Using ACES and whites don't equal whites.

In ACES, I did some quick tests between "hardware accelerate" and GPU/Software Render only. When scrubbing timeline, the background will flicker with this blue color if there is no Display transform selected based on any settings for Hardware aceelerate & GPU/Software Render. The BG should be black.

Flicker blue BG goes away when a Display Transform is selected.

When I hid the shape layer, the display did this when I had hardware accelerate off.

If I increase the size of the display to 100%, it does this. If CUDA on, its green.

If Software only, it turns red.

Toggling Display Transform to on state, issue goes away. Regardless of hardware accel/gpu/software only states.

After turning off ACES and using Adobe color management all issues go away. White=White, and no crazy glitch like issues regardless of hardware accel/gpu/software only states.

Hope this helps!

In ACES, here is the same comp with no Display transforms.

Same side-by-side comparrison and using the same Display Transforms.

Chaging transform for comp on left showed variations. Changing display transform on right comp never shows any variations..

This post addresses the following question.. 

3. If you switch Video Rendering and Effects in Project Settings to be Software only, does that either reset the display or stop the incorrect display from occuring subsequently?

I exited AE. Went back in. Loaded in same comp that shows the white/gray transform issue.

Enabled "Software Only" under Project Settings.

Here, both comps result in transforming White to Gray.

Here the same two comps display different values.

Same results for the other comp..

Switched over to Adobe color management, and both comps display correctly regardless layout, number of composition windows, or placement.

It appears that opening multiple composition windows of the same composition consistently generates different results when in ACES.

What I can't re-produce is what triggers AE (when in ACES) to start transforming white to gray in the 1st place.

This posts tests out "Hardware accelerate".

I exited AE. Went back in. Loaded in same comp that shows the white/gray transform issue.

I disabled "Hardware Accelerate" & both comps when viewed independently transformed to gray.

white=white

white=gray

After opeing multiple composition windows, White=White comp transforms correctly.

Here they are side by side..

Then I swithced to MIMIMAL layout, and got this result.. White=Gray comp actually transformed correctly.

Still in MINIMAL, when White=Gray comp is re-positioned, it then goes back to the incorrect transform.

Switched to adobe color managed and both comps transform correctly, regardless of layout or composition window placement.

Next post will address..

3. If you switch Video Rendering and Effects in Project Settings to be Software only, does that either reset the display or stop the incorrect display from occuring subsequently?

This post will address point #1. Purge all memory & cache.

I tested this out on the AE scene that had one correct transform (white) & one bad transform (gray). After memory/cache purge, both comps resulted in gray transforms. I saw these results by viewing each comp independently.

Comp where white would transform correctly, now transforms to gray.

Comp where white would transform to gray doesn't change. Stays gray.

So I decided to open two composition windows side by side so you could easily see the results, and then the two comps showed different results again (one white, one gray).

The same result happens when I don't re-arrange the composition windows like I did above. 

Here, I have two compositions of white=white opened. One transforms gray. One transforms correctly to white.

If  I do the same thing for the white=gray comp, it stays the same (stays gray).

Here I have 3 comp views of the same comp (white=white). Two of these comps are next to each other. The other is offset to the right to show a side-by side. In this layout you can see that one is gray & one is white.

Comparing the other comp to the offset comp on the right, and they both transform to white.

All of the tests above were done using a custom layout. So I decided to test these results using a factory layout, so I switched to MINIMAL.

Same minimal layout, but demostrating that both WHITE comps show different results.

Minimal Layout, 3 of the same comps opened. Two are white. One is gray.

Turning off ACES and using Adobe color manament results in a consistent white shape, regardless of composition window position & its layout, regardless of using custom layout or factory layout.

Going to try "Hardware accelerate" test in next post.

Thanks for sharing some things for me to check out, which I will follow up on later today. Regarding the driver update, the one you suggested does not support my graphics card (Quadro P5000). Is this a mistake? Or are you suggesting that this driver is known to work with Quadro P5000, even though its not listed as a supported device?

This is the driver that Nvidia recommends for my Quadro P5000 card.

 https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/204574/en-us/

That is definitely not the most current driver. Could you try updating it to the 531.41 studio driver?

I am not fully convinced that is actually the issue here however. 

A few other things to try:
1. When the panel display flips to being incorrect, does "Purge all memory and disk cache" reset the display?
2. If you disable the "Hardware accelerate..." Display preference, does that either reset the display or stop the incorrect display from occuring subsequently?
3. If you switch Video Rendering and Effects in Project Settings to be Software only, does that either reset the display or stop the incorrect display from occuring subsequently?

Thx!

Apologies for long post. But I hope this info provides you with enough information to diagnose the issue.

Since you are not seeing the value difference on your side, here is a screen capture of two comps side by side. Each shape has a value of FFFFFF. Project settings ACES/ACEScg. Display transform ACES/sRGB.

Both comps really close together to clearly see the undesired transform taking place.

Regarding reaptible steps, as of now it appears to randomly happen. I suspect its a driver issue, which I show further below in this post.  Anyway, I can get AE out of this bad transform state by loading in another scene that doesn't have the issue. However, that scene might randomly start transforming the color space incorrectly.

As of yesterday, when I start AE from scratch, by default it transforms white incorrectly. The example below shows a shape with a HEX value of FFFFFF, but its being transformed to a gray value. Under Project Settings, if I toggle the working color space to ACES/ACEScct, ACES/ACESproxy, or ACES/ACEScc then white is displayed correctly. White will not display correcty using ACES - ACES2065-1, ACES-proxy, and ACES/ACEScg.

While attempting to diagnose this problem, I also noticed that interpretting footage is acting up.

Here is a screen capture of an AE session as seen in PS. This is displayed accurately.

Here is the same AE screen capture image as seen in AE, with Preserve RGB toggled. Not correct.

It will only display the screen capture correctly with the display transform toggled to NONE. Prior to yesterday, toggling PRESERVE RGB on footage would display correctly with the display transform set to ACES/sRGB.

These transform issues could be taking place because of the following. I updated my graphic card drivers prior to the latest AE update. After the driver update, I got a compatibility report from AE saying that my webcam had issues. I resovled this conflict by updating my webcam drivers. A week later, I updated to latest AE version (23.4) and I got another compatibility report. This time for my graphics card.

Here is the log report.

To my knowledge, I am running the latest Nvidia drivers.

Finally, after doing these transform tests in AE, I am noticing that I sometimes have to resize my diplay in order to see the results of display transform changes, or to see the results after adjusting the working color space under Project Settings.

Thanks for your time & patience in diagnosing this issue!

John

Per @Paul Uu's comment, marking this post as Needs More Info.

- John, After Effects Engineering Team  

Hmm, when I open your project I see both White =Gray and White=White comps rendering as white.

Can you come up with any repeatible steps, starting from scratch with a new Project to get it into the White = Gray state?