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Known Participant
April 2, 2024
Question

Washed out colors when exporting from Adobe media Encoder

  • April 2, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 5162 views

I'm having a problem with video, exported as MP4 - the colors appear to be washed out.

However, when using After Effects for exporting, the colors appear correct (black as #0C0C0C, which is close enough to the real color, which is #0D0D0D)

I have read other posts in this community and tried exporting software- and hardware, configuring LUT etc. but no cigar. Initially, I thought it was the player, since the same video appeared different in QuickTime player and VLC, but as mentioned, it can be solved by exporting from AE.

When exporting as .MOV from AME, it's almost spot-on.

However, I would very much like to continue using AME, since it contains a lot of functionality that I take advantage of and gives me a boost in production. Any ideas?

2 replies

Community Manager
April 19, 2024

After Effects sends a Rec709 output to AME. So you can set the Color Space to 709 and then send it to AME. Not ideal. We want to fix this. But here's a workaround till then:

  1. Go to the File -> Project Settings -> Color tab -> Color Settings section
  2. Change the Working Color Space to "Rec.709 Gamma 2.4"
  3. Uncheck "Use Display Color Management" from the "Channel and Color Management settings"; those color-rings right below the monitor. (This is only to confirm that the color values are the same, immaterial of the display color space)
  4. Now export to AME.

The exported file should hopefully not have the color issues. Please let us know how this goes. If you do want to bring the output file into After Effects to compare, please note that you will need to disable the Display Color Management for it again and then compare the colors.
Participant
February 20, 2025

This solution doesn't work when following similar steps when rendering using AME from AE.

Known Participant
February 21, 2025

I also never got the solution to really work - it was better, but on some renderings, the colors still didn't match.
The problem solved itself, however. At some point, I had to reinstall Windows (and everything installed) and the problem was gone. Before that, I tried reinstalling the whole Adobe-package, but it made no difference.

EckiAME
Community Manager
Community Manager
April 4, 2024

Asking our friends over at Color, After Effects and Formats team.

Known Participant
April 9, 2024

Much appreciated. If you need additional information, the project files or a video that shows the process, please let me know.
I did a little test with just a simple rectangle (#0D0D0D), exported as a 5-second video, which shows similar behavior.

EckiAME
Community Manager
Community Manager
April 9, 2024

Can you post it here? I will file a bug for this, too.