Exporting to h264 - color madness

Hi,
i am trying to overcome color matching issues and did some tests with Motion 4.0.3 now.
(On 10.6.4, macPro 8core 2008)
Basic setup: Have an empty scene with a green background set to RGB (0,93,40).
*First attempt - direkt import:*
1. Export directly from motion to h264
2. reimport the just made movie and make a check with a colorpicker.
3. In my case the colors are way off, showing a value of RGB(17,19,43)
*2nd attempt - using share and send to compressor*
1. use share and send to compressor
2. in Compressor use the standard Quicktime h264 setting
3. Result is even worse
*3rd attempt, only use Compressor*
1. Export the scene as Prores 422 HQ
2. Reimport that to motion, make a color check, colors are the same (in my case)
3. Use the Prores Clip in Compressor, use standard Quicktime h264 setting and export.
4. reimport the h264 to motion, make a color picker check
5. Bingo, in my case this is almost the same now with RGB (0,93,41) instead of RGB (0,93,40).
Question: Why is that? It takes the double time to first write Prores and then use Compressor.
Is that a gamma issue? I tried to check that by changing the media settings gamma of a reimported testfile, so that i get a almost close result by eye - but the color picker sees the difference.
Any info is greatly appreciated
Message was edited by: MarjanP

H.264 always affects color. Color information is greatly compressed in H.264. I am not surprised that after throwing away tons and tons of info, then attempting to re-constitute it, you see some shifting. H.264 is a web delivery format.
And it's not "double time" to export first as ProRes - that would be considered the "rendering". Then you compress that. If you try to go out H.264 directly, you're trying to "render" and "compress" at the same time. It's usually faster to do it sequentially. (One reason being that if Compressor is doing best compression, it makes two passes thru the material. If it is not rendered, it must render it twice. If it's already rendered, it's only a file read - much faster).
Patrick

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Exporting to H264

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No offense, but this is simply a terrible workflow for several reasons. First of all, you are at the moment trying to do at least three conversions. Each conversion requires recompression and quality loss. Secondly, FCE does not work with MKV files. Let's try to simplify the workflow to make it faster and get better results.
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Sent from my iPhone

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Export to H264: FCP X vs Compressor 4

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This is not bad.
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Compressor3.53 genrating dulipcate frames when exporting from H264 to Apple Prores

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Message was edited by: JP Owens

PROBLEM SOLVED "export clips from Color back into FCP & add transition"

If I have two clips that you cannot place a transition in between here is the only thing that worked for me.
I discovered this problem after I exported my movie clips from FCP 6 to Color and imported the color corrected files from Color back into FCP 6. I could no longer add transitions to any of my clips unless I made the following changes.
1. 1st check to see if the video clip has an audio track underneath it. If they are not linked Select the audio and the video track to be linked, hit Command "L" and you will see an underline under the audio and video name to show that they are now linked. Do the same for the adjoining video and audio track.
2. Next select all of the clips after the video clip you just selected by typing "tttt" this changes to the "Select All Tracks Forward Tool". Click on the track after the video track you just linked and it will select all of the tracks thereafter. Hit the "A" button to change back to the selection tool and move all of the selected tracks away from the previous video/audio track.
3. Next type "RR" this will change to the "Ripple" tool. Now click on end of the video track on the previous video clip and type -15 (for negative 15 frames). Then click on the beginning of other video clip to the right that you linked and type +15 (for plus 15 frames).
4. Type "tttt" to change back to the "Select All Tracks Forward Tool" the hit the "A" button to change back to the selection tool and drag all tracks back together again.
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I hope this helps someone...this is the only thing that worked for me!!!
Number1talent

I am working with mostly DVCPro ftg, with a few clips in MiniDV. I did have roughly 10 clips with speed changes, but they exported fine two weeks ago, when I did this the first time. (Actually, it didn't keep the speed changes, but it did export with media to FCP).
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MacPro 2 x 2.66 Quad cor Intel Xeon
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We have even tried using After Effects and Premier to the same result. Rendered it straight from Quicktime Pro, same. Rendered it to 720p30, same. Render it to 24fps, same. I had another editor render it using whatever methods he wanted to use... same. Tried Compressor, SAME. Tried Adobe Media Encoder, SAME......We even, god forbid, used a PC running Premier and built the image sequence and rendered to h264 at 30fps, 5mbs.... @#$@#$ SAME!
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I was starting to think this issue is realted to Mavericks, but since the PC did the same thing that is not it either. I have linked a sample of the clip below exported to 720p30, 25mbs... something that is much smaller than the original and should playback smooth very easily on any of my systems.
FYI: I have now opened numerous projects I have edited over the last few years and noticed that all of them are now jumpy, so this isn't just an image sequence issue. While the other projects don't use image sequences and instead are shot footage edited together, there is still the random jump (far less than the image sequence as you will see) but they are now there... ***? I have cleared preferences in FCP which helps for a short period of time, but once exported I get the same glitch.
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Here is a sample file for you all to see and please tell me if anyone does not see the issue after playing it several times in a row.
www.media3lv.com/switch/NORTH-sample-720p30_25mb-sec.zip
One last thing to note... my main goal for these videos is YouTube or Vimeo playback via our company website. I have a few other animations online right now using YouTube and the problem is also showing there. At first I thought it was just my videos, but I have looked at numerous YouTube videos now showing 3D animation and alot of them are jumpy.
www.supernap.com/supernap-building-design.html
www.supernap.com/supernap-tscif-exchange.html
These don't show the issue as bad since the camera fly is much slower, but why is this occuring and is it coming from my source, or is this a known youtube issue? I can program this using out own modules, but YouTube and Vimeo allow for multiple resolutions and a checker script which makes it easier to share over all devices at all quality up to 1080p.
Advice is welcome and appreciated?

I have tried at actual, full screen, using 1080p30 size from the original compressed to 4mbs (something my system can handle without blinking), 720p30, etc. etc. etc. Nothing stops the jumps. Even the activity monitor shows only 5%-15% processing being used by QT and/or FCP.
I plan to pull my old G5 out of the closet, it runs 10.6.8 and is still rock solid for video editing in FCP7. If it plays smooth on that 8 year old system then I know it's Mavericks. I'll try that tonight. It floors me though why the original 1080p30 will playback perfect via FCP and Motu, but once I turn of external monitoring and just try to play it via the preview monitor it is jumpy as **** and then the exported file does the same thing. So strange. I even deleted prefences of FCP and that does help with screen playback initially, but it always gets jumps in it after playing for a while.
I knew I should not have started using Mavericks and I HATE FCP10.

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