Losing luma information when dynamic linking between Pr CC and Ae

[Walter Soyka]

[Daniel Peterson] “I have a finalised project that I’m color correcting in PrCC… some clips are dynamically linked to Ae for graphics and multiple overlays… all good, BUT I just noticed that the clips I’ve sent to Ae have had the luminance clipped… see screenshots… anyway to solve this loss of information?”

In Ae, make sure you are working at 32bpc. 8bpc and 16bpc will cause the clipping you are seeing. See Color depth and high dynamic range color [link] for more.

[Daniel Peterson] “The other problem I just discovered… how to get the same color correction applied to both the Premiere Pro clips and the After Effects clips (other than exporting out the premier clips, kinda defeats the purpose of linking)… any suggestions? Thanks.”

I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking here. Don’t you want all the color correction to be in the same place (i.e., either Ae or Pr)?

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
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[Daniel Peterson]

Ah thanks Walter… I love simple solutions, don’t know why I didn’t try that in the first place!

[Walter Soyka] “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking here. Don’t you want all the color correction to be in the same place (i.e., either Ae or Pr)?”

I didn’t explain it very clearly… I am doing all the correction in Pr but within the sequence parts of clips are dynamic linked into After Effects for some VFX overlays… there is multiple blend modes applied to the layers above the clip in Ae, so that part of the clip must stay within Ae for the effect to work… What I was trying to work out is how to perfectly match the colour correction of the clip in both Pr and Ae… I thought perhaps there was an interchangeable colour correction preset or effect that I could apply to clips in both Pr and Ae… Doesn’t matter now though, I decided to apply all the colour correction in Pr even though it changes the vfx overlay colours slightly. Sorry if that is still confusing.

Thanks again for your help!

Filmmaker | Motion Graphic Artist
http://www.saltmedia.net

http://www.TheDigitalSlice.com (beta)
What’s your weapon of choice… FCP7, FCPX, Premiere, Avid, Smoke, Edius, Vegas? Jump over and help gather some data.

[Chris Wright]

you can also try precomping the ae project, turn off color management then apply color profile converter and set the preset to the same as color profile as your monitor’s native profile. Now when you use premiere, it will have perfect color fidelity.

[Walter Soyka]

[Chris Wright] “you can also try precomping the ae project, turn off color management then apply color profile converter and set the preset to the same as color profile as your monitor’s native profile. Now when you use premiere, it will have perfect color fidelity.”

It sounds like you’re trying to make Ae (which can be color-managed) match Premiere (which cannot be color managed) on your monitor. I wouldn’t say this is the same as “perfect color fidelity,” and this could actually muck up perfectly good color if you’re not careful to manually manage color for your source footage.

I think Daniel is looking for color correction effects that translate from Premiere to Ae — as in, a way to get the Fast Color Corrector (for example) as an effect on linked clips inside of Ae. Sadly it does not work this way now, but that would be a great feature request.

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

[Daniel Peterson]

That’s correct, I’m looking for color correction effects that translate from Premiere to Ae… to match the exact colour correction between applications…

Walter, changing the project to 32bpc didn’t fix it, do you have to create the project in 32bpc to begin with?

Filmmaker | Motion Graphic Artist
http://www.saltmedia.net

http://www.TheDigitalSlice.com (beta)
What’s your weapon of choice… FCP7, FCPX, Premiere, Avid, Smoke, Edius, Vegas? Jump over and help gather some data.

[Daniel Peterson]

Ok, I was wrong, I just worked out that changing Ae to 32bpc did actually stop the intial clipping! BUT strangely, when I apply a colour correction effect (e.g. RGB curves) to the linked Ae clip in Pr… it immediately clips the luma back down to 1.0 beofre I’ve touched the actual parameters?? Ah so close…

Filmmaker | Motion Graphic Artist
http://www.saltmedia.net

http://www.TheDigitalSlice.com (beta)
What’s your weapon of choice… FCP7, FCPX, Premiere, Avid, Smoke, Edius, Vegas? Jump over and help gather some data.

[Walter Soyka]

[Daniel Peterson] “Ok, I was wrong, I just worked out that changing Ae to 32bpc did actually stop the intial clipping!”

Yup — just make sure you don’t apply any 8-bit or 16-bit effects in Ae, otherwise you will get clipping.

If you must use lower bit-depth effects, you can sandwich them in between two Levels adjustments to preserve highlights: the first should set the input white to 1.2 and leave all else on defaults (compressing the range, bringing overbrights under 100%), the second should set the output white to 1.2 and leave all else on defaults (expanding the range, bringing overbrights back up where they started).

[Daniel Peterson] ” BUT strangely, when I apply a colour correction effect (e.g. RGB curves) to the linked Ae clip in Pr… it immediately clips the luma back down to 1.0 beofre I’ve touched the actual parameters?? Ah so close…”

Sounds like you are on Premiere Pro CC 7.0.0. You should update to 7.0.1, which includes a bug fix for this, several other important bug fixes, and a few new features.

https://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/07/ppro-cc-july-2013-update.html

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