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how to export pure black from AE?
How do I export pure black from AE using h264 codec and be able watch the same superblack via Youtube or VLC player?
This is what I do… I create a new comp, add a solid with black and export using Media Encoder. The format I use is h264 (Match Source, High bitrate).
When I watch my clip via Windows Media Player, it shows pure black because I believe it shows the full range (0-255).
When I open the same file using VLC player, MX Player on my android phone (via table using the same player too) or upload the video to youtube, the black is a bit of greyish. I believe this is the correct behaviour because when I use h264 codec, it expects pure black to be on 16 and whites at 235?
This is what I tried so far…
– changing project colorspace to sRGB 1966 and other options like HDTV rec 709 (16-235)
– playing around with color profile converter
– levels
– changing depths from 8 to 16 bitsI can achieve pure black on my PC via VLC player by changing dynamic range from 16-235 to 0-255 in the NVidia settings. The problem that if I distribute my video file to end users, they won’t see pure blacks if they watch it via VLC… the same problem would remain if I upload it to youtube.
Can someone tell me what steps I should follow in order to generate 1 second clip with superblack background using AE and watch the same pure black via VLC, youtube (h264 codec). It would really make my day and I could finally sleep well!
Thank you in advance
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3 Replies
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Sadly, you cannot fix this problem on the source side. There is no way for you to compensate for a user with a misconfigured player or graphics driver or display.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
walter is right about misconfigured players outputing 0-255 or 16-235, but you can try burning in the color management with AE’s effect->utility-color profile converter. try rec.0-255 and 16-235 and see if it breaks in other computers. As default, some players do setup a certain way so all you can can hope for is get the greatest group of default setups to be compatible. Besides, most players don’t support color management anyway.
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I believe I’m preparing the source wrongly in After Effects…
Here is what I did today. I added a solid black in Davinci Resolve, in the output setting set video/data levels to 4-1019, picked quick time wrapper and rendered a few seconds of it as I result I had black.mov file. Then I dragged/dropped that file to Media Encoder, picked h264 match source/bitrate, converted and volia – VLC played everything with true blacks. Uploaded to Youtube, everything super black. All players show blacks as I expect.
Like I mentioned in my initial post I cannot achieve the same effect with After Effects. I tested many things in AE and nothing worked for me but I’m ready to go through that again, maybe I missed something.
I uploaded rendered files:
https://www.filedropper.com/showdownload.php/black_5ae.black.mp4 (rendered via AE, just created new comp, added solid black, dragged and dropped to media encoder; no color management, levels or embed color profile as it didn’t work for me…)
black.aep (my simple AE file)
davinci.resolve.black.mov (rendered via Davinci Resolve, set video/data levels to 4-1019)
davinci.resolve.black.rencoded.with.media.encoder.mp4 (dragged/dropped davinci.resolve.black.mov to media encoder. This file shows superblacks across all players I tried)
PS how do I exactly set video/data levels in AE like I did in Davinci resolve…?
Thanks
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