Colors are faded when importing to ASP......

Bee-ruce2 · Post by **Bee-ruce2** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:29 pm

Hi. I'm having trouble importing a .mov clip into ASP properly. In an ASP project, I have a character (made out of vector layers) animated against a static background (made of image layers).I exported this scene using the Animation codec (30 FPS).After exporting to desktop....I open up the .mov file and view.....all the colors are fine. I then import the same .mov into a new ASP project. After importing ....the colors on the character in the .mov clip in ASP are severly faded or "washed out" while the background colors remain normal.(In the link showing a still of the clip...the image on the left shows the original colors while the image on the right shows the colors after importing the clip into ASP.......notice the T-shirt and shoes as well as outlines). It appears something during the importing process is causing the fading. Any ideas what is causing this and how to remedy it. Thanks.

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/5368/stillrv0.jpg

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:38 pm

Don't use the animation codec. I think this might be the problem. Try another codec or none at all. When I plan to import rendered movies into ASP I don't use compression. I use none when exporting and the colors are identical to the original ASP file.

I believe the codec may be doing something to the colors... changing them somehow. Although it does seem odd that the background colors aren't changing.

-vern

Bee-ruce2 · Post by **Bee-ruce2** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 8:00 pm

Hi. I tried exporting using "none" and reimporting....it helped to some degree but still got some "patches of fading" (see image)...the farleftside of T-shirt, right shirt arm and parts of shoes are still not importing properly. I then tried exporting using the "DV/DVCPRO" codec and re-importing......this time the clip imported properly. Still not sure whats going on but glad found a solution. Thanks for the suggestion.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/7829/c ... illmk1.jpg

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:23 pm

why are you exporting and re-importing? If it is a must to have, export it as a png sequence. Using a video editor compose it as your favourite video codec (that should be readable by AS) and try again.

Bee-ruce2 · Post by **Bee-ruce2** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:29 pm

Genete wrote:why are you exporting and re-importing? If it is a must to have, export it as a png sequence. Using a video editor compose it as your favourite video codec (that should be readable by AS) and try again.

Genete.......without going into details.....I'm exporting and reimporting to save render time.For my purposes....its essential that I get my final render time down in the final project. If I was to render all layers in the same project file.......my render/export time is 2 hrs.If I export 90% of layers....then reimport into a new project and add my final 10% of layers (which are interchangeable for different projects) and then render......I can get my export time down to 10 minuetes for the final project.I did'nt think of your option of exporting as a image sequence. That would probably work.....however.....now that I know It will export with the DV/DVCPRO codec....think I will use that as the image sequence option will add one extra step in the process (converting the image sequence back to .mov).Thanks for your suggestion.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:50 pm

This is a guess but maybe the washed out colors could be from the alpha channel created when exporting. I think that viewing the movie doesn't use the alpha mask, but importing into AS does use the alpha mask. The mask is probably "wrong" and is causing areas of the image to appear "washed out".

To test this just put in a black shape on a layer behind the imported movie layer and see if instead of being washed out it is darker.

Other than that I'm at a total loss for what is going on. ASP uses QT to import images and video. If it plays and looks correct in the QT player it should appear the same in ASP. If there is an alpha channel that QT is probably ignoring it but AS isn't. Just a wild guess.

-vern