Re: FCPX Strange colour banding in playback modus for nightshots

I have a strange colour banding effect with additional noise when I playback a few nighshots in FCPX. I checked the following things:

- changed better performance and better quality, no difference
- the banding effect is not there in the original mts files
- the banding effect is not there when I playback the transcoded files with MplayerX
- the banding effect is there when I playback the transcoded files with Quicktime player
- the banding effect is not there after exporting

So, the result for me is, it is not really a problem, because in the end, the effect does not really exist. It is just annoying when it comes to the point to decide, what do you have to colour/noise-correct.

Were your night scenes illuminated by fluorescent or street lighting? Banding is a common problem when shooting at the wrong frame rate/shutter speed under those conditions.

Thanks for your suggestion. There were all kinds of different lights in the night, it was on a 20 people fishing boat, night time, in front of the coast of a Philippine island, lights from the coast, lights on board, hand lamps, lamps on other nightfishing boats etc. As I repeat, the problem is not really there, no problem on the footage. The problem is only there when FCPX reproduce these night scenes. For some reason, FCPX cannot handle with it. As soon as it is exported, it is gone.

I would put my money on the boat deck lights. Small AC generators such as you would find on a boat can vary quite significantly from the stable 50hz or 60hz frequencies that we normally expect. I see that in the Phillippines they are on 60hz 220v so if you shot at 24 or 25fps you would get banding under artificial lighting conditions.

As I said before, the original footage is ok. It's just a problem when playing back in FCPX.

As it was with FCP7 and with any other NLE for that matter, if you only have a computer monitor to view your footage you need to set the Viewer to 100% to be able to see the real quality of your footage. And even then, it's just a computer monitor. If you work with video and you need to see exactly what things look like you should use a calibrated external video monitor.

Best wishes,

Ronny

Yeah the problem is not the footage itself, but FCPX not showing you exactly what you get. This is actually a pretty big problem. You need to be able to see exactly what things look like to make the best judgment calls regarding any particular scene. Let Apple know about this. But before you do, is the banding still there when viewing at 100% size?