AE color management nightmare, color shift in render

Report · May 01, 2020

Pretty straightforward. We're doing VFX on a film. Some of our artists are in AE. We've sequenced all shots (Slog3) to 10bit DPX. Bring the DPX into AE. Change nothing. Render to QT4444, and there is a very slight pink/magenta tint in the footage. Not extreme, but enough to notice when a lut is applied.

This bug has plagued us for years across many shows and we've gone through hoops to work around it, but I want to get to the bottom of this.

The other crazy thing is that while the pink shift happens on my co-workers computer, it doesn't happen on mine, and no matter what I try I can't reproduce the bug. We have the exact same system

Has anyone else experienced this?

Report · May 01, 2020

It could be your screen calibration - I calibrate mine once a month, or a number of other color management settings. I do not do a lot of DPX work, but as long as my calibration is where it needs to be and my color management is consistent I do not have any issues.

Report · May 01, 2020

Our screens are calibrated correctly, the issue is that the DPX coming out of AE doesn't match the DPX going into AE.

An additional detail, my colleagues computer does acually produce an accurate render when rendering a DPX with "preserve RGB" checked in media encoder. DPX is not our ideal delivery format however, as we are working remotely and delivering in 4K, and drive space is limited. QT and DNx files are 30% smaller than DPX so that would be ideal, however both have the same problem.

Report · May 02, 2020

Well, to be honest that simply soiunds liek a math error in one of the underlying code libraries. Having different versions on different systems still could explain the difference then. also wasn't there some weird issue in QT when Apple switched the system's default screen Gamma to a different value? This may be worth investigating even if it's probably perfectly Adobe's fault to not fix this leaky code to begin with.

Mylenium

Report · May 23, 2024

Hello! I am having exactly the same issue, would you be so kind to tell if you have managed to find a fix? (I am at current May2024 AE beta)

Report · Jul 09, 2024

yess, i have the same situation for years and most directors and colorists thinks its my problem, i think aftereffects is really stupid when it comes to handling color math, i do most of my work on nuke however using aces and trying color transforms i've never encountered such a thing