Media Encoder not retaining camera metadata - possible?

[RM_03]

Hi everyone

I work at a film school where we shoot on a mixture of cameras, but mostly ARRI. ARRI Cameras have a wealth of metadata in their original files but it all disappears when trancoding material in Media Encoder (say from ProRes 4444 to ProRes (anything)). Yes there's a metadata option that supposedly preserves all - but it does no such thing. I'm not expecting media encoder to necessarily keep everything (like lens used, shutter angle etc - though that would be great) - but it doen't even keep basic gamma info - like whether it was shot in linear or Log...

Perhaps there are new features in the Premiere Pro 2025 / Media Encoder 2025 offerings to this end? Or is there something I'm missing? If not it seem strange with Adobe's apparent desire for more professional colour managment workflows within Premiere that this is a bit of a gaping gap.

Any pointers gratefully received (adding metadata manually file by file or afterwards is unfortunately not feasible)

Thanks.

[Simon_Du]

Hi,

since ALEXA 35 (ARRIRAW and Apple ProRes),  We (ARRI) is using a new file header SMPTE RDD 55

We also offer an MXF Library in our ARRI Partner Program for reading/writing our metadata. 

As a workaround it's possible using our ARRI Reference Tool (ART) for writing *.json metadata sidecar files or for transcoding ARRIRAW into AppleProRes incl. our metadata.

I'm not sure what's technically possible on Adobe side using, showing and writing our metadata with Adobe Premiere Pro or AE, but we will try reaching out our contact at Adobe about this. 

Kind regards,

Simon

[RM_03]

Hi Simon

Thanks for your reply. It would be great if Adobe can see value in retaining ARRI metadata through their app workflows. Of course what's possible in their current code base is a mystery, but if you can encourage them to think about possibilities that would be fantastic.

Thanks so much.

Ben