After Effects and sLog or Red Log

[alvarom12292]

Hi everyone, a techincal question here

I recently did an animation that I started with certain elements in Cinema 4D and them combined them for final compositing and video in AE. This is for a Film, so one of the Post Producers of the project asked me to send them in 4 KDPX. Fair enough, I was told from the beginning that they were working in 4K so no problem and I export the DPX sequence of my work  and shared it with him.

A couple of days later he comes back saying it is good for HD grading but he was expecting them to be log (something never mentioend earlir but maybe some people assume it will come with the video). Now, I know that log or red log or slog2 are metadatas for color grading and usually they come with the files from the camera. This is the first time I've heard they want logs for an Animation and they want this metadata for their colourist. Not sure how to reply to this to be honest. They might not aware that I've done this in After Effects and were probably expecting me to work from Nuke or DaVinci. I'm not sure how to tackle this, is there something I can do or if its impossible what they are asking? I assumed that After Effects akready burned-in the information unless I can export it separately.

[Mylenium]

The color space info should be retained if color management is actually active and a suitable output format chosen, potential bugs and combinations of settings that prevent it notwithstanding. Without any info on how you actually configured your system and AE as well as details about the project liek e.g. source file formats, color profiles/ LUTs used and render settings we can't tell you more that that.

Mylenium

[alvarom12292]

Right, so the process I did is as following:

I have some shots done in C4D, exported as PNG sequences and imported into AE. I wasn't using any color space, to be honest I've never used it before, not much experience doing stuff for AE. They apparently used a RED camera but the Red Log isn't available in my options. 

Color is in 16 bpc. For Render I was asked to send them a DPX sequence in UHD resolution (16:9). I'm sorry if this isn't enough, what more information would you require?

[Mylenium]

Well, that's a pretty bad workflow, to be honest. 16bit PNGs? Who's even using that? Otherwise it's irrelevant. If you're not using any color profiles, simply tell them that you're using a standard sRGB color space and leave your rendered files as they are. Nothing more to it. Converting them to anything else without proper color management will only make a mess, especially in a logarithmic format like DPX. CM would be mandatory for this sort of thing.

Mylenium

[alvarom12292]

Yeah, to be fair this is inexperience on my part. Also, space is in 8 bit, not 16, got confused there but don't think that would make much difference. I haven't done much stuff for film in AE so maybe that's the lesson here, to be more aware of CM in the future. Still, when seeing the options for Color Management in AE, couldn't find neither Red Log or slog2. There is slog3 but I was just reading that they are very different. And I'm using AE 2020.

Anyway, thanks for the replies. Will learn from this.