Rec 709 issues with AE / Premiere / REsolve

[Chris Wright]

this is better than adobe’s help files.^

[Andrew Somers]

“We’ve recently started compositing some final assemblies in rec709 as opposed to the default no-color space in AE, and with the no color space, the exports were the same (with expected player differences) between all apps. Once we switched to 709, it seems to be quite a bit brighter in gamma and offset- but the strange thing is that when that file is pulled back into AE it reads it as composited in the full 709 space”

Something I discovered is that not all Rec709 profiles are created the same – some have a technically wrong gamma. This includes Rec709 profiles that ship with Adobe products.

The profile named “HDTV (Rec709)” does not have the correct gamma curve – in fact “HDTV (Rec709)” seems indistinguishable from the sRGB profile!!!

Unfortunately there are many Rec709 profiles out there, with different gamma curves.

The profile named Rec709-elle-V4-Rec709.icc seems to be one of the few correct ones out there. It can be downloaded here:

https://github.com/ellelstone/elles_icc_profiles/blob/master/profiles/Rec709-elle-V4-rec709.icc

This profile seems to have both the correct linearization at levels lower than 0.018, and the correct gamma offset that results (the offset results in a perceptual gamma that varies about 1.9 to 2.0 depending on level).