• Adobe After Effects

  Question about superblacks and superwhites in AE 5.5

  Posted by Bill Ravens on August 8, 2011 at 1:15 pm

  I’ve tried to search for an answer to this, but, it seems to be such a huge source of confusion that I can’t understand what I’ve read.
  My question relates to the color space used within AE 5.5. When bringing a Sony MXF file into AE, it is tagged with the YCrCb color space.I’ve imported a REC709 Color Bar pattern with pluge bars. No matter what I do, AE clips the pluge bars below 0%. If I import the same REC709 color bar pattern in to Media Composer, I can perform a CC to recover the super blacks. Because AE clips the superblacks when I import, I can’t recover the shadow detail info.Even if I check “Preserve RGB” the superblack values are clipped.
  Is there a way around clipping superblack and superwhite values?

  edit: it would appear AE maps the imported color bars to RGB0-255, clipping values below zero and above 255. Media Composer imports the same color bars to RGB16-235, allowing access to the superblacks and whites.

  Bill Ravens replied 15 years ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Darby Edelen

  August 8, 2011 at 8:34 pm

  Are you working in a project that is set to a 32bpc color depth?

  Darby Edelen
• 

  Bill Ravens

  August 9, 2011 at 4:11 am

  no, this is a standard 8-bit.
• 

  Darby Edelen

  August 9, 2011 at 4:44 am

  [Bill Ravens] “no, this is a standard 8-bit.”

  Touché, I should’ve phrased that differently: You should try working in 32bpc.

  Darby Edelen
• 

  Bill Ravens

  August 9, 2011 at 12:12 pm

  AHAH!
  Many thanx, Darby! I’m not a wise-axx…just thickheaded, sometimes. That worked.

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