Gamma consistency in FCP,AE, & QT with DVCpro HD codec

J

jesse

Member
(My previous post was deleted for some reason, this is a resubmission).

Has anyone encountered gamma inconsistencies when moving from Final Cut Pro 6.0 AE CS3, and quicktime 7.4 using DVCpro HD codec?

Both Final Cut Pro and After Effects are causing gamma shifts that are darker than the source footage displayed by quicktime in the OS. They appear darker within the applications and when exported as new quicktime movies. Or possibly Quicktime is gamma shifting them lighter when playing?

Is there a way to sync the color profiles across these applications?

The platform is MAC OS 10.4.11 .The footage was shot on HVX200 DVCpro HD 960 x 720 (1.33) PAR Original format .mxf converted to quicktime in FCP. Edit was FCP. Effects in AE.

The gamma shift became obvious when footage from After Effects was exported. It was darker than the FCP render. After examination the FCP render seemed darker than the Quicktime source footage viewed within the QT player. For AE the best results were achieved when “Match Legacy After Effects Quicktime gamma adjustments” was selected. This matched the gamma to the FCP gamma, at least visually, comparing application windows side by side.

[After Effects CS3 has a lot of input/output parameters for color management. This PDF covers a lot: http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/af...color_mgmt.pdf ]

FCP and After effects were displaying the footage darker in the application than when viewing the source footage in quicktime. The Match Legacy setting in AE made the footage consistent with FCP. When viewing source footage in FCP, the re-exported AE non-compressed footage they appeared identical. Tests were done with quickimes, targa & .psd sequences, and the results between AE & FCP seem the same. But both seem darker than quicktime.

How do you maintain the color management and gamma consistency in all three programs? Are FCP and AE darkening everything? Is quicktime displaying them brighter? Where are the color profiles embedded? What happens when you switch between MAC and Windows OS?

Targa sequences (or other recommended format?) need to be exported from AE for final composite at a vfx house working on Windows PC's. It seems there may be no way for the color to be viewed consistently between apps. But is there at least a way to fix the color space in the media? If you re-export the source video into targa's what is that doing to the color space?

Does anyone have any advice?
 
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Match Legacy Vs. Color Management?

Match Legacy Vs. Color Management?

Haven’t had much response from DVXuser yet. So I did some more digging on the internets. So far I’ve discovered two solutions. 1) Use match legacy 2) Use color management. The question is which is better? I don’t fully understand embedding a gamma tag in quicktime. How do these color space options effect export of .tga sequences? The effects house requires .tga sequences. Does anyone have any advice?

Below are links to tech notes with related passages.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Aft...t=WS44E9CED2-117D-4c19-879E-D553BB88B886.html

The gamma adjustments performed by After Effects CS3 differ from the gamma adjustments performed by these QuickTime codecs. Gamma adjustments performed by After Effects CS3 on Windows are the same as gamma adjustments performed by After Effects CS3 on Mac OS. Also, by not using QuickTime codecs, After Effects preserves over-range values in 32-bpc projects.

1) MATCH LEGACY
Select Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments in the Project Settings dialog box to accomplish any of the following:
Avoid color shifts when working with projects created in After Effects 7.0 or earlier
Match the colors in a project created in After Effects 7.0 or earlier
Ensure that colors in Composition panel match colors in QuickTime player
The Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments option is selected by default for projects created in After Effects 7.0 or earlier. You should create new projects without this option selected.


2) Color management
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402801


2) Enable color management in After Effects and use a color managed workflow.

Color management ensures that color and tones in your movies remains consistent and predictable between applications and devices. Color management will benefit any video workflow, and it can specifically improve the color and tone of your video if you use a YUV codec (such as a DV or v210 codec) and you use the QuickTime movie exported from After Effects in other video editing applications (such as Apple Final Cut Pro).

Additional info:

When QuickTime Player displays a movie file, it adjusts the gamma in order to make the image look correct. QuickTime Player bases the amount of gamma adjustment on the codec in use (if the file is not tagged with a specific gamma value). However, the gamma adjustments that QuickTime Player makes are not consistent between Mac OS and Windows, meaning that the same file may not look the same in QuickTime Player on Mac OS and Windows.

Note: On Windows, the result may be dependent on whether QuickTime Player is set to display through DirectX or Safe Mode (GDI). Refer to the documentation for QuickTime for more information about QuickTime settings.

