Color difference between Illustrator PNG file and .mp4 render from AE

[mattijnw20897291]

Hi all,

I'm struggling with this issue now for way too long and really hope somebody has the solution. When I'm rendering an animation designed in Illustrator the .mp4 file comes out with a slight color difference. I'm using the exact same color profiles (sRBG. 1EC61966-2.1), see the image of my settings in AE.

Still, the colors don't look exactly the same.

Left is the .mp4 and the PNG image is on the right.

Really hope somebody knows the answer to this! 🙂

[Roei Tzoref]

if you import your mp4 back to Ae - does it still look different than the original? if it looks the same, the then issue is because the player/browser you are watching the video in interprets the color differently and nothing really do worry about.

[Dave Merchant]

Video files (generally) do not have the option to embed a reference color profile, so you have to make do with the permitted range of color values and the conversion curves in the encoder. H264 uses a Y'CbCr pixel format, not RGB, so there must always be a conversion when encoding the image, then another conversion when the playback application sends data to an RGB display screen. Unless you happen by chance to use only very limited colors in your footage, going from a full-range 32bpc composition to a lower-range 8pbc video format will always result in some luma and chroma shifts. I suspect that some of the colors in your animation are simply illegal - beyond the range allowed by the codec.

You could try using the rec2020 (HDTV) color space as your base reference to get a better handle on how things look, but ultimately if there's an illegal color in your comp, it isn't going to export without changing something - the color or the video format.

Roei also makes an important point; although they shouldn't, it's not uncommon for video player applications to "adjust" the picture slightly. Even Adobe applications cannot guarantee the on-screen preview is correct. Then you have 99.99% of your audience watching on displays that are completely out of whack, they think the world looks better with an IG filter.

When clients insist on having a video that exactly matches their Pantone swatch book, I simply point them to the price list for a professional SDI card and calibrated reference monitor (anything around $10,000 for full-HD) then let them multiply that by the number of people who will watch it. All of a sudden "that's close enough" sounds like a good idea.

[Mylenium]

Same old, same old: A PNG isn't 32 bpc in the first place, so your workflow probably doesn't make much sense to begin with. Why inflate an 8 bit imgae to 32 bit and then render to an 8 bit video format? That aside, color profiles don't do much if your monitor isn't calibrated and your player software isn't capable of using color management plus that 32 bit to 8 bit conversion might require extra steps in AE like using a color profile converter or Compander effect to prevent skewed colors. So for what it's worth, if color matching is really is a concern, start by working in 8 bpc or 16 bpc and see if the output is more predictable. And of course what the others said is true - you can obsess about this all you want, but most likely the output will be played on an unmanaged device/ player anyway, so in the end it doesn't matter. Colors will always be off in some way.

Mylenium

[Dave Merchant]

Mylenium  wrote

Same old, same old: A PNG isn't 32 bpc in the first place,

Of course they can be.

Mylenium  wrote

Why inflate an 8 bit imgae to 32 bit and then render to an 8 bit video format?

There are many reasons why a professional might choose a high depth working space, since the effects will respect that even if the source footage does not.