Premiere Import changes color | sony camera

A couple comments ... first, you want "consistency" ... well, as pro colorists are trained, every screen out there is different from every other, and no one will ever see what they see on their Grade 1 expensive & highly calibrated reference monitor and darkened grading suite.

Everything is ... relative ... to what people are used to seeing on that screen. Which is frustrating, but it is reality.

Next, Apple made things even mushier by using an incorrect display transform, essentially  gamma 1.96, but only on Macs without Reference modes.

As Macs with Reference modes, set to HDTV, will use the correct Rec.709 display transform function, roughly equivalent to gamma 2.4.

So in general there are two large groups of screens for Rec.709 ... Macs without reference modes, using QuickTime Player or Chrome or Safari ... and every other screen. Oh, and Macs without reference modes running VLC or Potplayer are in the second group also.

So pick the group you wanna produce for. If the non-ref mode Macs, then use viewer gamma of 1.96 in Premiere, and you'll be pretty close.

If everyone else, use probably viewing gamma of 2.2 unless you are in a darkened room for grading. If ... and only if! ... you have a properly fairly dark, neutral room, use the gamma 2.4 setting.

And once done, understanding that no one will every see exactly what you saw, release or deliver it, and get on with the next job.

just hope i could get a consistent view with the QT player, turning the CM on and setting the viewer gamma to 1.96 did work for standard rec709 videos, but not for xvycc 709 according to my tests, i've also tried importing it to other editing software like davinci resolve, the image is still a bit darker compared to the qt player

So I'm curious ... what do you want? As it sounds like your main consideration is you want one that looks the same outside of Premiere on your particular Mac?

Does it matter how other screens will see the file?

hey,  did u got any progress on this? i'm having the same issue. and i also have turned out the premier CM and also tuned my viewer to gamma 1.96, resulting in this almost the same but still darker image compared to the QT player as well.

Let me try a calibration of everything. On set monitors and editing monitors.

When I have some additional time I will set up a pulge and get back to you with what I see.

One thing you might be missing ... is there are millions of daily users of Premiere. Including many using advanced workflows with Red, Arri, upper Sony cameras. And they aren't posting here about problems.

So it would seem logical that other many other users are not having the same issues. Though some undoubtedly would in that massive user base.

Have you calibrated any of those monitors with a puck/software system, like the i1 Pro?

I ask because my BenQ PD2720U came with a pretty certificate of how accurate it was in Rec.709. Well ... so what. As naturally, I never ever trust an uncalibrated monitor.

So I ran a profile pass to check it, first.

And what came up was the white balance of the Rec.709 setting on that monitor was well blue. And it was running the white level at around 280 nits brightness. As well as the colors varied well off all over the scale. Not even in the same continent as a properly Rec.709 compliant screen.

After learning how to tweak the manual settings, prior to running a calibration pass, I could get a profile pass to show a solid low dE with correct charts ... both gamma and color response.

So it can be made to run at 100 nits "white point" brightness, sRGB primaries, within a point or two of D65, with a pretty gamma curve.

But that is not how it came from the factory.

How about trying a pluge ... put the bars & tone on a clip, export that. What do you see both inside and outside Premiere? And how do Premiere's scopes show the values of the pluge?

1. I am not using Apple Retina Monitors. I am using 99% sRGB color-accurate monitors.  Just like the 100% sRGB monitors I use during recording on set. I am very aware of the importance of keeping a good color space throughout your workflow for print, video or web. This way when I design or shoot, what I see on set is what I should get during editing.   That has now been affected by Premier and the settings do not seem to alter anything, other than make things worse.

2. Just so that other people who read this may be able to find the settings you are talking about: 

• Go into your Project Settings / Color

• Change your Viewer Gamma to 1.96 Quicktime, 2.2 Web or 2.4 Broadcast.

BUT, I have now tested all three of these settings in this same project and the color of the footage does not change at all if the "Display Color Management" is turned off.

2.4 Broadcast - Left is Premier and right is what I see on the camera and Quicktime/VLC viewer

1.96 Quicktime - Left is Premier and right is what I see on the camera and Quicktime/VLC viewer

 If I turn on "Display Color Management" and "Extended Dynamic Range Monitoring" under the Preferences / Color area, the color changes.  But NOT in a good or accurate way at all.

1.96 Quicktime is closer to what I see on the camera and my color-accurate display monitors on set, but it is still not fully accurate to what I should be seeing from the file and when compared to numerous other preview programs outside of Premier. It is still a bit darker and definitely more saturated.
- Left is Premier and right is what I see on the camera and Quicktime/VLC viewer

2.4 Broadcast is completely wrong in terms of what I see on my camera. If I had to shoot my footage to get it to look correct on these settings in Premier, the shot would be nearly blown out while on set... not that I would have any way to adjust my color space to match these dark and over-saturated settings while on set. This can not be acceptable for Premier editing. This is just plain nuts and I can't believe that Premier considers this acceptable!
- Left is Premier and right is what I see on the camera and Quicktime/VLC viewer

I get that having additional settings to control what you see is a good thing, but in terms of Sony footage being shot on professional-grade cameras and displayed on 100% sRGB preview monitors on set, Premier does not have a setting that now shows the footage the way it was actually shot. The program IS changing the color of the file during import, even when using Rec 709.  Again WTF Adobe?

