Can't embed color profiles to output.

[Dan22496605e7l8]

Hi all,

When rendering from After Effects I want to embed my working color profile (sRGB), but the option to embed the chosen profile is greyed out and it says "This format does not support embedded profiles", but neither does any other format.

I usually render Quicktime Prores 422 HQ, but I also tried a bunch of other codecs but none seems to support embedded profiles. I guess this is more a bug than a fact. Does anyone have this working?

When importing the rendered file back into AE it interprets it as Rec.709, so the format does support color profiles. When I try to play the file in VLC, it becomes too dark and details are lost, and it looks identical to initial import in AE before I change interpretation from Rec.709 to sRGB, which leads me to think that it has the Rec.709 codec embedded by default.

My working space is sRGB.

Software versions:

After Effects 22.6.0 (Build 64)

Windows 10 Enterprise, Version 21H2, OS Build 19044.2006

[Mylenium]

Pretty much none of the video formats support actual color profiles. AE simply determines these things based on its automatic interpretation rules and metadata info present in the file. None of this is mandatory, though, and certain apps use metadata rather creatively, so it's not necessarily useful to derive such info. Real color profile info can typically only be stored in image files. Beyond that I'm not sure what embedding a mundane sRGB profile would even achieve, given that it's the default assumed profile for most apps, anyway and Rec.709 almost covers the full gamut as well. I find it more likely that you eitehr have general color management issues or problems with hardware accelrated display and decoding functions, which would be a point not just in AE, but also VLC or other players.

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/importing-interpreting-footage-items.html

Mylenium

[Dan22496605e7l8]

Thank you for your reply.

sRGB apparently isn't the assumed profile for AE or VLC, so that would be one reason for embedding the mundane profile, so that it actually looks like it was intended. And if video files are not supporting color profiles being embedded, why does AE automatically assume that all video files I import has a Rec.709 profile assigned to it?

The issues with VLC has followed for many years, across different computers running either Windows or macOS so that's not because of any general color management issue, but I don't remember AE automatically assuming Rec.709.