In order to provide consistency between platforms, After Effects CS3 adds a metadata tag to exported QuickTime movie files that specifies what gamma adjustment to use. When this tag is present, QuickTime Player uses that value instead of what it normally would use for that codec, and the resulting adjustment is consistent between Mac OS and Windows.
 
gamma in mac & windows .tga sequenecs

gamma in mac & windows .tga sequenecs

Well, a lot of views so far but no replies so far. Any advice is welcome.

A new test was done: On Mac Pro Targa sequences (24 bit) rendered out of AE CS3 (16 bit comps space). These were done using the Match Legacy setting. Targas opened on Windows in AE 6.5, Photoshop, and Quicktime. Footage was compared on two Apple 23" monitors side by side. In all applications the images are equally dark compared to the Mac targas on the first monitor. They don't just look a little dark. They look crappy dark.

Next the targas were 1) re-rendered into duplicate targa sequence to clone them. 2) The original Mac targa sequence was imported into Quicktime and re-exported as a animation millions+ quicktime using the frame rate of the original quicktime. 3) A screengrab was also made of the first targa.

All three were copied back over to the mac re-imported to AECS3 to compare to the original quicktime + targa export. They all look identical to the original targa sequence footage. So they appear to clone with no loss.

The problem remains-- when the CG artists work with the footage it will appear to be dark and crappy. They are compositing in Fusion not AE. What can be done to make the targas gamma consistent across Mac and PC?

This doesn't appear to be a monitor calibration issue.

Does anyone have any advice?
 
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What are your monitor gamma set to?

You have to remember that Quicktime doesn't use color management and there are plenty of known issues with it's handling of gamma flags. I detailed a response to your previous post which got deleted and I don't feel like typing it all out again, but that's the gist of it.
 
1.8 Mac Gamma Vs. 2.2 TV Gamma

1.8 Mac Gamma Vs. 2.2 TV Gamma

Thanks for your reply. Don't know why the thread was deleted-- originally the post was also put in quicktime so maybe the moderator deleted it.

Gamma settings are set to the Mac 1.8 standard Gamma (1.801 RGB)

Also tried the 2.2 Television Gamma which states "you may want to select this setting if you are working with images to be displayed on television or PC-compatible computers." This actually is a bit closer, but the PC display side by side is still much worse.

As far as quicktime, we are taking quicktime out of the equation by rendering targas (.tga). The VFX house has requested .tga sequences for each shot/scene. By exporting with 'Match Legacy 'on the .tga's were 1) rendered on mac. 2) imported to windows and the re-rendered as duplicate .tgas 3) imported back to mac. When comparing the original quicktime with the first rendered mac .tgas and the windows .tgas they all appear to be identical. There is no gamma shift to the eye. Don't know if the files are being encoded with any gamma settings.

The issue that remains is what should we do about the shift in platforms? Should the vfx artists gamma shift their app or display while working? We were hoping this was a more common problem with a specific solution. As you see there has been a lot of digging and trial and error.
 
I'm interested in final results from this topic since I'm attempting to color correct footage shot on HVX200 in import into AE on a PC to color correct. My questions also were asking what hardware people using AE on PC are using to monitor what the final footage looks like?
 
match legacy solves the gamma shift upon render issue. if you don't use it, your renders will always be quite darker than the original even if you do nothing. i have no idea why anyone would prefer this. i don't use color management in AE. i like my rendered video to look the way it did when it went in unless i choose to change something. but my assemblies are always in fcp. clips sent out to AE and eventually back for the final.
 
Hello,

I wake up this post because i've the same problem with conversion from TGA to QuickTime uncompressed :

-We create TGA sequences on PC
-We made the conversion from TGA to QuickTime uncompressed 8 bits (2vuy) on a MacPro with AfterEffect. If Match legacy is checked, the QuickTime is a perfect clone of the TGAs. If not, the QuickTime is darker.

But the matter is on the PC : i want to create the Quicktime from the TGA sequences on the PC with After Effect (the AJA or BlackMagic codec are installed, and i use the goods), but no way! With or without Match Legacy checked, is quicktime is the same : darker. So it's work on the Mac, not on the PC.

I've tried a lot of things (color managment...) but without results.
Is there any solution?

Thank you for your help
 
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