Forcing After Effects to render a specific Hex color

[iamjadiam]

Unfortunately I can't show you the entire project, but to get a sense of the challenge I'm trying to solve, note that the background of this site (outer band of color) is one shade while the video background (inner band of color) is different. How can I make After Effects render the shade exactly so that the site's background color feels like the video's background?

[Roei Tzoref]

place a solid with the color you want as the background. in the solid setting you can set the hex color.

if this does not answer your questions, you need to be more specific. what exactly is the problem?

[iamjadiam]

Thanks for weighing in. This is precisely what I did ... the render, however, creates a shade that's slightly different because of the compression.

[Roei Tzoref]

the render, however, creates a shade that's slightly different because of the compression.

to know exactly, import the footage back to Ae - do you see the color shift? if you do, then it's the compression, if you don't - then it's the playback medium.

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

It's not possible to match video 100% exact to a web color. Different browsers render colors differently, different operating systems use different Gamma settings for videos (as do the video CoDecs used by the browser), monitor color profiles can affect color rendering of color managed vs. unmanged content and a gigazillion other things like video providers often re-encoding video. It is simply impossible. Either you accept that fact or you give up and stop wasting right here and right now. If at all you can only make it work on your system and on your browser, but there's a good chance it will whack out on another computer/ device and browser. Even assuming that your rendered screen output would be representative of the actual programmatically defined Hex color in your CSS code is just plain wrong. Even CSS styles are affected by monitor profiles or multiple styles can interact weirdly. So, no offense, you are simply operating under wrong assumptions from the getgo and everything is almost inevitably bound to fall apart/ not work. If you realyl need consistent color rendering, for better or worse your only option is to include the background in the video, naturally at the cost of bandwidth and file size.

Mylenium

[Rick Gerard]

What Mylenium said is absolutely accurate. In order for colors to match exactly you have to make sure that the device (computer screen or TV) is precisely calibrated and that the video player (media player) also accurately sends color information to the screen. The only way to check this precisely is with calibrated test equipment.

Pick a hex color, render a test, import the test render then sample the color with the eyedropper and see if it is the same. If you are good to go there then you have picked a color management workflow and codec that will accurately reproduce that specific color. No guarantee that if you have 10 spot colors in your design that every one of them will be completely accurate. Now at least your workflow is accurate. The only way to make sure that the end viewer is seeing the same color is to put them in a room with equipment that you have calibrated.

Years ago I did a ton of CocaCola commercials and we had specifications for coke red that we have to the color timer in the lab, the telecine operator that transferred the film to tape, and the editor that cut the tape in the post-production facility. The final approval came when the agency rep checked the color in the final edit, not by looking at the monitor first, but by checking the vectorscope and waveform. For a couple of months one of our broadcast (=$$$$) monitors was on the fritz and we were still able to deliver a hand full of spots that had a definite cyan cast on the monitor because the vectorscope and waveform monitor checked out.

[iamjadiam]

Totally makes sense. And wow! That's one heckuva workflow!

[iamjadiam]

I suspected as much but wanted to see if someone might have a working solution. Even if all you did was reassure me that it wasn't possible, I genuinely appreciate you weighing in.