Force DV output to 0-255 ?

Question

Hi,
After bashing my head against the wall for two hours, I finally figured out why DV footage is getting mangled when passing through After Effects. It seems that the DV output module (and the IYUV output module, for that matter) are hard-wired to output colors in the Studio IRE range of 16-255.
OK, so this is evil. I bring in a clean piece of DV footage, do nothing to it, and it outputs at squashed levels. Contrast is totally screwed up no matter what I do. Color management is off througout. Even if I check "Preserve RGB," the levels of the input file are not preserved on output. Pedestal goes up, gain goes down, and my footage looks like death.
The only workaround I can find right now is to output to an RGB codec such as QT Animation. But this is not a solution, it's a workaround.
So, what's the solution? I have seen people post inaccurate statements to the effect that YUV codecs such as DV are always forced to a 16-235 range. This is not accurate, because other programs (Sony Vegas) do not force the issue in this way. The codec obviously permits levels from 0 to 255, but the upper and lower ranges are not used-- BY CONVENTION ONLY.
If I turn project color management off, with output "preserve RGB" off, I get screwed up levels.
If I turn project color management off, with output "preserve RGB" on, I get screwed up levels.
If I set project color management to SDTV NTSC, with output  "preserve RGB" off, I get screwed up levels.
If I set project color management to SDTV NTSC, with output "preserve RGB" on, I get screwed up levels.
So, is there a way to simply bring in a piece of DV footage, and output it transparently to the same levels? This seems like a really simple, obvious thing that everyone would want to do.
Thanks,
Aaron

Answer 1

It is correct that DV gets scaled from 16-235 -> 0-255 (thereby clipping super-blacks and super-whites) when converted to RGB – and Adobe apps behave appropriately according to this convention.
An application such as Premiere, which handles YUV natively in certain filters, is able to deal with this expanded range (which can allow you to recover lost highlights, for example).
An RGB-only application like After Effects cannot do this, however. I really wish Adobe would implement a feature that allows this kind of "expanded" interpretation when working with footage but, alas, they do not.
Here's what I do when I need to use this expanded range in AE. You'll need some tools (all freeware – but this won't work for Mac):
Cedocida DV codec
Lagarith Lossless codec
VirtualDub
Install Cedocida, Lagarith and VirtualDub. Note that you don't really need to "install" VirtualDub; just unzip the files and place them in a folder called "VirtualDub", such as C:\Program Files (x86)\VirtualDub
Here are the steps to set up the process:
Launch VirtualDub.exe
Go to the Video menu, choose Compression and select the Cedocida DV codec; then click the Configure button.
In the configuration options look at the Output settings (lower half of the dialog) and change the setting for YUV to RGB conversion from its default to [0..255] -> [0..255].
Also, be sure to un-check the box in Output that is labelled YV12, as it may cause the video to lose color resolution.
To process the file in After Effects, first save it out as a lossless intermediary file like this:
Open your DV AVI file in VirtualDub
Go to the Video menu, choose Compression and select the Lagarith Lossless Codec.
Choose Save as AVI… from the File menu and save it to a new file
Open this Lagarith-compressed RGB file in After Effects and use tools such as Color Finesse to tweak it to perfection.
VirtualDub allows you to save settings files and to create batches very easily if you need to do a lot of these conversions.