Videos in Pr and Ae are displaying darker that other software.

[ahrenb76834656]

I use DaVinci Resolve to color my footage, but after I have done so, when I bring those files into Premiere or After Effects, they have shifted very dark and lost alot of detail.

I can still open these files in VLC from the Browser, and they look correct.

Is there something I have set wrong in Adobe?  Why am I loosing color and detail when going into After Effects?  It makes it very hard to accurately great VFX.

[Mylenium]

You will never make "great VFX" because you are not using any color management and calibration. That's all there is to it. You have to read up on this stuff and then set your options accordingly on all programs and calibrate your monitor using a suitable method.

Mylenium

[ahrenb76834656]

Hello Mylenium,

I do in fact have two monitors that are both calibrated using a spider and have been carefully dialed in.  I also color all of my footage in DaVinci Resolve, using it's Histograms to make sure the image is legal and contrasted correctly.  So yes, I have extensively "read up on this stuff", and I am using both calibration and color management, so that is not "all there is to it."

  My question deals with why, when I bring that colored footage into adobe products (like Ae, and Pr), are they displayed much darker than they when I rendered them out in Resolve, or when I play them back in VLC?  This means that the level of detail is not the same as it was when I was coloring, and so it's harder for me to see the hard edges in order to mask and Roto. 

This is also not something I have noticed in previous versions of the software, so I am wondering if it is a problem with a new way that adobe is interpreting the files?  Or if I have a preference set wrong that I can fix?

  If you have any insight into this, I would appreciate it.

  Otherwise, please stop being judgmental and assuming, and belittling other peoples work, even though you haven't ever seen any of it, and know nothing about the system they are using.

-Buhmann

[Szalam]

What are your color management settings in AE?

[ahrenb76834656]

"More Accurate."

[Rick Gerard]

"More Accurate" is not Color Management. You'll have to do some research on how to enable color management, how to set up the profiles, and how to attach that metadata to your rendered files. There are thousands of switches in AE. It takes some study to learn where they are and how to use them.

Type color Management in the Search Help; field at the top right corner of AE and so some studying, then set things up to match your workflow. You just have some things turned off or set to the wrong values somewhere. Without full screenshots of the appropriate switches and workflow details down to the last decimal point it's hard to know what you are doing wrong.

[ahrenb76834656]

Thank you Gerard.

[ahrenb76834656]

Hey Rick,

This has taken me a long time to get back to this project, if I were to give you screenshots to look at to help me solve this problem, what would you need me to send?

I have gone through at this point all the different working space options, and switched on and off the linear setting, and can't find the magic combination.  Would love some help on this.  I don't understand why Resolve would show me one thing, while Ae is showing me something different, or how to match the working spaces to make them match.

[Sheena Kaul]

Moving to After Effects​

[eikonoklastes]

In VLC, go to Tools > Preferences > Video > Output, and set it to OpenGL video output, and restart VLC.

You should now get consistent colours between Pr/Ae and VLC.

Meanwhile, it sounds like your colour output from Resolve is Linear, and you need to compensate for it in AE by setting your colour working space correctly;

File > Project Settings > Color Settings > Depth > Working Space > sRGB IEC61blahblah... (the sRGB is an assumption on my part, but a safe enough assumption. If you specifically know which profile to choose, choose that instead).

Also check Linearize Working Space.

If your output from Resolve is 32 bpc, make sure to enable that too, so you don't throw away all that good information.

Alternatively, embed your colour profile from Resolve itself, and you won't need to mess with your AE settings.

[ahrenb76834656]

Thank you eikon-
   A few questions if possible-

1- I couldn't see where Resolve gave me the option to embed my color profile from Resolve, would this be phrased differently, or do you know where the option exists in Resolve itself?

2- I changed the space to sRGDxxx and switched on Linear, and it still is displaying much darker.  All it really did was desaturate the image.  So I then went through all the different color spaces, with linear switched on, and couldn't get it to work right.  I guess this isn't a question, as much as a "I am stumped."