editing Apple Color + Final Cut Pro

[2001 Productions]

I'm color grading HD footage in Apple Color and it looks great. Then I render it out to my Final Cut timeline and there is a perceptible loss of quality, particularly where the image fades into shadows. Instead of a gradual fade, there is a series of progressively darker fields. Even if I output uncompressed from Color and set my timeline for uncompressed there is a loss of quality. I can toggle back and forth between Final Cut and Color on the same frame and clearly see the drop.

Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

 

[knightly]

The editor dumbs down the footage for speed while you're working. The output is the real pudding, view it in quicktime viewer and see if the problem persists.