Hi,
I’m using draft to auto generate movie files from a Nuke render, but the output looks different in different players (tested VLC, media player, media player classic, quicktime)
Whereas if I make a similarly encoded file through AE it tends to be a closer match in most players.
I have tested saving as .mov or .mp4 and with MPEG4 and H264 codecs.
My Nuke output can either be exr’s, tiffs or jpegs (these tests have be run with jpeg outputs)
NB. Its not a huge 2.2 gamma shift issue, we are talking about small but subtle differences.
VLC always looks correct - but we can’t guarantee that our clients will use VLC.
I believe this post explains what it is you’re seeing: http://vitrolite.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/quicktime_gamma_bug/
tl;dr version: There are transformations going on behind the scenes in various viewers, and AE applies secret gammas. Draft doesn’t apply any secret gammas, it gives you exactly what you asked for. AE does apply secret gammas. If you want your Draft output to look like your AE output, just apply the secret gammas, the values of which are given in the post. (They differ depending on the codec.)
Aside: Color is very complicated, and few places do it properly. It involves knowing about viewing luts, calibrating custom luts for each piece of hardware you view on, and knowing when to apply which luts in a sequence of operations. Chris and Ian have given me a run-down on it, and it’s pretty mind blowing.
thanks for that article.
It seems that i have tripped over the tip of a iceberg!!!
Once again a windows based system is giving us problems, but at least its good to know that its not anything iIve been doing wrong and that there is no simple solution.
Thanks for the tip
M
Welcome. Yup. An iceberg. On the bright side, Draft is easier to steer than the Titanic… not that that helps passengers aboard the Titanic.
Good job I’ve asked Santa for a life-raft and whistle this Christmas!
