• Adobe After Effects

  DVCProHD in AE CS3

  Posted by Matt Larson on June 4, 2007 at 4:14 pm

  I just started playing around with CS3 on a new Mac Pro and I’m running in to the same color management issues with DVCProHD footage that I saw in AE 7. Does anyone have any advice on setting up the color management profile or the way AE interperts DVCProHD footage?

  If I take the original DVCProHD clip into Quicktime and export it to “Uncompressed 8-bit” and bring that new Uncompressed clip into AE I have no problems. In fact in that situation, Quicktime seems to embed the proper profile directly into the clip (HD 709 YCrCb) which is not available as a profile in CS3 from what I can tell.

  This problem makes DVCProHD unusable in After Effects since the gamma offset is so pronounced. Hopefully I’m missing something?

  I’m also hopeful that Apple’s new ProRes codec does not have these same problems. Has anyone had a chance to use it in After Effects yet?

  Looks like it’s still Uncompressed 8bit for the time being….

  Adolfo Rozenfeld replied 18 years, 11 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Brendan Coots

  June 4, 2007 at 6:15 pm

  As I’m sure you know DVCPro HD has a lot of known issues in this area, all of which seem to be tied to the difference in gamma handling between FCP, Quicktime and other apps. FCP and Quicktime both seem to apply different gamma settings for on-screen playback, that aren’t present in final output to tape etc. but how confusing is that?!? Not to mention Quicktime stripping superwhite values, it’s a real mess.

  The reason your conversion fixes these issues is that it strips out the existing gamma tag in the .mov header.

  I am no expert on this subject by any stretch, but the workflow you are using seems to be a good bet in avoiding these issues, until a real fix is issued. Aside from that, I’ve heard that Quicktime TIFF doesn’t suffer from these issues?
• 

  Adolfo Rozenfeld

  June 4, 2007 at 7:27 pm

  It’s not a color management issue. The REC709 input profile is the right one. The problem is the way FCP handles gamma for some codecs/formats.
  Try applying a gamma correction of 0.824 in AE (for example, in an adjustment layer). Credit to Chris Meyer for the number.

  Adolfo Rozenfeld
  Buenos Aires – Argentina
  ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

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