AE to FCP luminosity shift

[David Eells]

There are others better qualified to answer your question, but until they do, I’ll give it a go. I believe this is because AE and FCP work in different color spaces. I’ve had this problem, and haven’t yet found a simple fix. I think your best bet is to make an adjustment in AE to correct for the problem; once you get on that works for you, apply it to all our effects shots.

Good luck.

[Annaël Beauchemin]

when you reconnect the media in AE, do you reconnect it directly from FCP’s capture scratch or is it exported (by you or automatic duck) prior to this? This maybe is where your problem lies.

Also make sure your render settings are set to YUV and not RGB inside of FCP.

[Chris Tomberlin]

Are you using OSX 10.4 and FCP 5.0? Does your system have drivers for any i/o card like a Decklink, Kona, iO or anything installed, or are you doing everything via firewire? There is a problem right now with Tiger FCP5 and AE where a gamma shift occurs in many situations when viewing or rendering out of AE. I don’t usually work with DV, but I can definitely make it happen with uncompressed and HD. The only complete fix I am aware of is to work in Panther with FCP 4.5.

Chris Tomberlin
OutPost Pictures

[Rich Rubasch]

I have shifts as well….At first I thought it was only a 10-bit problem, but I was working with the DVCPro 50 codec and when Iexport a clip from FCP as self contained (without any conversion) it is definately lighter in AE. The ONLY solution I found is to export the clip out of FCP to an Animation codec clip. It is perfect in AE and then I render back to the DVCPro 50 codec for FCP and it is a match.

Many people are blaming QT 7 (I still run QT 6.5, AE 6.5 OS 10.3.9, FCP 4.5) or their video card’s codec (but we are seeing this lightening effect when bringing DV clips to AE). I blame AE 6.5 but I’m not positive.

This is sort of what we get when we have an app like FCP and AE that can accept any kind of Quicktime…the problem is interpreting the proper color space. I have done some experimenting and with a simple levels effect but I cannot get an exact match to the source file. I can darken it but not make an exact digital match.

This is frustrating, but like I said, exporting a Quicktime from FCP (with conversion) to an Animation codec clip for AE work, then rendering out of AE to your FCP project codec seems to work for me, even if the interim clip is quite a bit larger than using either a reference clip or self contained with the FCP project codec.

You are not alone!

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc

[Toni Dove]

I’m running OSX 10.4.1, FCP 4.5 and AE 6.5
I rummaged through earlier archives and found a reference saying that the shift was a gamma shift from 1.8 to 2.2. (I haven’t tested this to see if it feels right yet)
I have the BlackMagic codec installed on my system (you can download this from the Decklink site – it’s 8 or 10 bit and the files are not as big as Animation files) – if I render to BlackMagic 10 bit I don’t get the shift. I’ve been emailing with the BlackMagic people who think this is a YUV/RGB problem.
I’m working on a feature that was shot on DV – my FCP 4.5 timeline is all DV. If I put BM 10 bit pieces in my timeline and render them DV for preview the BM people said I would lose a generation when I finally rendered everything out to BlackMagic – I don’t have a Decklink uncompressed card so I need to be able to work in DV realtime for editing and finishing. Right now I’m doing everything in DV – compensating with a gamma shift and I will eventually put the whole shebang into a BlackMagic sequence – replace all the AE pieces with BM ones and render the whole dea to BM 10 bitl with filters added (footage with blurs and color corrections will be upsampled by the BM 10 bit render).

I’m emailing the BlackMagic people to find out: if the render previews are discarded and you put everything into a new sequence shouldn’t that solve the problem of resolution loss? Then I could be putting in the Black Magic pieces from AE as I go instead of replacing them later.

So that’s where I am with the problem – it is possible to set your FCP project to render in RGB – FCP seems to recommend YUV for quality. It doesn’t seem possible to set AE to render in YUV. I haven’t tried this as I’m mid project.

Thanks for the replies/moral support
Toni Dove