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bbbigelow
bbbigelow
Inspiring
November 9, 2017
Answered

Millions vs Trillions of Colors - ProRes4444 Export

  • November 9, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 18221 views

Hello,

I'm finishing a project and want to make sure I'm not throwing away bit depth in my exports from After Effects.

I'm working with Alexa LOG C footage 12 bit, in a project with color management turned off and in 32 BPC. I've been exporting to ProRes4444 with the color set accidentally to "millions of colors". However, if I bring that footage back into after effects, its interpreted as "trillions of colors".

Am I throwing away colors by selecting "millions of colors"? Or does ProRes444 default to "trillions". I'm wondering if the distinction matters with this codec, source material, and working space.

I tried using this grey card https://studiohanneman.com/blog/2017/08/08/bit-depth-test-chart/  in my workflow, and it seems like I'm not throwing away color. But I'm not really sure.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Jose Panadero

    If your source footage is 12bit, you need to work and render in Prores 4444 (or other 10/12/16 bit codec) at trillions of colors in 16bpc to retain at least, all the color information of the original footage. If you render at millions but in a "trillions" codec like ProRes, AE and other video apps will tell you that you have a 10/12/16bit file but reality is that you rendered previously at 8bit so you have lost a lot of the original color of your footage. An 8bit file has only 256 possible colors for every pixel, while working in 10 bit is 1024 posible colors for pixel.

    3 replies

    Jose Panadero
    Community Expert
    Jose PanaderoCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 10, 2017

    Setting the project at 32bpc it is not necessary because your original footage is under this color depth. Could be interesting to work in floating point if you are going to composite some lighting effects or for compositing tasks in general. Anyway, to make sure you would not render at a 8bpc color sampling, is as easy as change your project settings to 16bpc or 32bpc and your render settings to Trillions of colors.

    Prores supports up to 12bpc per image channels and 16bpc for the alpha channel. Effectively, does not support 32bpc

    Jose Panadero
    Community Expert
    Jose PanaderoCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    November 10, 2017

    If your source footage is 12bit, you need to work and render in Prores 4444 (or other 10/12/16 bit codec) at trillions of colors in 16bpc to retain at least, all the color information of the original footage. If you render at millions but in a "trillions" codec like ProRes, AE and other video apps will tell you that you have a 10/12/16bit file but reality is that you rendered previously at 8bit so you have lost a lot of the original color of your footage. An 8bit file has only 256 possible colors for every pixel, while working in 10 bit is 1024 posible colors for pixel.

    bbbigelow
    bbbigelowAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 10, 2017

    Thanks Jose. When exporting I selected "trillions of colors" for the depth in the Output Module, but left "color depth" in the Render Settings at "current settings" (which is the default for the "Best" preset). My working space in AE is 32bpc.

    Just want to verify that this would render 16 bit ProRes4444 (as I don't think 32bpc is supported in QT). I just want to make sure somehow it wouldn't downsample to 8 for some reason.

    bbbigelow
    bbbigelowAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 10, 2017

    Creative Cow supplied the answer that in DOES matter. So Trillions will yield the higher bitrate, millions will not.

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