Thank you for all your comments but this is SERIOUSLY frustrating that Premier is changing the file color appearance and messing up mine and I am sure numerous other production company workflows.  I now have no way to 100% know that the footage I see on set is going to look the same when imported for editing.  That IS a Premier issue and bug that needs to be resolved.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists. I've been through in-person and online discussions of the differences in CM between the Mac OS Colorsync and the rest of the world vis a vis broadcast Rec.709 standarts for years. I've taught Premiere's CM to colorists for years.

To and for people, who were the first adopters of DolbyVision for broadcast/streaming, and whom Dolby hired to do the in-house training vids for using DolbyVision in Resolve for professional delivery.

If I didn't know this stuff, accurately, they wouldn't associate with me let alone pay me.

I also work in Resolve, as I teach people who work in Resolve as colorists how to work in Premiere when they have to for whatever reason. And am working on teaching using the Tangent Elements and Ripple panels in Resolve using their new "Warp engine" so that Resolve users can set their own mapping of those devices. I ain't the worlds best editor ... that's a laugher ... but I do know a fair amount about color practices. In both Premiere and Resolve.

You, the user, can setup Resolve in all sorts of ways. Not surprisingly, for something that started out as a $250,000/seat colorist grading app.

A massive complaint about Premiere has been that we Premiere users couldn't set any color management things ourselves, because Premiere was hard-coded assuming the user had a broadcast standard Rec.709 viewing situation. Which Apple broke a few years back with the Retina monitors, using the camera transform function in replacement of the expected display transform function.

(My colorist buds are mostly Mac geeks, and they are furious with Apple over this "simply wrong Cm thing".)

So we Premiere users got first that "gamma compensation LUT", then the "Display color management" option, and finally, in the 24.x series, a pretty decent set of user controllable color management tools.

This is NECESSARY ... it is not a bug. And it works for the vast majority of users every flipping day. It is far more usable across workflows than what we used to have.

You say the Quicktime player view, on your Mac, shows what you feel is the accurate view of your shots. Fine. If a gamma 1.96 display transform matches your "accurate" view of the media, then ... well, bless you. Use it. It isn't "broadcast" pro level but then, if it works for you, go for it. I'm totally about the practical. Use what works for you.

Set the Premiere viewer gamma to 1.96. 

And ... Premiere is only applying whatever CM you have it set to do. You control that.

Rec.709, by the book standards, again, uses a display gamma of 2.4, and sRGB primaries. Premiere, when set to Rec.709, will use gamma 2.4 and full-on sRGB primary transforms. That is what you are complaining about ... display gamma of 2.4, sRGB primaries.

So you can now change viewer gamma to gamma 1.96. That should mostly fix your "brightness" problems.

Now try that with and without DCM on. With DCM on, Premiere looks at the ICC profile of the monitor, and tries to remap the image within the Program monitor to the ICC profile of the monitor in use. Including both brightness (think mostly gamma) and color remapping.

The color differences between Premiere and the Mac is due to the Mac doing a weird or perhaps unique remapping of sRGB color data to the P3 native color space of the Retina monitors.

With that in mind, turning on DCM may have Premiere remapping color within the P3 monitor space in a way you don't like.

Ergo ... try it with and without.

What works for you is what you will want.

But as someone running a very highly calibrated/profiled system, Premiere is actually giving the best choices for user CM use it has yet offered. And I have many folks on Macs I routinely communicate with, who are rather pleased that Premiere CM is finally emerging from the dark ages. Not nearly as many transform options as Resolve, but hey, it's vastly improved. 

I want more user controls, and more open-ness about the under-the-hood processing chain, as always. But, as-is, it's a ton more user friendly for varied workflows than it used to be.

If more complex and puzzling at times.

Your comment:
As if you want things to match QuickTime player, set the viewer gamma to 1.96. With the Display CM and Extended range settings both to 'on'

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I am not wanting the footage to look like Quicktime, I want the footage to look like what I shot on set. Premier is changing the look of the footage on import, PERIOD. The only reason I show Quicktime is that on the camera and in Quicktime, or even VLC viewer, the footage looks brighter and less saturated, just like I shot it. 
 
Then, once imported into Premier, the footage looks darker and more saturated.  How does Adobe expect videographers to shoot on-site with the look of their camera and just hope and pray that the footage will look the same once imported into Premier?
 
This has never been an issue before. Adobe needs to fix this since it IS a proven Adobe Premier issue bug!
 
 I have tried to adjust the color settings.  I am only seeing the two checkboxes under Preferences-Color and if I check these boxes the color gets WAY worse:

Can you please tell me where these other settings are that you are saying can be changed to fix the issue with Premier and their new color space?

This is frustrating.

You keep ranting, which is fine, I've certainly done epic ones.

But you won't spend 30 seconds to fix the problem you are having. The software works if you set all the needed things correctly,

It is not a bug for them to have added more user-settable color management controls. It is necessary.

But it does require the user to then set their needed controls as needed.

Which is all you need to do. And it does work with nearly all media at this time.