Why is my video appearing too dark on FCP?

I just shot a video with a Canon XA10, using the "Night scene" setting. The footage looked dark, but I could still see the images on the screen. (It looked as dark as I wanted it to) Now, I'm logging and transferring, and the preview window is close to black.
On my camera's viewfinder, it looks great! Is there a setting in Final Cut Pro's Logging and Transferring that is off?
-All my other footage looks normal, Just sequences attempting to be dark, come out different
-Its a AVCHD camera
Thanks!

Camera viewfinders are notorious for displaying an inaccurate image. They are often set to show a "bright" more vibrant image.
Equally, FCP shows you a proxy image intended to deal with composition and action. And the third variable is - who knows how well your computer monitor is adjusted?
The only real way to see what you have recorded is to view it on an external TV monitor being fed a TV signal. To do this, you need a qualified i/o device (from Matrox, AJA, Decklink) to convert the FCP output signal then feed it to a properly adjusted TV.
Anything else is just guesswork. Really.
x

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NB I mistakenly asked this question in the Final Cut Pro X forum and should really have posted it here
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.
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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
The latest reply I have received was the following from Meg the Dog and it certainly helps but is not a complete solution so I'd appreciate any further views:
In FCP-7 go to the menu Final Cut Pro > System Settings.
When the System Settings Pane opens, click on the Playback Tab.
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Well iMovie seems to "read" ProRes fine as I made no additional adjustment to the image clip to view it (and after all it is an Apple codec so iMovie should be able to read it).
As I am a professional photographer my monitors are regularly profiled and I have no issues with the colour range, gamut and birghtness - indeed the iMovie output very closely matches the still shots that I did at the same time.
Of course I have no control over the monitor conditions you may be viewing it under.
Having made the adjustment that Meg the Dog suggested has indeed brought the FCP image more into line with the "correct" out put as displayed by iMovie but not all the way there - see the new image here:
You can now see that the player's hat is now visible but the gamma is still off - needs a higher gamma and possibly a little more brightness (exposure) too.
It is however workable and I will attempt to edit the footage now and if necessary tweak it to ensure a good output video.
When I compare this odd discrepancy with what I have come to expect from still photo editing programs I am a little bemused; If I make image adjustments in Lightroom, save the file, and then open in Preview/ Photoshop/ Aperture the image appears much as I expected it to (ie like the Lightroom output)
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http://www.amazon.com/VideoSecu-VGA2TV-Computer-Presentation-Converter/dp/B000X3 FAJU/ref=sr14?ie=UTF8&qid=1295210644&sr=8-4
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I have tried to use the display calibration tool in the Mac's display preferences and that didn't seem to help (I'll admit that I don't think I'm doing it correctly).
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The best thing you can do is hook at least an inexpensive TV to the output on your camera so you get an idea of how it looks on a TV while you edit. Depending on your monitor calibration, it is quite possible that an image is darker on your computer screen than on a TV. Of course the better the NTSC monitor (the TV), the more accurate everything will be. I don't know of any iMovie plug-ins, but when clients bring me reception video from say a Canon camera that has a 7 lux rating (very poor in low light), I apply a gamma "filter" in FC to make the scene appear brighter. Maybe there is some sort of gamma plug-in for iMovie?
As far as better encoding software, I would look at Mpressionist, http://www.digigami.com/products.html. I hear it's the best. Others prefer BitVice, http://www.innobits.se/.
And hardware encoders are coming down in price as well... within the range of us mere mortals: http://www.optibase.com/Content.aspx?id=79 which probably yields the best results.
All that said, if you are looking for more professional results, you will need some sort of infrastructure to achieve them. What I mean by that is right now you don't know if the scenes are darker only on your computer monitor or if they are darker on an NTSC monitor. I can say that LCD camera screens tend to be far brighter than the "real" image recorded. And finally, the only way to be sure of anything is to use hardware scopes!
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I have gone through calibration. Please note that other applications, such as Lightroom appear as they should. I also have a spyder, and though I haven't calibrated this monitor, the fact that non-video applications are appearing as they should tells me that the problem is probably with the application running the video playback, or something do to with the video processor. Also note that the problem occurs with both Amazon streaming, Netflix, and videos ripped with Handbrake, and that it occurs with MS Silverlight, Quicktime and with VLC player.
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Why is my video appearing too dark on FCP?

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