[Faith Granger]

About the error messages:

ERROR MESSAGE = “the following plug ins have failed to load: mediaCore\cineform\CFHD_AVI_importer.prm (and also it lists) mediaCore\cineform\CFHD_MOV_importer.prm”

I resolve this issue after intensively googling. Allas, although the error message is now gone, my contrast issue IS NOT. So that error message had nothing to do with it.

Sigh.

So kids, are you all giving up on me now????

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

OK, Walter, I imported the original clip in AE and rendered it out as a JPG image sequence (I believe that is what You meant when you said to render it as a JPG?).

YES I still see the same contrast shift.

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

Also:
I did a new experiment: I opened the same original clip in Premiere, and it displayed the clip differently than AE did. The Premiere preview showed less contrast than AE, but it did show more contrast than Vegas. It somewhat split the difference, sort of. Since Premiere and AE are both adobe products, we can rule out vegas as being the sole culprit of the discrepancy of what i am seeing on my timeline in vegas, between the original clip and rendered AE version. Obviously, not even Premiere agrees with AE … (And yes, I am viewing everything on the same PC and same monitor with same settings.)

Not sure any of above helps, but I thought it was worth mentioning 😉

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

2 weeks into this frame rate ordeal and I am still STUCK. Sigh… Walter I am going to do your suggested jpg test in a minute and let you know outcome, but I wanted to post this in the meantime, it might be important:

IMPORTANT NOTE: I just realized that AE is giving me an error message when i first fire it up, and I should mention it here because I don’t know what it means, and could it affect the way the clips are imported (thus creating more contrast).

ERROR MESSAGE = “the following plug ins have failed to load: mediaCore\cineform\CFHD_AVI_importer.prm (and also it lists) mediaCore\cineform\CFHD_MOV_importer.prm”

I have consistently pressed OK and ignored it, and have been able to drag both avi or mov clips into my project without apparent problems, but now I am wondering whether I should not ignore it LOL. Could it be causing the contrast problem?

It is asking me to reinstall the plugins, how do I do that? Reinstall the entire CS5.5 Production Suite? Or??

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

Huhhhhhh… was that English??? LOLOL….

I just posted some new info that may be helpful, see my previous post I did some new tests… 🙂

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

walter, I am partially confused by your reply. You want me to re-render the clips in vegas using a different render method?

I checked the Vegas QUICKTIME “uncompressed” settings and under “video format” it is set to “None”, so it seems that when I did my previous test i already had a “none” setting? Am I correct? Please confirm.

I have also conducted new tests that revealed something new (and hopefully helpful):

I took the .jpg screengrab of original clip, (screengrab was captured with vegas and is exactly what vegas “sees”), imported it into Photoshop…Photoshop saw my .jpg screengrab exactly the same as vegas. And rendered it IDENTICAL to the vegas render, identical contrast as my original video clip. Yes I did mean to type “Photoshop”, that was phase ONE of test, Please read on….

So now I took it one step further. I imported the same Vegas generated screengrab of original clip into AE and rendered it out as a 5 second clip, using my identical render settings (quicktime jpg2000) used to initilly test the problem. The resulting clip is identical to the vegas screengrab and identical also to the original clip.

So AE and photoshop both are able to interpret the color of a still image the same way Vegas does, but AE is not able to do the same with video clips.

maybe this new info helps?

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

Ok I just did a test, to find out the answer to your last question. I rendered the clip from vegas timeline to both avi and quicktime uncompressed, and the rendered clips are virtually identical to the original.

THE PROBLEM ONLY HAPPENS WHEN USING AE.

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

My last test: you can see the two clips in one frame, I put the AE one on top of the original one, allowing some of the original clip to be seen on the sides. You can clearly see the sky color and brightness difference, etc…

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

Well currently, for the purpose of testing the problem, the workflow is incredibly simple lOL:

I drag a avi or a .MTS (MPG-2) clip into AE, with color management OFF then send it to the render queue.

I then render it as lossless quicktime (but have tried many other render formats – see my first post) or as Quicktime with video codec JPG 2000 at 95% quality.

SO BASICALLY i AM NOT DOING ANYTHING TO THE CLIP EXCEPT RENDERING IT BACK OUT.

I then bring both the original clip and the AE rendered version into my NLE on seperate tracks but loned up so they start at the same place. And compare frame by frame by muting and unmuting top track.

And I can SEE the difference, loud and clear.

The screengrabs posted came from my NLE timeline.

FAITH GRANGER
Multi Award winning filmmaker
—————————–
http://www.deuceofspadesmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/deuceofspades

[Faith Granger]

Imported and rendered back out one of the avi clips, with color management OFF, and SAME PROBLEM. So we can rule out that the clip native formats are to blame, since both avi and MPG-2 are doing the same thing.