Does CS3 After Effect's color management suck, or is it just me?

[jmclagan]

It's quite a loaded question but I figured it would get some attention...

I shot some clips with the Panasonic AG-Hvx200, with the intention of editing in final cut and keying and compositing in after effects. My computer is a Mac g5 with Apple cinema series display. The final output is to be sRGB. I assumed that the embedded color profile of the clips would automatically be interpreted by both programs without a problem. My fault for assuming.

There was no issue importing the footage to Final Cut using the DVCPRO-HD setting. But when I brought the edited footage into AE CS3 using the DVCPRO-HD preset there was a huge difference between the working color space, and the rendered footage. the gamma had shifted up by more than 1. I toggled the "Enable Final Cut Studio Color Compatibility" checkbox in the Quicktime preferences and that seemed to reverse the gamma shift but it still doesn't match my AE color space. I tried importing the footage into compositions with different settings, HDTV(Rec.709), HDV/HDTV etc. I know the frame rates are different but I was just trying to test the color space issue. I also tried simulating the outputs in AE.

Does anyone know of a solution to setting your working color space in AE CS3 on an apple display to properly render your intended colors for sRGB?

Also, does anyone know of an application that inspects a video clip for it's embedded ICC color profile?

[rallynavvie]

You should be able to set color spaces within Adobe, but I'm guessing the reason between the differences is that AE is defaulting to the Adobe sRGB gamut and not whatever FC uses. I would assume each can use the other's color spaces though. I'm not too familiar with FCP anymore as my Mac days ended a couple years ago