[Chris Wright]

99% of premiere is force interpreted into rec. 709 including dynamic link and mercury transmit. The other 1% is HDR rec. 2020 via meta tags in jpe2000, exr, and special h.264.

after effects supports a vast array of color management, so it’s not limited like premiere. the thing is, its not automatic like quicktime player or FCPX which have….

Some old gamma info.
1. calibrate your monitor to one or the other.system preferences>Displays) to 1.8
2. use gamma tags legacy and in quicktime properties enable FCP legacy
3. Final Cut Pro/System Settings/Playback Control. Change Gamma Correction from Accurate to Approximate
4. fcp individual clips – Editing tab, “Imported Still / RGB Video Gamma”. choose source 1.80, 2.20
5. for playback, QuickTime preference, General tab: “Enable Final Cut Studio colour compatibility”
6. in AE, Choose File > Project Settings. “Legacy Quicktime Gamma” preference via render queue, not export
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/kb/quicktime-movies-too-dark-light.ht...
7. AE’s utility profile converter, set input as rec. 709 16-235, output as 0-255 rec. 709 or visa versa if wrong direction.

[Chris Wright]

i second primatte.

I also made an AE 32bpc keyer template that features:
despill/deartifact/lightwrap/inner/outer blur with custom edge transparency. I think it has some cool parts and its very customizable.
https://f1.creativecow.net/7088/7088

[Chris Wright]

this might work.
64 cube iridas lut for burning in darker 16-235 from 0-255. export from media encoder
https://f1.creativecow.net/10598/fixmyyoutube

or you could try AE’s built in utility color profile converter to get video range from full range video.
input hd 709 16-235
output hd 709

[Chris Wright]

I’m guessing the specific h.264 profile is incompatible with that resolution.
720 level is either 2.2, 3, 3.1, 3.2, 4, 4.1, 4.2.

if worse comes to worse, simply render out a nice dnxhd/hd or prores and then use handbrake to get final 720p.

[Chris Wright]

“color is not right even before exporting”
are you editing in avid and then exporting a full render or XML? how can the color be wrong in avid if you’re color correcting in avid?
What is your workflow?

[Chris Wright]

adobe media encoder has configure settings for dnxhd for RGB or video levels. that is most likely your issue. 0-255 vs 16-235.

[Chris Wright]

are you saying that handbrake fails re-encoding? even professional users have to transcode for proxies, digital intermediates, redcine-x etc. The world out there isn’t kind to slow computers.

[Chris Wright]

did you resize the PNG’s to the sequence size prior to importing. if you don’t, it could hit a memory crash.
some people have also reported setting paging file to 100GB prevents memory crash. or premiere’s preferences from performance to memory.

[Chris Wright]

i believe there was an update for that. you can install concurrent premiere versions and test with the latest 2017.1 without uninstalling 2014.2 Just make sure you disable uninstall older versions in the creative cloud app.

[Chris Wright]

where’s the post so that we can see what posts didn’t work? did you try disabling cuda renderer and deleting media cache? can you turn on help-enable logging crash. view the log report.

you can render out an image sequence and then see exactly which frame crashes to isolate the issue.
my first guess is it is a transition, nest, lut as those are very, very buggy.
did you compare the render settings? import sequences native disabled? don’t render previews?