24p DV to AE and back

[cshelton]

Someone please tell me if this is the proper method to get 24p DV into After Effects and back to the NLE as intact as possible.

1. I import 24p DV footage(AVI) into After Effects.

2. I "interpret footage" and have AE guess it's 3:2 pulldown. That takes the footage from 29.970 to an effective framerate of 23.976. It guesses correctly, this is the framerate I want and is the "native" framerate of full frames that were captured.

3. Then I set the comp's framerate to 23.976.

4. I create my post effects.

5. I render the movie as a "lossless" avi, meaning no compression. I don't really touch the render settings at, by default it's set to "lossless".

What I end up with is a 23.976 framerate, lossless, progressive scan AVI. It is no longer DV, and doesn't need 3:2 pulldown anymore as it's natively 24fps. I want to get this footage back into my NLE and have it play nicely with my unmodified 24p footage.

So far it looks ok, no flicker and dead on framecount vs the same unmodified footage, but AE does boost the contrast, even if I do nothing to the footage within AE, just import the file and export it right out, it still messes with the footage contrast.

Anyone have any ideas about this contrast issue, and am I using the right method to get footage from NLE to AE and back?

[Matt Grunau]

AE should NOT be changing the contrast of your footage. There are times when video codecs (most notably QuickTime's Sorenson codecs) will change/darken video, but as you are rendering uncompressed, that should not happen. If it is changing the contrast, it must be something that happens during the DV to 24p conversion. I cannot figure why you would be having that problem. It's interesting that even when you do nothing to the footage is still boosts the contrast. Is that after you resample to 24p? If you simply import it and then export back out at 29.97, does it still do it? Can you post a picture for us to look at?

When bringing it into the NLE, unless you are working in 24p settings, I think you will have some problems. If you will be mixing 29.97 and 24p, I know you will be having problems. Does the video have to be 24p, or can you achieve that look through other means like shutter speed and whatnot?

Lastly, is there any way you can change the contrast in AE to compensate for the boosts? Maybe lower is slightly so when the boost happens it looks closer to normal?

[cshelton]

I am working with 24p footage across the board, and I have both programs set up to handle 24p footage so everything appears to be working there.

I'll try out an unmodified 29.97 file to and from AE and see if it messes with it's contrast as well, thanks for the suggestion.

As far as uncontrasting the footage after it comes back in the NLE, well I had to just make a brightness/contrast preset called "uncontrast AE footage" and it works pretty well, although it's not exact.

There's got to be a way to do this correctly, but I've still not found it.

[pharmtoxzy]

I know what your talking about, use quicktime instead of avi, avi out of after effects seems to change the contrast so when you export from after effects use QT. Hope this helps.