Has this happened to you?
You shot a video on your new iPhone 12,
and it looks great on your phone,
but when you import it into Final Cut Pro
it looks like this.
Blown out to a point where it’s unwatchable?
Today, we’ll take a look at how to fix it,
and how to deal with iPhone 12 video in Final Cut Pro.
Hey guys, whats up.
My name is Serge, and welcome back to my channel.
In this video, we’ll talk about how to fix
blown out iPhone 12 footage in Final Cut Pro.
But before we do, let’s first talk about why it looks blown out,
and how you can prevent it.
There’s actually nothing wrong with your iPhone footage,
it’s just recorded in a different color space.
By default, your iPhone 12 is set to record video
in Dolby Vision HDR.
You can confirm this right on your iPhone,
because you’ll see an HDR logo in the top left corner.
What this means is your footage is recorded
with a much higher dynamic range and with 10 bit color,
and when played back on a screen that supports Dolby Vision,
looks considerably better.
But there is a few downsides to HDR video.
One, is the file sizes are huge,
especially when you export your video in Pro Res.
You also need a display that supports HDR to play these back.
Your iPhone 12 display,
and a lot of the newer TVs support it,
but most computer screens, including my 2019 MacBook Pro
don’t go bright enough,
so your footage will look blown out.
Unless you specifically need HDR video,
the easiest way to deal with it is to turn it off
on your phone before recording.
To do this, on your iPhone
go to settings,
scroll down to the Camera settings,
and select Record Video.
Down near the bottom,
you’ll see a toggle for HDR Video.
Turn this off to record your footage in the Rec 709 color space,
thats more universal,
and more like what we’re used to seeing on normal displays.
That’s great, but what if you already have footage recorded in HDR.
In Final Cut Pro, there’s a couple ways we can deal with it.
First, let’s take a look at how we can deal with HDR footage,
in a more conventional SDR project.
Select your HDR clip in the media browser,
and drop it down into your timeline.
Right away, you get a warning message,
saying you’re adding an HDR clip into an SDR project,
and your bright content will be clipped.
If you skim over your clip in the timeline,
you can clearly see this.
To fix this, press Command 5 to open the effects browser,
select the color category,
and locate the HDR Tools effect.
Drag this effect over your clip in the timeline.
This helps, but our clips still looks too bright.
For your clip to be displayed properly,
you need to go up to the video inspector,
and in HDR tools, from the Mode dropdown menu,
select HLG to Rec 709 SDR.
This looks much better.
Just for reference,
I have the same clip recorded in SDR, and they look identical.
Next, if you want to make the most of your iPhone 12 camera,
let’s take a look at how you can edit
and export your videos in Dolby Vision HDR.
To do this, you have to make an HDR library.
Create a new library,
and with your library selected in Final Cut Pro,
in the inspector, click the Modify button.
Select Wide Gamut HDR option, and click Change.
Import your HDR footage into your library.
Now, make a new project in your HDR library.
and make sure Use Custom Settings is selected.
Change the Color Space of your project
to Wide Gamut HDR Rec 2020 HLG.
Click OK.
Now when you add an HDR clip to your timeline
it looks proper, and much better than SDR clips.
Edit your iPhone 12 HDR clip as you normally would,
but for color grading,
you will get the best results if your display supports HLG HDR.
Now, let’s take a look at exporting your HDR video
for uploading to platform that supports it such as YouTube.
For highest quality export,
you need to export your HDR project
as either an HLG Mater file
or use the Share to Apple Devices preset
with the video codec set to HEVC 10-bit.
To export your project as an HLG Master File,
hit the share button and select Master File.
In the settings tab,
set the format to Video and Audio,
and select one of the Video Codecs.
The only ones you’ll want to stay away from here,
is the H.264 and Uncompressed 8-bit.
Selecting one of these will give you a warning message,
saying your video quality will be reduced.
Any of Apple’s Pro Res codecs,
or Uncompressed 10-bit all support 10-bit HDR video.
The problem with exporting your project as an HLG master file,
is the file size.
As you can see, our 15 second 4K HDR project
will be over 1 GB.
That’s huge and will take forever to upload,
especially if your project is longer.
If you make an HDR project for uploading online,
there’s a better option.
Instead of exporting our project as an HLG Mater File,
we can export it as a much smaller HEVC 10-bit file.
From the Format dropdown menu,
select Apple Devices,
and set the video codec to HEVC 10-bit HLG with Dolby Vision 8.4.
This makes our exported file size
a much more manageable 28 megabytes.
You can now use your web browser like Safari
to upload this project to YouTube,
and it will be recognized as an HDR project,
and will have an HDR playback option on supported devices.
If you plan on using your iPhone 12 and Final Cut Pro
to make HDR videos,
there’s one more tip I want to share with you.
If you’re running MacOS Big Sur,
have Apple Compressor,
and a machine that supports it,
you can use hardware acceleration to export your videos faster.
Open compressor,
and press Shift Command 1 to open the settings pane.
Click the disclosure triangle beside Apple Devices,
and select Apple Devices 4K HEVC 10-bit Dolby Vision preset.
Right click on it, and select Duplicate.
Press Command 4 to open the Inspector,
and in the General tab
type in a new name for your preset.
Select the Video Tab,
change the Encoder Type to Faster,
and make sure the Include Dolby Vision 8.4 Metadata checkbox is selected.
Go back to Final Cut Pro,
and open the Preferences window.
Select Destinations,
and double click Compressor Settings.
Open your custom folder,
select your new share preset, and click OK.
Close the preferences window.
When you’re ready to share your HDR project,
click the share button,
then choose your new preset for a faster export.
I hope you found this video helpful.
If you did, make sure to check out the rest of my channel
for more Final Cut Pro tutorials.
New videos uploaded every week, so please subscribe.
Thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you back here next week.