Quicktime export, colors washed out

I think this question has been asked before but I just couldn't find a good explanation in the archives. Wondering if anyone knows why, when I export my movie out of FCP to h.264 and then playback in quicktime, the colors become much more muted and washed out. This has been happening for awhile now, and its been driving me nuts and now I have a project that is absolutely going to hurt because of it.
I want the bright vibrant colors that I see in my canvas in FCP -- what gives? Any help would be great. Thanks.

Yeah, sorry, this was actually a graphic created in Motion 3 then sent to FCP to sync with some audio and other sound effects. The entire workflow is HDV 1080p24, compressed to various sizes of h.264 and meant for web only. Because it is meant for the web, I have bypassed a calibrated monitor and am just doing all the work on my Apple Cinema displays.
Like I said, I can take the exported h.264 version from FCP, open it in quicktime and hold it up right next to my FCP canvas and the luma and chroma values are noticeable muted, less vibrant, and just not as much fun to look at.
I have played around with the general settings in Quicktime, specifically the "Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility" option, but still no change. I have read other places about this being a gamma issue once the movie is played back in Quicktime, but I really don't know what that means.
All of my software is about as up to date as you can get.

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Quicktime exports are washed out, low contrast

Hey-
This sounds like a classic gamma problem, but i don't know where to look to fix it. Basically, my edit looks one way, but when i export the quicktime of the timeline, playback in quicktime is washed out, drab, low contrast, and has less saturation than it does in the edit in FCP.
Anyone know how best to address this? is this a gamma issue IN FCP? I expect, when export my quicktime, that playback in the quicktime player and on other computers (i've looked at it on a windows machine as well) will look the same way it does in my FCP edit, and it doesnt.
Help, and thanks!

Chris
afraid you are mistaken, looking at the file on a PC will be quite different to looking at it on a mac and I am thinking this may be where your issues start.
(Sorry if the following is sucking eggs)
Go to your display preferences/color and check what is set there, return to a default profile or even better calibrate your displays. The way QT displays a files is different to the way FCP does, (citation needed). Also typically a mac is set to a gamma of 1.8 whilst a PC is set to a gamma of 2.2. This used to be a real problem creating mpg1 content for PC's, had to create a gamma setting specifically for display on a PC. I must admit that I am now creating wmv's, (Flip4Mac) for insertion in Powerpoint and corporate web and gamma is no longer an issue.
As you said classic gamma problem, also try using one of the prepackaged compressor settings with no tweaking.
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Pic HERE: Losing color/washed out when exported

So I exported my movie using H.264 and the result is a washed out image.
The left image is the exported footage and the right is the footage viewed in FCP.
Is this a common problem or am I just doing something wrong here?
[img]http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/6871/1190482208.jpg[/img]

The only difference I could see was that the whites were (Slightly) brighter in the left.mov pic... Maybe a slight shift in "warmth" or saturation in the mids (I can see it in the mans face far right).
Hey, you are compressing and something has to give. Simply boost the controls in FCP that are important to you before compression based on the results you see. Keep in mind that every web viewer’s computer will display something different.
Props to you for being fussy!

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Thanks for all the replies, I was beginning to think I was on my own,I'm very happy this thread finally came to life. I did use an adobe Monitor profile (Prophoto) as I thought that was the color space used by LR and had read in some other thread that I should use it. I tried using my supplied profile (2005fpw.icm) and I get an error message from Photoshop stating "The Monitor profile"Dell 2005FPW color profile" appears to be defective please rerun your monitors calibration software. I then have the option to ignore the profile or to use it anyways. I actually stumbled accross the huelight ACR's and tried them out but that didn't help. Photoshop has the same bland lifeless look as LR does. I d/l a trial of Elements 5 and it was also the same so it's adobe across the board. Color space and color management are totally new concepts for me
so I'm really at a disadvantage trying to trouble shoot this, I can bandy these terms about, but I suspect I don't really grok them fully as of yet. I'll be happy when I finally get my monitor calibrated, I understand now that it won't be a magic "fix all" :( but at least I'll have a solid point to begin building a color managed system. Other Raw converters don't seem to have this problem but as I am just now developing my workflow I'd like to master one program and I think I'd like that to be LR as it seems to be the one that encompasses the entire workflow ie. rating,cataloging,flagging ect. and I feel it would probably mesh best with Photoshop which I also plan to learn/use. I'm feeling pretty stuck and not very inspired to shoot atm as the exposures just keep piling up and aren't being integrated or dealt with appropriately. I don't have auto tone checked off and I'll see if I can track down an updated driver/profile for my monitor, one which isn't "defective" as Adobe puts it. Thank you for all the replies, I will get this resolved eventually and any help you guys can give me is more than appreciated.
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Quicktime export, colors washed out

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