Why do AI video clips drift in color at all?

Every export, re-encode, and image round-trip nudges color. Generators decode a seed frame, render in their own color space, then re-encode to 8-bit yuv420p for delivery — and each conversion clips and rounds values slightly. Chain several clips and those small shifts accumulate into visible mismatches in brightness, contrast, and hue.

Should I fix scale or color first for Seedance?

Fix scale first. Rescaling changes which pixels align, so doing it before the color match gives the matcher correctly-aligned reference pixels to work from.

Seedance · Color drift between chained clips

Fix color drift between Seedance clips

Building a sequence in Seedance means handing the last frame of one clip into the next generation — and like every generator, Seedance shifts color slightly on each round-trip.

What you're seeing

Color balance changing between consecutive Seedance clips
A sequence that slowly warms up or cools down across several cuts
Mismatched contrast at clip seams

Why it happens

Seedance decodes your seed frame, renders in its own color space, and re-encodes to 8-bit delivery. The output frame never exactly equals the frame you exported, so each clip in a chain starts from a slightly different color point than the one before it.

How to fix it with Color Correct

Generate the next Seedance clip from the previous clip’s last frame.
Load the previous (reference) and new (source) clips into Color Correct.
Run Frame-Pair Color Matching from the new clip’s first frame to the reference’s last frame.
If the Seedance clip is also scaled, run Rescale first, then color-match.

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Step-by-step in the docs

Frequently asked questions

Why do AI video clips drift in color at all?: Every export, re-encode, and image round-trip nudges color. Generators decode a seed frame, render in their own color space, then re-encode to 8-bit yuv420p for delivery — and each conversion clips and rounds values slightly. Chain several clips and those small shifts accumulate into visible mismatches in brightness, contrast, and hue.
Should I fix scale or color first for Seedance?: Fix scale first. Rescaling changes which pixels align, so doing it before the color match gives the matcher correctly-aligned reference pixels to work from.

Related guides

Stop fighting color drift

Color Correct matches your AI video clips frame-to-frame so a sequence stays consistent.