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jimmywalter
jimmywalter
Inspiring
August 5, 2026
Answered

Best mp4 player? VLC looks very different than playing within Premiere

  • August 5, 2026
  • 12 replies
  • 92 views

While this post shows VLC and Premiere looking almost exactly the same, my VLC looks washed out compared to Premiere. I am going to show this in theaters. They may not have the DCP, just a video projector which plays mp4, perhaps some other formats. Which is the best mp4 player? I have a DCP player on my other computer. What should I do?

VLC
Premiere Pro PlayerPost showing Premiere and VLC the same
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    Correct answer jimmywalter

    BTW, I have found PotPlayer superior to VLC.

    And I am now using Premiere Beta with its new color system which seems, so far, much better than Lumetri and before it

    12 replies

    jimmywalter
    jimmywalterAuthor
    Inspiring
    August 8, 2026

    Thank you so much for all of this, all of you. I was blind and now I am beginning to see, pardon the puns

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    August 8, 2026

    Hey, color management is a miasma to get into, but if you’re gonna do color correction/grading, you gotta know at least a decent amount.

     

    Color correction and grading is a totally fascinating thing. And there’s always more, there’s another four ways to do anything you already know how to do, and new tools come out … and new media … and hardware … and … and ...

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
      jimmywalter
      jimmywalterAuthorCorrect answer
      Inspiring
      August 8, 2026

      BTW, I have found PotPlayer superior to VLC.

      And I am now using Premiere Beta with its new color system which seems, so far, much better than Lumetri and before it

      jimmywalter
      jimmywalterAuthor
      Inspiring
      August 8, 2026

      Wow. So tens of thousands of dollars. 

      Is it possible, easy to work with a theater - you know, like go there and play what you have to see who it is working?

        R Neil Haugen
        R Neil Haugen
        Legend
        August 8, 2026

        Many local theaters can ‘rent’ space in a room for a morning or early afternoon use. Sometimes you have to rent the room, and some times you can just pay a bit to have an operator sit and run your media through their system for a couple minutes.

         

        One big thing separating most noobs from the seriously experienced … is … do you use the scopes as much or more than your eyes? 

         

        The Mark I Eyeball is a fantastically flexible comparative device … but is absolutely incapable of absolute value judgements. For those, such as where your lower shadows and black points are sitting … you must learn to rely on the scopes. And same for where your high points are … and for your precise color referent bits. 

         

        In fact, scopes are so freaking important that the upper pros don’t even use the ones in Resolve much … they have external scope apps, running on the clean feed outta the breakout box/card to the Reference monitor … often run on a separate computer. Like an older laptop, with the many options for scopes available from that app displayed on a monitor close to the Reference monitor, so they can shift view between them quickly.

         

        As typically pro colorists work with a ‘surface’ … a hardware control panel, such as the BlackMagic Advance or Mini, or a Tangent Elements panel … they don’t use the mouse or pen that much. Or keyboard even.

         

        Most of the folks I know run a control surface in the middle of the desk, on either side is a Streamdeck pair or maybe even four … heavily programmed … so they rarely leave looking at the Reference monitor and scopes monitor. Everything else is muscle memory, reaching for the controls or the buttons of the Streamdecks.

         

        For instance, a good friend has four Streamdecks … two of the big like 32 button units ‘in the back’ with a standard 15 button one in front … on each side of his surface. One room he works in has that huge Advanced panel, one a Mini … but for both, he has 3D printed setups to hold the Streamdecks so that their top ‘flat’ panel is exactly at the height and angle of his surface control panel. I know he’s supplied the 3D printed Streamdeck holders to other colorists also.

         

        But when you’re trying to grade 500-600 shots a day, every day … and have to make QC first time every time … such things matter.

        Everyone's mileage always varies ...
          R Neil Haugen
          R Neil Haugen
          Legend
          August 8, 2026

          My humble setup …  as I do a fair amount of tutorials, advising & conusulting, including working on difficult grading issues for various & sundry persons, plus software and hardware testing mostly on NDA status … but I do not do any broadcast or theatrical release work myself.

           

          Note the camera on me and the Tangent Elements panel …  front left to right, Wacom pen tab ( I’m a lefty), keyboard, Trackball, and an older tablet used for the Tangent “verisimilitude” mode; then a gamer’s button box I’ve actually just removed from use, the Elements panel, BM switcher … the monitors an ultrawide ‘main’, standard Dell on left for second panel and sometimes scopes, Reference monitor up top, and a small monitor for scopes primaraily lower right. 

          The Ref monitor is of course calibrated and then profiled … meaning another pass with specialized software that checks the screen outputs when fed specific inputs, and gives a series of charts and data on the actual result of the input. Until those charts and data are within tight specs, you … redo. And with the upcoming move, I’ll naturally have to fully run that again. Oof.

           

          This was the supposedly “temp” setup, from a move a couple years ago, that I expected to be in use only a few months. I will finally be moving into my own full room again next month, though I hate moving. I’ve somewhere over 25 USB devices/connections at this time, and they are all setup to run without conflicts … but I can never unplug and carefully re-establish without having to move something from one hub to another to resolve conflicts.

           

          It’s all on a standing desk that I added the front shelf for the keyboard to … so that I can have it at the best height for keyboard, or drop an inch or so, and have best height for the panel.

           

          In normal operation it’s rather dark, there’s 18” between the back of the Reference monitor and the gray curtain, and there's a bias light on the back of that monitor from MediaLight (biaslighting.com) set to a precise brightness according to the specs for Rec.709 workflows.

