Working with Cineon images and the built-in color management in After Effects 7.

Added: March 13th 2006
Submitter: Stu Maschwitz
Score:
Hits: 15502

Holy crap, film! Try this:

1. Download Marcie.
2. Import her into a new After Effects 7.0 project.
3. Set the project to 32 bits per channel (float)
4. Set your Project Working Space to Linear Adobe RGB
5. Select Marcie and File > Interpret Footage > Main
6. Click on More Options
7. Under Conversion Method, select Kodak 5218 ICC Profile
8. Hit OK
9. Hit OK
10. Drag Marcie to the Create Comp button
11. With the new comp's View active, View > Proof Setup > Kodak 2383 Theater
12. Select View > Proof Colors (switch it from unchecked to checked)

You're now working with a Cineon file in linear, scene-referred float, and accurately previewing how your work will looked filmed out on Kodak Vision film stock.

When you want to output back to log:

1. Create an output comp that contains your linear Marcie comp
2. Set Proof Colors to Unmanaged for this comp's view (Proof Colors should be checked)
   
3. Apply the Color Profile Converter effect to the layer
4. Leave Input Profile set to Project Working Space
5. Set Output Profile to DPX Scene - Standard Camera Film
6. Very important: Set Intent to Absolute Colorimetric

Output this comp to a Cineon sequence and it should match the original Marcie source.

You've now fully round-tripped a color managed, linear floating point film compositing pipeline. I don't know of any other compositing application that ships with this capability, "high end" or not!

But wait, there's more! Want to bake this film-look LUT into some NTSC video dailies?

1. Add linear Marcie to a video output comp (NTSC res)
2. This comp should also have Proof Colors on and set to Unmanaged
   
3. Select Layer > New > Adjustment Layer
4. Apply the Color Profile Converter effect to the layer
5. Leave Input Profile set to Project Working Space
6. Set Output Profile to DPX Scene - Standard Camera Film
7. Very important: Set Intent to Absolute Colorimetric
8. Apply a second Color Profile Converter
9. Set Input Profile to DPX Theater Preview - Standard Print Film
10. Set Output Profile to SMPTE-C

Smoove. Don't believe me? Download the project file (316kB zip). This workflow is compatible with Part 1 and, of course, Part 2.

AE 32-bit Linear Workflow Tips

Linear Color Workflow in AE 7: Part 1 - Setting up Your Project
Linear Color Workflow in AE 7: Part 2 - Working in Linear Float
Linear Color Workflow in AE 7: Part 3 - Setting up an eLin-like Workflow
Linear Color Workflow in AE 7: Part 4 - Rendering