Brightness change upon rendering in After Effects CS5, headed back to FCP

[Walter Soyka]

[Glenn Camhi] “But when I render out of AE, the footage gets noticeably brighter. I’ve tried rendering using the Animation (lossless) codec, a TIFF image sequence, and PNG. I’ve tried it with “Preserve RGB” on and off, and with the legacy gamma switch on and off. No dice.”

The issue is not with After Effects, but rather with Final Cut Pro — it’s misinterpreting the gamma on all these RGB formats.

Import the clip into FCP. Select the clip, then hit Cmd-9 to open Item Properties. Right-click the gamma value (normally set to Source) and set it to 2.2.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Glenn Camhi]

Thank you for the fast reply, Walter!

FWIW, I see the problem in QT as well, not just FCP. But that would make sense if they’re doing the same thing.

In Item Properties, there’s nothing listed next to Gamma, and right-clicking will not allow me to add anything for that particular setting.

I can however just add a gamma filter, and I find that a setting around 0.82 seems to match, at least on quick initial glance. I was just hoping not to have to alter the image any more. Alas, so it goes. The release of FCX is sending me to Avid next, so this is a temp issue.

Thanks again.

[Michael Szalapski]

Might I suggest you consider Premiere instead of Avid? The editing metaphor in Premiere is much closer to Final Cut. (A few years ago when I picked up Avid, I found Avid’s metaphor to be a bit outdated.) Also, with the Mercury Playback Engine and other improvements with CS5+, Premiere runs better with HD footage.

But – ignoring all of that – Premiere’s integration with After Effects makes it the best choice (in my opinion).

(And I think Adobe is still doing a great price cut for people coming over from Final Cut.)

Here’s an article you might find interesting from a long-time Final Cut Pro on moving to Premiere: [Link]
He talks about why he chose Premiere as well as the differences and similarities to Final Cut. Hopefully it is helpful for you.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.