           

          Everyone's mileage always varies ...
            jimmywalter
            jimmywalterAuthor
            Inspiring
            August 7, 2026

            So what do the professional movie makers do?

              R Neil Haugen
              R Neil Haugen
              Legend
              August 8, 2026

              I  work for/with/teach pro colorists, attend NAB/Vegas, and know many of the major ones as acquaintances, some as friends. So what do the pro colorists do? Starting with broadcast and theatrical workflows ...

               

              1. They never ever trust a computer monitor. Period. End of story. Full stop. NO.

              They use breakout boxes/cards such as by BlackMagic or AJA, to send a clean signal that the OS doesn’t get to mess with!!!! … to a Grade 1 Reference monitor.  Such as by Flanders, Eizo, Sony, a couple others. We’re talking 5-10 thousand bucks for an SDR monitor. Quite a bit more for HDR. They normally use Resolve or Baselight for the grading app. And they have professiona calibration services doing the calibration and profiling of the monitor system to ensure they are dead on to the specs they need to work within.

              1. Their working area is a properly darkened room not quite black, with only D65 light sources, absolute neutral gray surround, and a bias light of a very specific measured brightness behind the reference monitor.

              There are published specs for pro grading suites. Both for Rec.709/broadcast or streaming, and theatircal release.

               

              1. FOR THEATRICAL RELEASE … they either have a Barco or the other brand projector in a blackened suite, or they rent a suite with one for the final pass. And have their DCP authoring software run directly out of Resolve or Baselight.

              So they see the project in a clean feed on a highly calibrated full theatrical projection in a properly blackened viewing environment.

               

              1. FOR GENERAL work, such as website use or YouTube for business, NGO, and government clients, they typically do the full process of the broadcast workflow, SDR, semi-darkened room, and to the Rec.709 specs. WITH the calibrated monitor on the breakout device.

              Although for this work, they typically don’t sweat the details as much as when they have to pass the dreaded QC machines. But they still work from a breakout clean feed device to the reference monitor.

               

               

               

              Everyone's mileage always varies ...
                Stan Jones
                Community Expert
                Stan JonesCommunity Expert
                Community Expert
                August 7, 2026

                ​@jimmywalter,

                I’ll emphasize what Kevin and Neil include: you must know what equipment you will be using in the theater. And if you won’t necessarily know from one event to another, you need multiple format versions available for the equipment you will have. So, for example, DCP if they have it, and .mp4 for most others. And the color setup and export may be different.

                If you have not used the DCP format before, it is not for the faint of heart.

                A lite version is still included in PR - I looked only at the 26.3.0 version today. I exported a 3:46 sequence, and it took it quite a while.

                Here is a link to an old discussion where I was involved because the PR lite version will NOT export subtitle sidecar, only burned in. And the QuVis website link to upgrade to the Pro version is no longer available. Today, the link in PR (in Export settings/Video section) works, but gets a 500 internal server error.

                The free alternative is to use DCP-o-matic (including a player), available here:

                https://dcpomatic.com/

                Stan

                 

                  R Neil Haugen
                  R Neil Haugen
                  Legend
                  August 7, 2026

                  And Stan caught that I left our a crucial word in an earlier post, about identical monitors NOT ever showing identical images … sigh.

                  Everyone's mileage always varies ...
                    R Neil Haugen
                    R Neil Haugen
                    Legend
                    August 6, 2026

                    First thing is to realize … there is no such thing as an Absoloute Color Control in pro video production. And yes, I learned this long ago, as … I work for/with and teach pro colorists.

                     

                    The first most colorists were taught is the factual matter of the beast:

                     

                    No human will ever see the same image you saw while grading the program. NO ONE. It is not physically possible. As even two identical monitors, carefully calibrated, side by side, fed the identical signal, will produce identical images on screen.

                     

                    Now through in the differences betwen hardware and software used to distrubute the program … none of which can produce identical results themselves …  the result is the realization that you have no control over what the user sees … ever.

                     

                    No two “identical” cameras produce identical image files … the color dyes over the sensors are imperfect, the pixel elements are certainly not perfectely identical, and all the hardware bits used within the camera have tiny but notable differences. The same thing goes for display of the images on the other end.

                    As has been often stated in pro colorist seminars, “You can’t change Gramma’s green TV”.

                     

                    So what do you do as a pro colorist?

                     

                    1. You setup your system as tight to the professional standards as possible for the distribution method  to be used by the project you are working on. This requires a proper viewing system, involving a highly accurate, calibrated pro level monitor or projector, in a properly setup room to DO grading in!
                    2. All changes to the image are done within that room’s setup. And at the end …
                    3. You release that into the Wild, where you have no control whatsofreaking EVER … and move on to the next project.

                    So … what is your viewing chain? Is it exactly like your type of distrubution model requires?  You say it’s going to theatrical release … are you working with a pro level projector in a carefully blackened room? If not … well … that’s problematic. As you are not working with the same gear as it will be projected by, and in the same environment for viewing as the final viewers will be.

                     

                    Kevin suggests using a DCP program, and that it an absolute must. Then take the file from that to a local theater, and have them play it for you in an auditorium, to see what it will sorta look like. Because even then on two ‘identical’ projectors, it won’t be totally identical when viewed. Probably very close but never identical.

                    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
                      Community Manager
                      Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
                      Community Manager
                      August 5, 2026

                      Hey Jimmy,

                      Thanks for the post. As you can see, color matching across devices and platforms can be a crapshoot. Try one of the Free DCP options out there and play it off the DCP player on your computer. I hope that whatever you choose works out best for your screening. See if you can do a test screening ahead of time to iron out all the kinks. Let us know how it goes.


                      Thanks,

                      Kevin

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