Final Cut Pro: What You See is NOT What You Get with Cotton Miller

The last step in creating a video in Final Cut Pro is exporting the movie, and using Compressor is the simplest way to create your final masterpiece. It offers various video size options by specific device or destination.

Yet the rendered movie on a Mac often appears much lighter in QuickTime than what you see in Final Cut Pro. So much for WYSIWYG! This is due to a gamma setting within QuickTime Pro. Gamma value is used to quantify brightness. Since Final Cut Pro uses a 2.2 gamma and QuickTime works in a 1.8 gamma the rendered video appears lighter.

Here’s how to achieve the best results on a Mac:

1. In QuickTime Pro, select “Preferences” under the QuickTime Player menu

2. At the very bottom of the General Preferences dialogue, select the box next to "Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility" .

And, voilà! What you see in Final Cut Pro is what you get in QuickTime.

Learn more from Cotton in his two-and-a-half day intensive
Final Cut Pro Intensive: Introduction to Multimedia
April 30-May 2, 2010

Visit his blog at cottonmiller.wordpress.com to see what he's up to.