[Zak Margolis]

Ah! Sounds like you could be having color space issues. Being no master of understanding the intricacies of AE color space, I’m afraid I won’t be of much help solving this one. You are in the right place however. There are literally dozens of threads here that talk about color profiles, linear workspace, and their relationship to different formats, etc.

If you decide to start a new thread, you’ll need to include a lot more information about your system and your set up.
What computer are you using? What kind of footage are you working with and where did it come from? And what is the intended final format of your project (is it for broadcast, youtube, etc)?

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
Good luck!
z.

z.

[Zak Margolis]

Hello Sergi,

Which version of AE are you using? Adobe logged the issue as a bug and has since corrected it. The version I was having issues with is 15.1.1. Adobe corrected the problem in version 15.1.2. And if you go back to AE 14, there isn’t an issue at all. I hope that solves it for you!

Good luck,
zak

z.

[Zak Margolis]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your interest in my problem. You guys are super helpful!
As it stands, I’m calling this “darkening” issue resolved.

I mentioned this in one of my long winded posts, but it turns out that this was not an EXR problem at all. I suspected EXRs at first. But actually, the “darkening” was happening regardless of the source. The “darkening” occurred on prores footage, photos, and even a gradient ramp generated from inside AE.

Anyways, there are plenty of work-arounds here including exporting to media encoder, rendering an image sequence, or rendering from AE 14. All of those methods yield clean results. The “darkening” I experienced only occurred for me when rendering a QT (any codec) from AE 15.1.1 and 15.1.2. And the issue has been logged as a bug with adobe.

Cheers,
z.

[Zak Margolis]

Thanks Steve,

I will most certainly be coming back to the cow for advice when it’s (finally) time to upgrade my rig.

z.

[Zak Margolis]

I completely understand why the community is upset. I definitely cut my teeth on some of those codecs so they hold a lot of nostalgia for me. As for “jumping ship,” I am with you on that too. I very much want to switch to PC, but thus far I have been too much of a coward.

But on to the important news. I talked with the folks over at Adobe and they are logging in my problem as a bug! I was suddenly filled with joy – as if I had discovered an uncharted island, or a new plant variety. In all of my shortsightedness, though, I forgot to ask the tech guy if they would please name this bug after me.

To answer your question, I’m an animator and compositing artist. I’m currently I’m working on a short personal film, which is how I ran into my “darkening” issue.

Thank you again for your help, Steve. I appreciate your time and attention to detail. Your suggestions definitely got my problem solving juices flowing.

Cheers,
z.

[Zak Margolis]

Well, somehow I still wasn’t sleeping well at night.
Here’s a couple critical pieces of info regarding this case:

AE is discontinuing ONLY some of the old QT 7 codecs. The Prores codecs are still being supported. That explains why I am still able to render QT movies with Prores out of AE 15.1.1. But then, the question remains: Why is AE crushing my blacks when I render using QT?

I just relinstalled AE 14 and loaded up the scene that AE 15 was “darkening.” AE 14 rendered it perfectly. The rendered quicktime movie MATCHED what I was seeing in the viewport of my project comp.

The obvious conclusion is that whatever voodoo Adobe did to QT that caused them to remove all of the old qt 7 codecs is also somehow how flavoring (crushing the blacks) of all my QT exports. But the fact that I scoured the web and couldn’t find anyone else complaining about this still makes me feel that the problem resides on my own system. I suppose it’s time to reach out to Adobe and see if they have any idea whats going on…

z.

[Zak Margolis]

Thank you Steve!

I think you’ve solved my problem! And actually, it’s the first thing you said.

I’m not sure why I still have access to quicktime in this version of (15.1.1) AE . If it’s magic, it’s DARK magic, as quicktime seems to be the culprit in this case. After receiving your message, I went to work and did a whole bunch of tests – the thing I should have done to begin with. I was incorrect is suspecting EXRs. The “darkening” was happening with everything – including a gradient ramp generated in AE. As long as I was rendering to quicktime, the results turned out dark. Finally I tried rendering a TIFF sequence and the images were perfect. Rendering anything other than quicktime yielded the expected images. Problem solved. Thank you!

By the way, I see now that I failed to adequately describe what I meant by “darker.” Here’s a better description. The renders were coming out with the darks slightly crushed. Shifting the gamma by .05 or so comes close to the bad effect. The light values were hardly being effected at all. Mostly, it’s that the blacks were being crushed.

I have definitely read most of the talk about color space on the forums here with all of the controversies and debates and would say I’m at about 80 percent or so comprehension of the basics. I’ll keep trying for sure! (Don’t think I’ll ever have the confidence to say the broadcast folks are wrong, but I’ll work on it…)

Thanks again for your help!
RIP qt
z.