FCE, and, I'd say, not recommended unless absolutely needed.
Piero

DVD looks different/better than imovie

I did a quick search in this forum to see if this has been discussed before. I'm sorry if it has; I'm new in this forum. Anyways...
I'm trying to edit video that I dumped from a video camera and DVD onto my powerbook g4 1.33ghz w/1.25ghz ram. I'm not having any real issues with the editing process itself. My problem is that, when I burn a DVD of the movie (using iDVD) it looks entirely different than on the laptop. I've even tried using a secondary screen to do the editing on (regular computer monitor). The secondary computer monitor looks the same as the laptop. But, again the burned DVD looks totally different. On the computer, it looks kinda like it's in dropframe but I'm using 29 (or whatever that higher setting is). But when I burn the DVD and play it in a regular DVD player, it looks much crisper, smoother and less pixelated. Will it help if I max out my laptop RAM to 2ghz or is this just a problem inherent in the preinstalled 64MB video card? If it's the video card, I'm thinking about upgrading to a macbook. Will a macbook video card be powerful enough not to have this problem? Any help/suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

bobwex123 wrote:
I use DV tape (not HD), import to iMovie 09 and burn to DVD with iDVD....
... If I upgrade in FCE and spend some time with the interface, will the final DVD quality be better than iMovie 09?
definitively YES.
as widely known, iM08/09 has this little *skip-field problem* with interlaced sources (miniDV imports are always i, independently, what camcorder marketing says), plus a gamma-prob.
details on our website:
http://sites.google.com/site/theimovieoutputproject/
you avoid these probs by using a 'real' dv-editor, as iMHD6 or FCE ..
sidenote: settings in the editor, on transfer and iDVD have to be correct for best quality. as: sequence settings 'fit' to camcorder, NO 'Export using QT conversion', iDVD is set to same standard as camcorder (PAL vs NTSC); project length <60min (=for highest bitrate in iDVD).
+disclaimer: I may profit from linking to my site.+

Which Imports Faster HDV or AVCHD in FCE and iMovie?

I'm planning on getting my first HD camcorder and I'm leaning towards the HV-20 or HG-10. I'm leaning towards the HV-20 HDV. Tapes are cheap and a good archive medium and I'm leery of small hard drives being robust. Do AVCHD camcorders use similar drives as the iPod?
I've read AVCHD takes some time to import. Does HDV import faster to AIC?
Does FCE 4 import faster than iMovie 8 for both formats?
Thanks for any advice.
Kelvin

Import speed depends on your computer, but I think the the AVCHD and the HDV transcoding is about the same. It's all being done by QuickTime. AVCHD transfer gives you more options in terms of selecting clips and portions of clip, which is more difficult to do manually off tape. But, as you said, tape is cheap and a good archive medium.

Fce or imovie 06

what are some advantages with using fce over imovie 06 ? i've only been using a mac for a few months now and have gotten pretty used to using i movie 06. i like imovie 08 for editing but it just does not have as many features as i like it to have. for only $200 it seems really tempting, i'm just not sure what it would add for me.
another thing for me is to be able to add a new track to a movie and be able to choose which track to listen to when played on a dvd player. i know imovie does not do this. does fce do this ?

I think you should read something about FCE: Final Cut Express.
Anyway FCE (and today a new version 4 was released) provides far more features than iMovie.
And it's also quite different from iMovie (either 6 or 08) and more difficult to learn: as a Mercedes is different from a... bike: with both you can move around, but you need a driver licence for a Mercedes.
About being able to choose tracks on the DVD player, it's not a feature for iMovie or FCE: It's up to the DVD authoring application. And, as far as I know, only DVD Studio (in the FCS 2 suite) can do that.
Piero

FCE versus iMovie?

I've been using iMovie for several years now. I grew to love 6; 9 even more so.
But I've been eyeing FCE as a way to make more professional films. Before I plunk down the cash, though, I'm curious as to what makes FCE a better tool than iMovie.
Thanks for any and all responses!

Have you started by looking over Apple's description of the two products?
http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/
http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/
I'd say what gives FCE the overall edge over iMovie for anyone serious about editing is the degree of control it gives. Almost all aspects, from filters to scale, position, and opacity are keyframeable giving you advanced control over the way your story unfolds. The traditional timeline allows you to better visualize how all clips match up, as opposed to the newer iMovie's "box" format. It also allows the layering of up to 99 video and audio tracks, as well as compositing of nested sequence for better organization.
These articles give you a bit of an idea of some of the key differences:
http://www.macworld.com/article/131294/2007/12/imovie_fce.html
http://www.macworld.com/article/146782/2010/04/fcevsimovie.html#lsrc.mod_rel

Better than iMovie

I'm busy editing my 3 month holiday in South Africa with iMovie (first time - new to Mac's), but the program seems a bit limited. Is there another piece of video editing software for a Mac that's alot better than iMovie?
(I know you get the really expensive ones like Adobe, but I'm looking for something that will equal Nero 7 for Windows, maybe something a bit better or expensive)
Thanx

define 'better' ...?
iM is excellent to import from miniDV, trim&crop material, add some simple transitions & titles... that is 95% of consumer level (.. and editor's) work..
'better' in means of 'more options':
Final Cut Express
$$ (=cheaper than FCP) but a steep learning curve too ...

Dark footage is darker in FCE than iMovie HD

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for