NewBlue FX in After Effects with 16bits depth PROBLEM

[Perfect-Blue]

Hello. I have a strange problem with all NewBlue effects in After Effects, while I'm working in 16-bits color depth. The problem is, every effect from NewBlue pack is turned off ONLY in 16-bits color depth, but it's working fine in 8 and 32 depth. When I set my project in 16-bits the layers with NewBlue effects are either become invisible, or the effect is switched off.

I'm working with After Effects CS5.5 . My NewBlue FX are ver. 1.4 and 2.4 - the problem is in each version.

Can I ask someone who has the same version of After Effects and NewBlue FXs pack to try this - new project in 16-bits depth, new comp, random pic/video, and apply random NewBlue FX, to see if there is a bug with the FXs pack, or the problem is only in my comp. And share the results here.

Thanks in advance!

[Niotex]

I'm pretty sure it's a simple matter of the plugins not supporting 16bit color space. Hence you'll be forced to either scale back down to 8bit or go for 32bit. However I would argue against going 16 or 32bit as there aren't really any means of preserving that bit-depth upon distribution.

In short it's not a bug it's merely not compatible. Best you can probably do when considering how you're going to be distributing your project is 10bit.

[Perfect-Blue]

It's kind of strange to support greater depth, like 32, but not smaller one - 16. Once it can support all the way to the top of 32 bits depth, the logical thing is to work with 16.

The other strange thing is turning the layer with the FX invisible , in 16 bits. I'm assuming it's some sort of bug in the FX, but Im curious, if its only in my config, or everyone have it.

AE dont give me opition for 10 bits, if you know where I can set in 10, please, share.

I'm kind of need of more color depth then 8, since I'm using all kind of sh*ts like optical flares and ramps(the picture in signature), and the give me better color-gradation.

[Niotex]

It seems I was mistaken about the native 10bit support for AE as it only has the following increments 8/16/32. Premiere Pro CS5+ however can do native 10bit, which is what I probably confused it with. What I'd recommend is working in 32bit [even though your display is only 8bit btw] then once you are done with the project and exported it as such. Simply scale it down to 10bit when compressing it to a 10bit h264 file.

Your monitor can only display 8bit color as is unless you have a true color display. So while you're getting a little more room to play with with ramping and what not, going beyond 10bit for final export is pointless.

/edit- Because we're not certain about a 32bit pipe solution for h264 the following will mediate that.

Make your comp in 32bit and do what you want to do. Pre-compose the 32bit composition into a 16bit one and let AE dither it down to 16bit. Thus avoiding having the plugin to try and run in 16bit, we'll let AE take care of that. Export that composition as the 16bit comp and pipe that into a 16bit compatible h264 encoding pipeline. Encode that puppy,Bob's your uncle! You've now got a juicy 10bit h264 encode, provided you know how to encode in 10bit h264 of course.

//edit- Beep boop your 16 to 10 pipe solution: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 6#p1427025

Skip avs and load straight into x264 10bit otherwise it'll be dithered down to 8bit. Thus making all your work pointless.

PS Mirko is a pizza-hut lovin' Italian.

[Perfect-Blue]

AE does not give me opition to set the color depth for a each comp. It is for the entire project. For all comps in this project is the same color depth.

My main monitor is TN, still there is another one with ... I dont know what, but not TN for sure (Philips 190s). Still I can see the differences in 8 and 16 bits on my TN monitor. But this is not a main problem. I will manage to make my way to the final render and desired color depth, there is no problem about this - I can still render the problem parts (the one with NewBlue FX) in 32bits, and the add the rendered video to the main comp, since some of other effects (like shatter Im using) only support 8 and 16 color depth.

The main question is - is NewBlue's 16 bits depth bug only in my comp, or its permanent, and other ppl have it.

[Niotex]

It's a incompatibility issue so everyone has the issue.