After Effects import ffmpeg video has color errors

[johnt53984649]

I create lots of 3D animations and do the final compositing work in After Effects. Usually, the frames of these animations are originally rendered out of my 3D software as separate PNG files, which I then import into After Effects as a "PNG Sequence."

However, the issue with this method is that the PNG files themselves usually take up lots of space on disk. I've been looking into alternative methods to losslessly compress them, such as by using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -framerate 60 -i out%04d.png -c:v libx264rgb -qp 0 out.mp4

or:

ffmpeg -framerate 60 -i out%04d.png -c:v libx265 -preset ultrafast -x265-params lossless=1 out.mp4

And these output files actually do give me much smaller filesizes than storing the original PNG frames (for example, 1.92GB instead of 4.5GB). However, the issue is that After Effects does not seem to be able to import these video files output by ffmpeg correctly. For example, here's what original first PNG frame looks like:

However, when I import the ffmpeg video files into after effects cc 2019 or premiere pro cc 2019, here's what the x264 video's first frame looks like:

And the x265 first frame:

Clearly, After Effects isn't able to interpret the colors in the ffmpeg video file correctly, but I don't really understand why. If I open the video files in VLC Media Player, for example, the colors ARE interpreted correctly, so this must be a problem with Adobe's software.

Is it possible to fix this problem by changing import settings in After Effects? Are there special output settings I need to specify for ffmpeg to avoid this problem? If none of these, do you have recommendations for alternative codecs that After Effects interprets properly?

[Mylenium]

You have to take it up with the x264/265 developers. This has nothing to do with AE nor do I see any reason why this should even concern Adobe. at the end of the day, the X-CoDecs are the reverse-engineered hacky ones that may not adhere to the MPEG specs exactly. That's ultimately what it boils down to: Do you want to adhere to professional specs and standards or just muddle through? Even your point about PNGs being too large doesn't exactly make sense when PNG itself is a compressed format already. Perhaps you simply need yet another harddrive? Just sayin...

Mylenium

[johnt53984649]

Thank you, but I can get better filespace savings than storing the PNGs separately; the PNG files are only compressed using intraframe compression (obviously, they're separate files) whereas both inter and intraframe compression are used by the lossless x264/x265 codecs (I've actually been able to get significant filespace savings over the separate png files by encoding to x264 and x265).

So, considering this, do you have recommendations for alternative lossless codecs that I can use instead, ones which would adhere to the specs you mentioned?