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I have a video composition in AE CC and want to export it. However, when the video is exported, the colors look different than what displays in AE. Interestingly enough, this problem only happens with codecs without alpha (RGBA) that only work with RGB. I need to export this to a RGB codec.

I have tried all sorts of stuff with working spaces in both the project settings and export settings and am quite sure the problem has to be elsewhere.

This is how AE displays the video and this is how I want my exported video to look: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nb80vt8721mm8g/AE.jpg

and this is how the exported file looks: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9uudws2miux6pxu/Export.jpg

Note the difference is not only in the darkness, but also in the tone of the colors.

I'm using Media Player Classic and Windows Media Player 12, since I got to be able to play this in PowerPoint. At the moment, I'm exporting to H.264, but I also tried a lot of other codecs - DXV, XviD, WMV, ...

I would be very grateful if somebody could help me with this.

Note: Due to some specific plugins, I cannot export this to a premiere project, so that's not a solution either.

Thanks, Ondrej

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  • what software are you using to view the video? Why RGB, as opposed to YUV? And lastly what codec are you using?
    – stib
    Jun 19, 2014 at 13:24
  • Edited the question to answer this.
    – Ondrej
    Jun 19, 2014 at 13:33
  • however, it seems i don't understand your question about YUV.
    – Ondrej
    Jun 19, 2014 at 13:43
  • H.264 uses yuv colourspace IOW the colours are describe by Y (luminance, aka brightness), U (luminance-blue), and V (luminance-red). RGB takes up a lot more bandwidth for the same perceptual quality, so it's not often used in delivery codecs. I'd advise against exporting h.264 from AE, it generally does a rubbish job. Export as animation and encode to h.264 using ffmpeg or Handbrake or such like.
    – stib
    Jun 20, 2014 at 0:51
  • thanks, understood. Exporting using animation would result in a video too big (my video has an hour), now exporting to lagarith. Is it normal for exporting of this to take 7 hours (using an i7 laptop)?
    – Ondrej
    Jun 22, 2014 at 11:22

2 Answers 2

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The colours were pretty much right when I did the following:

  1. In the render queue window, click "Lossless" to open the output settings of that video
  2. Click Format Options… in the Video Output settings Choose H.264.
  3. Render the video.

It occurred to me that Quicktime player tends to show washed colours unlike other players.

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After some time, these are my conclusions:

  • the issue is related to the source and export video codecs operating in different color spaces (YUV vs. RGB); the color problem is based in this and also resides in the fact that H.264 cannot work with an alpha channel.
  • although exporting the video to QuickTime with some alpha-capable codec like Animation or Lagarith, the resulting video with 1 hour is way too big for me
  • I ended up exporting to H.264 after all and will be applying some color changing effects in Premiere during final processing steps.

This is not the ideal workflow to say the least. I will have to take a look and find a way to avoid using After Effects for this.

Thanks for the comments, people.

Ondrej

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