Chris Zwar has a look at how to manage a workflow for using Arri Alexa Log C in After Effects. After Effects in recent years has included pretty much every Codec needed, anticipating media and footage from a vast range of cameras and systems. In addition to this, Ae has also included color management, attempting to make it simple to take control of colorspace in your projects.
While there are many ways of working with Log C footage in After Effects, none of them are immediately obvious
And although the Arri Alexa is a popular digital camera, the problem is that it uses a proprietary colorspace – Log C. As Chris notes, there are many ways to work with Log C footage in After Effects, but none of them are all that intuitive.
While there is no clear way to round-trip Arri Alexa Log C in After Effects and back, Chris explains the best way to work with Log C footage, which, as he puts it… “opens up a whole can of worms to do with colourspace and color management”… So this presentation has expanded out into two comprehensive parts, plus a third which will round up the first two in a few minutes to get you going quickly with How to Work With Arri Alexa Log C Files in After Effects.
Working With Arri Alexa Log C in After Effects
The first part of the article introduces the problems that arise when using different colorspaces in a workflow and provides a base to better understand what Log C footage is, why it’s useful, and how to work with it. Part 1, largely is an overview of colorspaces in general, including color management, 32bit float images, and logarithmic file formats – pretty much everything you need to work with color in Ae.
Part 2, looks at the working with the Arri Alexa Log C in After Effects, Arri Log C colorspace, and makes a comparison of different working methods in After Effects.
The last part of the tutorial demonstrating Arri Alexa Log C in After Effects, is a bit of a summary which represents a very short demonstration of Chris’s favorite technique and comparisons and demonstrates the most elegant workflow in about 3 minutes. [via Pro Video Coalition]
