MAC / CS3 / DVCPRO-HD color shifting

[Gary Lieberman]

Mathew,

Thanks for the tip. Fascinating discovery! Unfortunately, we have a Blackmagic IO. Still, you’ve got me thinking that I might try moving some codecs Blackmagic installed and get them out of the way. I’ll start with your suggestion of checking root/library/Quicktime/ and see what I find.

Since issuing THE CHALLANGE a few month past, I’ve made one discovery, that is, I can’t even “round trip” a clip from a sequence using the Apple Pro Res HQ 720p codec. My work-a-round has been to export from FCP using “custom” and then choosing “Animation” as the codec.

Can’t wait to try your tip. Will get back to you with my results. I wonder why removing AJAUncompressed, a codec that was not in use, worked to solve the challenge.

Gary

[Kevin Hedin]

Francois, thank you for that information. I did just as you said, and it did fix part of the problem. AE Now displays the correct gamma on the computer screen and the “round tripping” works correctly, however, the output from my Kona is displaying an incorrect gamma while using video preview from within AE. I looked at the control panel for the Kona and played around with the “Codec Options”. I change the RGB-YUV conversion GAMMA from AUTO to REC 601 (2.20) which did solve the output to the monitor, but this is not intuitive. Working with HD Material, one would assume that the REC 709 is the proper Gamma but it did not work. Using Rec 601 is for SD but seems to display the gamma correctly for HD when using video preview in AE.

All seems fine for now, but I will report more when I test more.

Thanks again!

Kevin Hedin
Digital One, Inc.
Anchorage, AK

[Francois Driessen]

Glad it helped! Let me know what you find?
Maybe give the guys at AJA a call? They’ve always been over the top helpful to get things humming.

Francois

>- e y e f l a m e .tv –< https://eyeflame.tv

[Gary Lieberman]

Francois! You solved The Challange! I’ve been looking for a solution since March. Tried everything. Seems that the there once was an Aja IO installed and then it was replaced by a Blackmagick. However, the codecs were still in the folder. I removed the AJA files and viola! the my round trips from FCP to AE and back are perfect!

Thanks again.

Gary Lieberman
Editsuite.com

>Spoke to one of the very helpful guys at AJA and he suggested removing >a codec that installs with the A Io control panel. root/ library/ >Quicktime/ AJAUncompressed

>Francois

>- e y e f l a m e .tv –< >https://eyeflame.tv

[Jerry Witt]

Hey Gary,

Thanks for posting this. I have been trying to solve this issue on my Mac for a week or two. Removing the Ajs IO uncompressed Quicktime component from my library worked like magic.

Aja should put out an e-mail to all there users.

[Jeff Dugal]

Thanks, this solved the problem.
But, now we don’t have any output via our Kona 3 because of course this codec was use by the Kona 3 to output on a video monitor!
Am I the only one having this problem ?

Thanks,

[Mark Hatch]

Has anyone at AJA weighed-in on this issue? Seems it’s been narrowed down to a problem with their codecs/software/hardware.

[Lars Fuchs]

I too have been having this shift problem (with NTSC/DV, not DVCProHD) footage not roundtripping from FCP to AE and back.

Although I have never had an AJA device, I did find two Kona Codec files in the QuickTime Library. I installed them after receiving them from a transfer house along with some film footage. I removed these: KonaUncompressedCodec.component and KonaCodec.component. Restarted FCP and AE, did the rt test, and still clips look much darker when they come back to FCP.

I’m using FCP 6.0.3 on a 15″ MBP with 4GB Ram, and AE 8.0 CS3.

I tried rerendering my test clips as a sequence of still frames using PNG, recreated the movie file using Quicktime and that worked fine in FCP – no shift!

Then I re-rendered the same clip, this time as a QT file but using PNG as the codec. That worked fine too!

Now at least I have a work-around until a definitive comprehensive solution is found. Hurray.

[Lars Fuchs]

Okay. So I got ahead of myself. The PNG trick only worked for my test clip. It didn’t work when I went back to rerender the project I’m working on. More to follow…

[Jen Casson]

Not sure if this was already mentioned or if this issue has been resolved. But if you import the a clip from AE that uses the animation codec (or another codec that uses the RGB color space), then select your item properties (cmd+9), change the gamma to 2.2 (right click / option click to bring up menu).

That seems to have sorted the gamma issue for me thus far.

You can also change the user settings to import RGB video / stills to use a specific gamma setting instead of whatever the source uses.