Colour Management - Log Footage Embedded Profile being read as Rec709, Can't Change

[Derjis]

I'm doing some quick compositing for a series that was shot in LogC; they need the composited files delivered back in LogC, so everything matches when they deliver it to colour for grading.

I'm trying to set up colour management in the project, but the footage has an HDTV (Rec.709) embedded colour profile, and AE won't let me change it.

The workflow I've used in the past is based on Chris Zwar's great video explaining how to work with Alexa footage:

- Go into Project Settings, change Depth to 32bpc

- Change Working Space to sRGB

- Interpret Footage > Main > Colour Management - Assign the footage a Colour Profile (Universal Camera Film Printing Density)

From that point, it's pretty straigthforward to work with a properly displayed space, then render out using the same Universal Camera Film Printing Density profile to maintain the Log.

I'm using AE CC2015.2; I've tested this with the same footage in CC2014, and have the same issue. Is there something I'm doing wrong? If not, is there a way to remove or change the embedded colour profile from the footage? Can anyone suggest a workaround? I've got a LUT that the production set up that they're using as a target, but I don't understand how to apply a LUT to the footage and still render out a final product in Log.

For comparison, here's the footage w/ and w/o a LUT:

[Derjis]

As a quick update: I've tried importing other footage into the project, and they're all being read with an Embedded Profile of HDTV (Rec.709), and none of them will let me assign a different profile. I've imported footage from a C100, a C300 (neither shot in Log), ProRes LT transcodes from DSLR, Quicktime Animation exports from C4D, even webrips from YouTube; all have the same issue.

Here are the project settings:

[Szalam]

What happens if you try it in AE version 14.1? (CC 2017)

Remember, you can install new versions without wiping out any of your old versions.

[Derjis]

We won't be "upgrading" to 2017 until at least one more bugfix patch is released. I've been burned way too many times in the past by shoddy Adobe installs. If this is a longstanding bug that has been 100% been fixed, I'll look at "updating", but failing that, i'm not touching 2017 with a 10-foot pole. I hear that Adobe screwed up Colour Management even worse with the 2015.3 updates, so unless they've actually fixed things, not going to happen.

[Derjis]

As a further update, I'm having the same issue in AE CS6.

[Szalam]

I was not suggesting upgrading your whole workflow; I was merely suggesting a troubleshooting step. If it worked in the newer version, I was going to suggest saving back to your production-approved version and seeing if that behaved once you had it working in the newer version.

I would expect CS6 to have issues as these new formats weren't really happening back when it was written.