Renders from AE look Dark in FCP

[Jesse Jacobs]

Had similar issue… gamma inconsistencies when moving from Final Cut Pro 6.0 AE CS3, and quicktime 7.4 using DVCpro HD codec?

Both Final Cut Pro and After Effects are causing gamma shifts that are darker than the source footage displayed by quicktime in the OS. They appear darker within the applications and when exported as new quicktime movies. Or possibly Quicktime is gamma shifting them lighter when playing?

Is there a way to sync the color profiles across these applications?

The platform is MAC OS 10.4.11 .The footage was shot on HVX200 DVCpro HD 960 x 720 (1.33) PAR Original format .mxf converted to quicktime in FCP. Edit was FCP. Effects in AE.

Default Match Legacy Vs. Color Management?
Haven’t had much response from DVXuser yet. So I did some more digging on the internets. So far I’ve discovered two solutions. 1) Use match legacy 2) Use color management. The question is which is better? I don’t fully understand embedding a gamma tag in quicktime. How do these color space options effect export of .tga sequences? The effects house requires .tga sequences. Does anyone have any advice?

Below are links to tech notes with related passages.

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Afte…3BB88B886.html

The gamma adjustments performed by After Effects CS3 differ from the gamma adjustments performed by these QuickTime codecs. Gamma adjustments performed by After Effects CS3 on Windows are the same as gamma adjustments performed by After Effects CS3 on Mac OS. Also, by not using QuickTime codecs, After Effects preserves over-range values in 32-bpc projects.

1) MATCH LEGACY
Select Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments in the Project Settings dialog box to accomplish any of the following:
Avoid color shifts when working with projects created in After Effects 7.0 or earlier
Match the colors in a project created in After Effects 7.0 or earlier
Ensure that colors in Composition panel match colors in QuickTime player
The Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments option is selected by default for projects created in After Effects 7.0 or earlier. You should create new projects without this option selected.

2) Color management
https://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view…nalId=kb402801

2) Enable color management in After Effects and use a color managed workflow.

Color management ensures that color and tones in your movies remains consistent and predictable between applications and devices. Color management will benefit any video workflow, and it can specifically improve the color and tone of your video if you use a YUV codec (such as a DV or v210 codec) and you use the QuickTime movie exported from After Effects in other video editing applications (such as Apple Final Cut Pro).

Additional info:

When QuickTime Player displays a movie file, it adjusts the gamma in order to make the image look correct. QuickTime Player bases the amount of gamma adjustment on the codec in use (if the file is not tagged with a specific gamma value). However, the gamma adjustments that QuickTime Player makes are not consistent between Mac OS and Windows, meaning that the same file may not look the same in QuickTime Player on Mac OS and Windows.

Note: On Windows, the result may be dependent on whether QuickTime Player is set to display through DirectX or Safe Mode (GDI). Refer to the documentation for QuickTime for more information about QuickTime settings.

In order to provide consistency between platforms, After Effects CS3 adds a metadata tag to exported QuickTime movie files that specifies what gamma adjustment to use. When this tag is present, QuickTime Player uses that value instead of what it normally would use for that codec, and the resulting adjustment is consistent between Mac OS and Windows.

Does anyone have any advice on the best way to clone media? As quicktime targa etc.

[Geoff Thomson]

Dude – you fricken ROCK! Your little discovery just saved me throwing my perfectly decent G5 out the window ay…
I’m out of breath from bouncing round the department – i’m that FRICKEN happy!
Thanks a heap mate.
Thommo

[Fred Beahm]

no problem man.
I know how you felt, trust me.
Was driving me crazy.
I think its something to do with CS3 and the new quicktime maybe.

Anyways, good luck!
FrEditor