AE Colorspace Working space 'none'

[v.k29893041]

Hi!

I'm trying to figure out how to solve color issues we encounter during a RED (R3D) workflow through After Effects. I hope someone can shine some light on this.
We have interpretted the R3D inside AE 2017 with the RED importer (interpret footage > more options) as follows:

- colorspace: Dragoncolor2

- gamma: REDgamma4

- rest as default, only the ISO as shot.

We have left the AE working space to 'none', as we usually use OCIO to manage colors to know what happens. Though we mostly do some removal work on this footage, so we won't need much color changes. 

The project is set to 32bit and we render image sequences to 16-bit EXR's with preserveRGB enabled.

At our end, everything works as expected. However, the grading facility had trouble getting enough color information from the EXR's.

Of course, you lose some dynamic range from the raw file when importing them with these settings. But I find it very strange that they claim the available colorgamut is sRGB, not DragonColor2.

So, what I would like to know is what happens under the hood when the After Effects colormanagement is set to none. Is must operate in some colorspace, it just should convert any colors if you don't want it to.
Or is this a known issue with the RED importer perhaps? How would we avoid losing color information from the R3D?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi V.K.

"If Working Space is set to None in the Project Settings dialog box, color management is off for the project." See if this page offers any more assistance: Managing color in After Effects

If you have more questions after reading the above, I can ask the team for you. Let me know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[v.k29893041]

Thank you for your reply.

To be sure: does that mean After Effects will keep all the colors that are present in whatever file it loads?

Can you explain what the specs are of the output of the R3D importer in After Effects? We feel something strange is happening there, because if we use LUT's that match the specified colorspace inside the R3D importer, they don't match at all.

It seems color information is lost, in comparison to the REDcine Pro exporter.

We ended up using pre-grades and pushing that through the pipeline again (which meant a lot of additional tweaking).

[fnordware · Accepted solution]

Even if your project color space is set to None, the RED importer needs to convert its raw pixels to some sort of RGB color space, which can be set inside the RED dialog. Maybe your facility suspects this is set to sRGB instead of a wider color space.

[v.k29893041]

Yes, that is true. And we choose the color format that was used for recording. But unfortunately the R3D importer did not give the same result as the RedCine Pro exporter.

Our experience proofs (again) that it is always best to convert your source material to a working format. The ACES system has been developed for these issues, for example.

[grantp57013578]

7 years later and I can confirm. AE does not interpret R3D footage appropriately in the Interpret settings, even if you are picking redwidegamut etc. It will look wrong compared to it you first convert the r3ds to something else in RedCine Pro exporter.