Canon C200 Footage - Footage and Waveform Different on Intel iMacs vs M2 Pro Mac Mini

Hi there Neil, could you clarify what exactly a reference mode is? Two of the Macs have been colour calibrated using an i1 Display Pro, so their screens have custom Colour Profiles; however, changing these doesn't affect the waveform in Premiere Pro. If it's something different, I don't believe we are using reference modes?

We have been using the auto tonemapping options on various projects, and I agree that they do help create a nice starting point for the footage. For these tests, we chose to disable it to avoid extra variables. Another issue we've had is that After Effects does not yet support these same auto tonemapping footage conversions as Premiere does, so when tracking and masking footage in After Effects, if we use dynamic links to push footage from PP to AE, the grades we make in Premiere do not translate into AE and vice versa. Other than that, for PP only projects, we have been using the auto tone-mapping to decent effect, but it doesn't solve our footage problems. The colours are still different between the machines even if auto-tonemapping is on and settings are mirrored across our machines.

We've updated all of the machines to Premiere 25.2.1 this morning and the results are still unchanged, unfortunately.

I've got a question about your Macs ... do any of them have Reference modes? And if so, is it set to HDTV?

I ask because "standard" Macs don't have Reference modes, and the ColorSync utility applies incorrect display transform gamma of essentially gamma 1.96.

However, Macs with Reference modes set to HDTV, do use the correct display transform of essentially gamma 2.4, like all correct broadcast compliant systems should. And most screens do use that.

Past that, I wonder why you're not trying out the new algorithmic transforms for the Canon log footage ... ?

As in my probably more limited experience with Canon log, they do a pretty great job of the base normalization process. And it works equally well whether going for Rec.709 or HLG/PQ. This is via the auto detect log combined with auto tonemapping options.

And you can even set variances on the tonemapping used.

Hi @SLNK-1 - Can you try the same version 25.2 on each machine and let us know if you are still seeing differences.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open project on an intel iMac, open the sequence and check the scope waveform.
2. Open the same project on an M2 Mac, open the sequence and check the scope waveform.

Expected result: Provided both computers have the same settings in the lumetri panel settings, you'd expect the waveforms to be identical

Actual result: for us, they are not, the C200 footage appears differently.

Here is link to the project, if you require access to footage as per the troubleshooting guide. Everything else is in the first message above.

Thanks,

Stuart

Hi there, certainly, find attached three screenshots from each of our machines, cheers.