An image from a short film I have been grading, on the left is the image as shown by quicktime, and the right is in VLC matching what you see in DaVinci, you can see that they are quite different. It is the damn Apple Quicktime Gamma shift!
So I have been having issues with the gamma problem with my producers viewing my movies, since I am working from home, and we are running Premiere. I knew about the issue in the past, but have been looking into any solutions, and found some amazing articles on the subject that you should certainly read to know more about this frustrating issue.
Todd Dominey has an awesome article on the issue from Janurary 24th, 2021, that is a must read.
And Dan Swierenga has another great read on DaVinci and the issue at his blog The Post Process.
For those who don’t know is that basically Apple and Quicktime have a Gamma shift issue with Video Footage that has to do with Apple Colorsync and how it tags video. So if you play your videos on a Mac in Quicktime or in any Colorsync application (life Safari) a video from Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve they will be brighter and less contrasty than they actually are. It can be a huge issue when sending to clients.
The issue does not occur with Final Cut Pro X because it uses ColorSync (not having to be cross platform).
The solution is to use a non-colorsync application to play the video back and it will look correct (or at least more as it was intended). This can be done with Mozilla Firefox or VLC.
You could add a LUT to try and fix it (and Adobe actually has one) but for people on windows or using a non-color sync app the image will be too dark, and the the fix is never going to be perfect.
So the problem become getting people to use VLC as Apple is never going to fix it’s messed up Gamma settings.
