Hello,

my workflow often requires After Effects instead of the LRTimelapse Video-Render.
When I use the new default to export JPEGs as Rec.2020, AE doesn't seem to interpret this format correctly. The picture appears very low saturated.
Now I use the checkbox to export in Rec.709.

- Do I really need Rec.2020?
- Is it possible with AE?

I tried to open the Rec.2020 JPGs with Photoshop, which seems to read it correctly. However I don't see any difference to the Rec.709 JPEGs on my calibrated Eizo CG319X no matter how hard I look.

- Which display is necessary to see a difference?
- Is an 8bit JPEG even capably of storing a bigger colorspace?

I'm asking because I think this may be a little bit similar to Log profiles in the HDR world. You compress/map a big dynamic range into a low dynamic format, preserve shadows and highlights but lose number of different values in midtoned gradients (color banding). However I may be wrong here.


Regards
Robert

This post was last modified: 2020-10-15, 07:23 by timestretcher.

Have you already tried enabling color management for your After Effects project (File > Project Settings, Color tab, set Working Space to the one you want)?

I don't know if that's a definitive answer, but when I tried that, a Rec.2020 video exported from LRTimelapse regained its saturation to match how it looks in Lightroom Classic. I tried it knowing that After Effects is not color managed by default, but I know it's supported, and that color management is required to make wide gamut color like Rec.2020 work properly. So the theory I wanted to test is whether enabling color management for a project would allow After Effects to apply the necessary color correction.

When inspecting a current LRTimelapse video in File > Interpret Footage > Main, Color tab, After Effects reports that the Embedded Profile is Rec.2020, which is what we would expect. With color management enabled in Project Settings, Interpret Footage reports that color values will be converted to the working space, which is what we want to keep colors consistent. With color management disabled (the default), Interpret Footage reports that "Color values will not be converted" which should result in a wrong appearance.

Note that in the Project Settings / Color tab, enabling color management means choosing any profile except None (the default) in the Working Space list. None means no color management, any other selection in that profile list means color management is enabled with the selected profile as the working space. Choosing any profile should restore the saturation of a Rec.2020 video, but that doesn't mean you should choose any profile. You should choose a working space consistent with your project requirements, such as Rec.709, Rec.2020, or maybe sRGB for a video for a web page. That way, After Effects will simply represent the Rec.2020 colors of the LRTimelapse video converted to whatever the working space is, and then displayed with a correction for your system display profile. All of that is consistent with what any color-managed application such as Photoshop has done for years.

For example, if you choose Rec.709 as the working space, After Effects should in theory take that Rec.2020 video from LRTimelapse and correctly convert it to Rec.709 for that project so that it looks right.

I am not an expert on this, I simply wanted to try and figure out your question because I also use After Effects sometimes, and will also need to know the answer eventually. What I learned above is based on playing around with it for the last 30 minutes making guesses based on the experience I have with color management (which is mostly in photography, not video) and on rather modest experience with After Effects. So I won't be surprised if someone who knows more about After Effects can let us know if this solution is sufficient.

If you wanted to keep it simple, and you're not concerned about extended color gamut, you could forget about color-managing After Effects and go on with the alternative solution you have, which is to render LRTimelapse as Rec.709.

This post was last modified: 2021-09-20, 19:41 by Gunther.

Thank you very much for your explanation. I've done some tests and I can confirm your findings: with the latest After Effects 2020 the color management seems to work quite well, but you might need to activate it!

File / Project Settings / Tab: Color / Working Space: Rec.2020 Gamma 2.4

This enables Color Management. Now you can do your editing.

If you want to render with LRTimelapse after doing your edits in AE, add the comp to the render queue, set the format to TIFF sequence and on the 2nd Tab make sure that the Output Profile is set to Rec.2020 Gamma 2.4
and check "Embed Profile"

Having done that, LRTimelapse will then correctly detect that sequence as Rec.2020 when loading it into the render dialog and offer all options for rendering (whether in Rec.2020 or Rec.709.

In any case: If you don't need special features in AE like stabilizing (which you also could do in Video Processing) I'd recommend to use the LRTimelapse renderer (ffmpeg) which often even delivers a better quality than the Adobe Renderer and is better integrated into the LRTimelapse workflow.

PS: I'm adding this thread to the faq.

This is an excellent thread. I've been using LRT for 3 years, and also now beginning to integrate into Premiere sequences. I don't use AE that much. I'm primarily a scenic photographer that specializes in wide format work. Color management is key for me too, and as I'm about to process 1200 frames taken on an EOS R5 (45 megapixel images) and test a batch process with Color Efex Pro before rendering, this all starts to get quite serious from a workflow, color management and storage perspective. I'll report back. David