Gamma shift when using media players or YouTube

[James Paulley]

I have my colour workflow set to Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 accross the board. So Photoshop, AE, Premiere are all set to the same profile. Everything looks fine in Adobe's apps. I can play the files back in Premiere and as long as I have the Lumetri Colour viewer gamma option set to Gamma 2.4, they look fine. Same in AE, they look fine. When I view the files in various media players and on YouTube, the brightness is shifting. What is the best approach here? Should I be rendering a final version out with a gamma shift for uploading to YouTube? Would this be done by setting an output profile to sRGB Gamma 2.1 in the render module? I've seen people using a weird QuickTime Gamma LUT too. What a headache! I just want to upload videos to YouTube and have them look the same as what I can see in Creative Suite. I'm not overly technical so I'm just after some simple, practical advice. Thank you!

[Warren Heaton · Accepted solution]

For YouTube and social media, you want to be using sRGB IEC61966-2.1 under File > Project Settings > Color.

On the Premiere Pro side, make sure that the Viewer Gamma is set to 2.2 Web.  If needed, override Source Clip Media Color Space to sRGB.

A low-key picture quality check is to upload your exported video to FrameIO (included with our Adobe subscription) and check the playback on an iPad before publishing it elsewhere.

[James Paulley]

Thank you.  I have been working in rec 709 Gamma 2.4 mainly because when I preRender stuff as MOVs in After Effects, when I import them After Effects sems to assume they are rec 709 gamma 2.4 and I have to go to Interpret Media and change the media's profile every time. So I just thought it would be easier to work in Rec 709 Gamma 2.4. Do you know if it's possible to change that behaviour?

If not, could I work in Rec 709 Gamma 2.4 and then right before final export change the project colour space to sRGB?

Why does viewing it on an iPad specifically provide a good test?

Thank you!