colour management dynamic link

[Walter Soyka]

[peter crawford] “Questions” If im starting from premiere then dynamically link to AE, does AE recognize my footage as REC 709 or do I have to manually go into color management and set it?”

Dynamic link in CS6 is unmanaged.

If you enable color management in your Ae project, you’d have to be sure to use interpret footage to assign the correct color profile to your dynamically-linked media.

[peter crawford] “I understand if you export from AE that you should set the output profile the same as your working space”

While this is common, it’s not universally true. What space you work in and what space you output in need not be the same.

[peter crawford] “but what happens with my dynamically linked clip back in premiere? Will It come back as 709 or will it be some weird RGB values?”

Premiere is not color-managed. If you are sending 709 to Ae and then back to Premiere, you can just leave color management in Ae off entirely.

You only need to use color management in Ae if:

1) You are combining multiple sources with different profile (and actually care about the “correctness” of the results)

2) You wish to use display color management with a profile computer monitor for accurate color display

3) Your output profile is different from the input profile of your footage.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Peter Crawford]

Thanks walter,

Oh O.k so no real need to bother with colour management in my circumstances.

I was under the impression that AE Works in RGB values so when rountripping this might cause some discrepencies in color values compared to my (YUV?) values in premiere.

The reason ive been looking into this is beacause im getting varied results when my exported work from premiere is viewded on different systems.

Everything looks good on my grading monitor on my macpro, but really dark and oversaturated on my and others imacs and really washed out on peoples p.cs..

Its a horrible thought that people might be watching my work thats looks under/over exposed and not the way I intended it.

FYI am usually working in prores and transcoding via ext application to h.64.
Maybe im just experiencing the notorius prores gamma shift?

On that note, when should I have gamma correction on ‘none’ as opposed to ‘auto’ on setup and export?

Thanks again

Peter

paxpincer

[Walter Soyka]

[peter crawford] “I was under the impression that AE Works in RGB values so when rountripping this might cause some discrepencies in color values compared to my (YUV?) values in premiere.”

Ae does work in RGB. And Premiere Pro can work in YUV (but doesn’t always, and sometimes works in RGB).

Converting between RGB and YUV does not inherently produce any color or gamma shifts. Converting YUV to RGB may result in blacks and whites being clipped if you are not working in floating point (32bpc) RGB.

[peter crawford] “Everything looks good on my grading monitor on my macpro, but really dark and oversaturated on my and others imacs and really washed out on peoples p.cs..”

Unmanaged applications and displays only display correct color by luck.

[peter crawford] “FYI am usually working in prores and transcoding via ext application to h.64.”

Can you describe your process and the viewing conditions where you’re seeing discrepancies?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Peter Crawford]

Thanks walter

So editing on premiere on a mac pro ouput to a grading monitor set to rec709 via black magic intensity pro.
I grade using the waveform monitor on my broadcast monitor.

I usually transcode to prores via streamclip or compressor (on my imac)
Transcode final to H.264 for web delivery.

Everything looks great on my grading monitor, and fine on playback on my main editing monitor(not calibrated)

If played back on my 2007 imac (snow leopard) with (vlc, quicktime, streamclip) it looks overly contrasty and dark whether set at gamma at 2.2 or 1.8.

The same issue on my colleagues later model imac via vimeo

If viewed on others p.c’s via vimeo it looks very light and washed out with little contrast.

I know that theoretically I should trust my grading monitor but if most people are viewing my work on web with varying results, this is a concern.

Thanks
Peter

paxpincer