Aspect HD 5.2 and AE CS3 colour profiles

[Steven White]

Hello,

I'm currently doing some 32-bit linear compositing in Adobe After Effects CS3, using the built-in colour profiles, and really enjoying the feature. However, I have had some trouble with maintaining colour consistency to and from Premiere Pro CS3.

What I would like to know is which colour profile I should be using for Cineform workflows, and ultimately, compressing to Quicktime H.264, WM9, and probably divX for Stage6 - maybe even HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

When I use HDTV (Rec. 709), I end up with the videos in Premiere Pro and Media Player Classic playing back much darker than what was configured in AE - but I thought this was the YUV space HDV was supposed to use.

I recently discovered that switching to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 led for Premiere Pro and MPC rendering to seem more consistent with what was in AE, but what I would like to ensure that I won't have to re-render to something else down the line.

Any suggestions?

-Steve

[Mike McCarthy]

Your video card may be effecting this. Nvidia cards play back slightly differently in YUV mode with Cineform. Do you see a color shift in Premiere between playing and pausing?

[Steven White]

I believe the video card issue was addressed in the latest build, but I am familiar with it.

This has to do with what gamma curve AE is using to supply the Cineform codec when rendering to *.avi, and what gamma curve is being assumed when the *.avi is being decoded and put on the screen.

Basically I'm reporting that what I see in AE while rendering, and what I see on playback are very different when compositing in YUV.709. If I use sRGB IEC61966-2.1, then when I playback the Cineform files, they look more or less the same as they do in AE.

Incidentally, I'm running Vista 32-bit, PPro CS3, AE CS3. Playback in BOTH PPro CS3 and Media Player Classic is messed up in YUV.709 encodes, but okay in sRGB.

Everything is being viewed on the same computer monitor.

-Steve

[David Newman]

They may be helpful, or not.

32-bit AVI decodes in CS3 are linear form all CineForm files. If the source was 709 the reverse gamma is applied, if the source is SI-2K then that camera's gamma is reversed. The color profiles then applied a display gamma. I don't use the color profiles yet myself, preferring to use adjustment layers to restore linear for monitor previous.