Benjamin Peterson wrote:
I started my career as a photographic retoucher and use photoshop and light room constantly so I am pretty confident that i know color. I also calibrate my Lacie 526 and Lacie 324i montiors monthly as well as have a sensor that will slightly shift the profile depending on the time of day.
I've been doing this for a few years now, and have come to some conclusions. Basically, the difference between still photography and video is like the difference between playing the trumpet and the sax. What you bring to the sax from playing trumpet is your ability to read music, what you know about composition, blending while playint with others, ect. But playing trumpet tells you nothing about how to physically play a sax. So it is with still photography and video.
For starters, your carefully calibrated computer monitor is just that, a computer monitor. It doesn't display the correct working space for video. What you need for WYSIWYG in video is a monitor that can show you the Rec.709 working space. Rec.709 has a different gamut, a different gamma, probably a different white point (D65), different phosphor colors, etc., etc., etc. Enought differences that it's difficult to make a computer monitor that can successfully display Rec.709. Yet there are a couple of computer monitors that can do this (a few Eizos, one HP). The vast majority of people doing serious color correction work in video use a production monitor for just this reason.
But a production monitor isn't enough. You also have to make sure that the signals you're sending the production monitor are correct. There's a sub-industry making signal converters for signals from NLE video cards (usually RGB based) -> signals for production monitors (usually YUV based).
That said, it is certainly possible to get a very good match between your NLE suite and a DVD / BD as displayed on an HDTV. But it's not as simple or easy as a calibrtated computer monitor for still photography use.
This is probably part of your problem. But Quicktime is probably the root of it. Quicktime is, well, I guess the polite way of saying it is that Quicktime is problematic. It gives all kinds of problems. Most people have abandoned it. You should too.