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Cole31589239mya9
Participant
March 27, 2024
Question

Interpret footage colour correction doesn't work

  • March 27, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 2204 views

I am a new adobe user and video editor so apologies if my terminology isn't accurate. 

 

When I import footage into premiere pro, the footage does not look the same as it does on iphone - it looks like a filter has been applied and I can’t get it to look natural. I've seen many posts for the common fix which is to change the setting in the modify clip colour tab, but it doesn't seem to work. None of the options look natural, they look either super saturated or super washed out and bland. I have also tried matching the sequence setting to the colour tab settings with no success. As a result I have been using capcut for footage I shoot with iphone because there are no issues there - which is not ideal. Shot on iPhone 14 pro max HDR, using premiere pro 2024 version 24.2.1 on MacBook OS sonoma 14.4. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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    2 replies

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    April 2, 2024

    It's rather straightforward ... you simply need to set your color management options correctly in Premiere for what you want to get. All found now in the Color Workspace, Lumetri panel, Settings tab. The tab named Settings.

     

    (Apparently you are a Mac user, which naturally (Apple being Apple) complicates things a bit but oh well.)

     

    Most users, Mac or PC, should have the Display Color Management option checked. Unless you have a very highly calibrated system to Rec.709 with a profile pass run ... and if you don't know about that, you don't. I've yet to see a manufacturer's calbration other than from Reference monitor suppliers like Flanders, Eizo, and the expensive Sony monitors that is actually the same as when a good puck/spectro & software calibration is run.

     

    Mac users should also check the Extended Dynamic Range option. I don't see that this does much on non-Retina monitors on Macs though.

     

    Auto detect log and auto tonemapping are interactive and should BOTH be on for nearly all users. Unless you are doing some high-end manual log to linear LUT work by 'hand'.

     

    Your sequence color space must match your export color space. So for a Rec.709 sequence, use only export presets that do not have a 'flavor' of HDR in the preset name. And for HDR exports, only use the presets which have your sequence color space in the preset name .... PQ or HLG.

     

    Viewer gamma is (thanks to Apple) a pick your poison option. As Apple's Macs without reference modes use an improper display transform for Rec.709 video imagery. 

     

    That this is an Apple issue is shown by the fact that Macs which have reference modes and are set to HDTV use the correct Rec.709 display transform.

     

    So ... if you only care about looking 'the same' on Macs without reference modes, use gamma 1.96/QuickTime. (On all other systems it will be dark and over-saturated.)

     

    If you want to have your clip appear in relative terms, on all systems, just like broadcast/streaming things show, use the gamma 2.4/broadcast setting. All professional Rec.709 media for broadcast/streaming is graded with gamma 2.4 set monitors. (And yes, the image will be lighter outside of Premiere on Macs without Reference modes. But the same as with all professionally produced media on that screen.)

     

    Or try to split the difference and use gamma 2.2/web. Which is ... used by some. Try it if you wist.

     

    But there is a colorist understanding I do recommend you learn about ... no one, on any screen, by any delivery method, will ever see the exact image you see on yours.

     

    Frustrating but true. So that is a large part of why pro colorists are trained to do two things:

    1) grade tight to the standard for the deliverable, and 

    2) after delivery, fuhgedaboudit. Move on.

     

    Because you have no control what so freaking ever as to how that looks on anyone's screen. The same device, an iPhone on a park bench at noon, then a dark bedroom at night, will "to the eye" show two different images of the same scene due to the change in the ambient environment.

     

    And every screen, even two "identical" monitors, will be different from every other.

     

    IF you grade to the Standard, then ... in relative terms ... your media will look like other professionally produced media does on any screen out there. That's all you can do.

     

    "You can't fix gramma's green TV."

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
    gourlie.goods
    gourlie.goods
    Participating Frequently
    April 2, 2024

    Neil, some useful advice there but I can attest for the OP that the problem isn't a simple calibrating monitor colorspace and things looking different between screens, it is fully an issue with Premiere not yet being able to specifically process iPhone video shot with the HDR setting turned on as described in his post.

     

    Even working in one system/monitor, HDR footage looks drastically different between playing a preview of the raw file using QuickTime or other player, importing into a Premiere sequence, and exporting that same clip (where it looks the most horrible... like really really horrrible). Trying to retain the original look without Premiere messing it up has been a problem we've been trying to get resolved for a while. 

     

    I usually advise people to turn HDR off when shooting because Premiere simply doesn't know how to interpret iPhone HDR footage yet, hence why I run it as-is through iMovie to strip the HDR profile which can then be used in Premiere and have it appear as you'd expect. But for us freelancers, we get the footage we get so we're left to find workarounds until Adobe provides an actual fix. 

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    April 2, 2024

    I totally agree with suggesting most users stay with SDR/Rec.709 for the time being. As most devices don't actually do HDR yet, and those that do handle one or two of the many competing forms ... but different ones with different devices.

     

    But even the ones that do supposedly handle HDR frequently don't do it all that well, or, they 'interpret' the 'feel' of the file for the best viewing experience. Rather than just showing the file. Which is why most of the colorists  I work with still feel HDR is the Wild Wild West of video.

     

    That said, I've seen some pretty nice HDR from iPhones handled through Premiere. So, at least at times and for some users, it seems to be working ok.

     

    I'm wondering if how the phone is setup, and what one expects of the Mac screens, is part of the issue?

     

    Another question, is are you working on a Mac with Reference modes?

     

     

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
    gourlie.goods
    gourlie.goods
    Participating Frequently
    April 2, 2024

    I run into this issue all the time as well from clients sending HDR footage. Luckily you're on a MacBook because the only solution I've found is to open the footage in iMovie and just export it as a file. This seems to remove the HDR profile and work as intended in Premiere. This will still cause an innacuracy with sequence previews and export (sequence previews appear warmer than when you export) but it gets you 95% of the way there.

     

    I wouldn't expect a better solution from Premiere, this has been an issue with Premiere ever since Apple released the HDR feature, even though this is a very popular setting for social media content creators. A past solution was to change the color profile to rec.2020 but that makes things look worse on the newest versions of Premiere. Adobe has proven remarkably unreliable with keeping up with the curve these days.

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