T2i color space for T2i/550D in After Effects

J

Johannes

New member
Hi,
Does anyone know how to deal with color space for 550D material in After Effects (CS4)? I have heard that only the 64 bits version (CS5) supports this. Is that so?
Thankful for any advice.
 
I believe you're a bit misinformed. The color space of your footage is 4:2:0 and that has no effect on what software you're going to use. Are you sure you mean color space? Could you be thinking of something else?

Perhaps you mean the codec. The h264 codec, which the 550D uses, is not very editor friendly. I believe Premiere CS5 can edit it natively. But I would still recommend converting your footage to something like ProRes to edit, and if you plan on doing any grading or VFX work.
 
Hi,
thanks, you are right. It´s the codec that is handled natively by CS5.
But still I wonder what workflow I should use to get the most out of the 550D material, colorwise, etc? Converting to prores is not an option, I guess, since I use PC.
Plus what color space setting should I use in AE?
Thanks.
 
Johannes said:
Hi,
thanks, you are right. It´s the codec that is handled natively by CS5.
But still I wonder what workflow I should use to get the most out of the 550D material, colorwise, etc? Converting to prores is not an option, I guess, since I use PC.
Plus what color space setting should I use in AE?
Thanks.
Click to expand...

I think the best work flow for PC would be using Neoscene cineform as it encodes your YUV 4:2:0 8bit files into RGB 4:2:2 10bit files (I think it's RGB) and since most editing programs encodes your footage on the fly internally to RGB for most of their effects and stuff it'd probably be better to do it yourself. Supposedly the 4:2:2 10bit RGB files are way better at color grading and green screening.

I don't know any of this for sure, it's just what I've read btw. Cineform is 100$.

I think the 2nd best method, which is free is to convert the files to DNxHD codec through MPEG streamclip, this converts the files to RGB 10bit 4:2:0. It's easier to edit with but I'm not sure if it is any better at color grading. DNxHD can only encode 1080p 24P files though, not 30P ones.

Both those codecs also are lossy, but supposedly you can't notice degradation of image quality even after rendering 10 times (for cineform atleast, not sure about DNxHD)

FWIW I want to get cineform for my PC workflow, but don't want to spend the money =|

I don't know about color space in after effects, I usually leave the " working space" to none, and use 8BPC or if I want to use glow and effects 32bpc
 
the matrox hd codecs are not bad either and free.
in AE, 8bpc isnot the best idea for grading. 16 would be better to start playing with color correction tools.
also add a slight layer of noise/grain before exporting to minimise banding : helps a lot on skies and smooth gradients.
 
I would like to know this also. The whole point of doing what Johannes wants to do is to allow you to perform any operations in a linear color space. Doing this along with using 32-bit per channel make a huge difference in how color corrections and other effects work since the pixel math now works properly. Even if you are working with software that doesn't have a color management system like AE, knowing what color space the video files are in will still be beneficial since you will know what kind of reverse gamma curve to apply to your footage to most accurately linearize it.
 
The color space of the native files coming off the camera is Y Cb Cr
which is Luma, Channel Blue, Channel Red
The green channel is then calculated by the mathematical difference from the other two color channels

To my knowledge, After Effects works only in the RGB color space (with color profiles) so if a native file is read off a disk into the computers memory
it is converted to RGB
 
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