How do I make SURE I am outputting 12 Bit Color Files?

Hi and welcome!

A couple quick questions first:

• What OS are you on?
• Which version of the Adobe suite are you using?
• Did you try QuickTime or AVI?

@ignus

Windows 10, AfterFX 2019, AVI, I didn't know MagicYUV had QuickTime options, But I probably wouldn't use QuickTime anyway.

Thanks for the info.

So first, some background info: In general, it is not possible for any generic (ie. VFW-based) AVI codec to export anything above 8-bit. The reason is that the Video For Windows (VFW) interface that Adobe (and many other Windows software) uses for it's generic AVI exporter does not originally support any 10-bit+ pixel formats. Some esoteric/new/opensource software (like VirtualDub2, Avisynth, MediaPlayerClassic BE, etc., also including MagicYUV) does support certain ways (ie. new "commonly-agreed-upon" pixel formats) to make this possible, but Adobe does not.

As such what you're trying to do is not possible through the generic AVI exporter.

However, for this reason, I have for long been having a plan to develop an Adobe-specific import/export plugin to circumvent this limitation, and your timing couldn't have been better, as it just reached a usable state 2 days ago, including 12-bit support. It is currently Windows only, but a macOS version will follow soon.

It is a MediaCore plugin, which means it's native home is Premiere and Media Encoder, but AfterFX can also use it directly for import without any special setup, export however is only possible through Media Encoder, not from AfterFX's own export dialog.

If you'd like to give it a try, I can share the plugin with you to test (it should be fairly stable btw).

@ignus

That sounds great. I will have to buy Media Encoder because I don't currently use it. But if it keeps the color at 12 bits then that's great! Thanks for this. 🙂

Actually it looks like it is free to download that's even better 🙂

Yes, Media Encoder is included with AfterFX.

I'll have to package the plugins up, I'll share the files and instructions with you through email.

Sent the email, tell me how it worked.

I am trying it now 🙂 Thanks for taking the time to do this! 🙂

One suggestion I do have for all your codecs is a drop down menus for option like Bit Depth for Color etc..

I am never sure if I am setting it properly because the options aren't shown. And when you have been up for 3 days wrapping a job, That can be a bit unnerving wondering if it is rendering correctly while you sleep. 😉

DUH I'm not too bright I found the dropdown listing everything 10 seconds after I posted the request. LoL

This worked Brilliantly!!! Thank you so much!!

Good, thanks for the feedback.

Regarding the dropdown for bit depth for color, do you mean the "Codec" dropdown or the "Render pixel format" dropdown?

If you select the MagicYUV 12-bit RGB codec for example, it will only allow Adobe to send 16-bit RGB frames to the codec, so you can't get anything lower than 12-bit accidentally (8-bit for example) since the 12-bit codec variant can't handle and won't accept 8-bit formats. So most of the time you can leave the render pixel format dropdown at 'auto'.

Is this what you meant by the dropdown you asked, or was it something different?

Hello!

Is this solution (your Adobe-specific import/export plugin)  available in the latest release, or just here in the forums? If so, can I also test it?

I must say that I'm somewhat confused about how AE/ Media Encoder handles bit depth.

Hi,

Yes, the Adobe plugin in this thread was the first functional test version of the final plugin released with 2.2.0. So you can test it if you install 2.2.0 (the Trial versions also include it).

From the plugin's perspective, bit depth is specified for the Adobe renderer, or more precisely, a pixel format is specified, and then the renderer will render and present such frames to the codec. The pixel formats can be 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit float, both RGB or YUV, etc. That's all the plugin cares about.