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Export to AE changes brightness
Hi,
I’m doing what I thought would be a standard thing: exporting an unprocessed/uneffected clip from my FCP 4.5 timeline to a new file so I can work on it After effects and bring it back in.
My footage is captured straight from my DVX100 camera.Whan I export, using ‘Current Settings’ the new file comes back in a good 15% ‘lighter’ than the original
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6 Replies
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Well when you export from AE back to FCP, there will be a shift due to YUV vs RGB color spaces. but what’s not sounding right is the “current settings” export from FCP – they should be exactly the same. MIght try a non self contained QT movie export for import into AE. That way AE is really referencing the original media files so there really can’t be a shift in that step anyway.
Jerry
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Thank you for your speedy reply, Jerry.
I’ve now done just that
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I’d think that you change the render settings in FCP to RGB, or simply color correct the result from AE a bit in FCP… The shift is well known though, and I don’t think you are experiecing a bug… But I also recommmend you post this in the After Effects forum where there are a lot of folks encountering this, and no doubt have the best workflow for AE and FCP… It still concerns me a bit you had the luma shift in a self contained QT movie from FCP though. This isn’t supposed to happen, and I’ve never seen this behavior, so don’t know if theres a hint of something corrupted in QT or FCP or something. Keep us informed here of your answers so that this thread becomes even more useful.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
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Make sure your sequence settings aren’t set to super-white. That will make the problem worse. For example if you create white elements in FCP, those white elements will be mapped to 110 ire in FCP, but then clipped when rendered in RGB space in AE. Or something like that. If the stuff coming back from AE it getting it’s brightness clipped, then that’s probably your problem.
In the past we had to map the luma values up to RGB levels when we used stuff in AE. Then apple changed the DV codec and all seems well. But if you have extra bright images from your camera, they could be getting mapped up and off the chart, and getting clipped.
So best to just make sure all your levels are safe in FCP before exporting.
AE renders things very differently. To preserve quality, it takes every frame of every element and first converts it to an uncompressed RGB image. Then composites it, then renders the frame into your chosen codec.
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The White or Super-White settings only effect images imported into FCP – nothing else. They don’t effect the rendering of any video on the timeline.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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I’ve had this problem before too. The solution is to render the AE project as “Lossless” and just render it to DV in Final Cut. It has something to do with the fact that Apple’s DV codec automatically adds a gamma boost to footage so that it will look “correct” on computer monitors. It’s a feature that Apple added in the beginning of FCP since most people who used it were not professionals and wouldn’t have a broadcast monitor. I don’t think that QuickTime 7 fixed this either.
This is an excerpt from http://www.adamwilt.com, very interesting.
“Unlike every other DV codec I’ve seen, the Apple codec gamma-corrects imagery to compensate for the difference between a video display’s 2.2 gamma and the Mac’s standard 1.8 display gamma. Apple does it so that what you see in on the Mac’s screen translates well to video and vice versa (unless, like me, you’re already running your Mac at 2.2 display gamma for working in Photoshop and Illustrator, and with all the other video codecs available!).
It makes side-by-side comparison between Apple DV exports and other DV exports very difficult unless you
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