Black levels crushed using DNxHD codec w AE upgrade?

[Piers Helm]

Hi Marcin,
Thanks for the Media Encoder solution, it works fine.

My previous solution in AE was for export. I placed an adjustment layer at the top of my comp with colour correction / Levels with Gamma brought up to around 1.5. This would compensate for the crushing that would happen with the DNx export.
However, I wasnt happy that this was a particularly good solution as I was adjusting by eye. Using Media Encoder seems much better.

After all this though my client now says he wants Prores for delivery.

[Marcin Staszewski]

Same here, they asked for ProRes 🙂
However, I’m on Windows, so that’s a no-go for me. What I dont get is Jenny&Chris’ solution, I guess we will have to wait until they read this…

[Jenny Conway]

Hi Marcin & Piers,
Sorry for the delay. I had the Avid export as a SAS (same as source). Then I put an Adjustment layer at the top of my comp and applied Color Profile Converter. For the Input Profile, choose HDTV (Rec. 709) and for the Output Profile, choose HDTV (Rec 709) 16-235. This will make it look slightly grayer in AE but when Avid imports it, the blacks are fine and it matched perfectly with footage in the Avid, without color shifting. Hope that helps? I plan to try a test w Media Encoder to see if it’s needed there but haven’t done it yet. Hope that helps.
Jenny