Participant

Question

Adobe Not Compatible with iPhone

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
May 9, 2022
3 replies
2853 views

I've completed courses in Premiere Pro and I am frustrated as I bought an iphone 3 weeks ago, I took circa 200 videos on it while traveling and I have now been advised by Adobe that Premiere is not compatible with the files in the latest iphone?! I know they may not be able incorporate functions into Premiere for all types of gadgets but for something as popular as iPhone, I find this very frustrating. The only way they said to work around it is to individually create imovies for every single file (without HDR) and then save them out again as Premiere Pro. This is just too messy and time-consuming for someone who takes 100's of clips. They have not even advised that they are looking into compatibility in the future? Anyone else been having this issue? I don't see the point in me paying for Premiere Pro if it's not compatible with my files. I would prefer pay towards Final Cut etc.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

If it happens to be the iPhone 13 Pro or 13 Pro Max, shoot ProRes. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/record-prores-videos-iphde02c478d/ios

If it's an older iPhone, select all of your iPhone clips in the Finder, right-click and choose Encode Selected Video Files. When the options dialog box appears, choose ProRes. This is effectively the same as importing the iPhone clips into Final Cut Pro and creating optmized media for editing.

To transfer clips quickly from an iPhone to a Mac, use Image Capture or Photos while the device is connected. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302

I prefer Image Capture as it's more like copying files from a hard drive and avoids them becoming part of the Photos Library.

Now the FiLMic Pro supports FrameIO Camera2Cloud and Premiere Pro includes FrameIO, it's worth taking a look at that approach as well. As you shoot with your iPhone, your clips show up in the FrameIO panel in Premiere Pro. https://support.frame.io/en/articles/6128936-c2c-filmic-pro-quickstart-guide

P

Phillip Harvey

Community Expert

They don't tell you in the commercials what a pain in the ass it is to work with media from phones. Is it compatible? Yes. Does it have a bunch of things that will make a smooth post production workflow more complicated? Yes.

Issue #1: HEVC. Anything shot in 4k or in High Efficiency mode is going to give you HEVC, which is one of the worst video codecs for post production. (The new iPhone 13's can record into ProRes but I haven't tested that.)

Issue #2: Variable Framerate (VFR). Premiere (like many other NLE's) is based on a constant framerate. So having a framerate that's constantly fluctuating is going to cause all kinds of issues like errors, playback problems, audio going out of sync, etc. The combination of VFR and HEVC can give you borderline unplayable media.

"Issue" #3: HDR. HDR is still a niche thing to be working with. 99% of all content consumed is going to be Rec709. If you want to work in the HDR space then you'll need to do a little more research on that, have equipment that can properly monitor it, etc. @R Neil Haugen is a great resource for learning about that kind of thing and he has already provided some links.

The reality is that lots of workflows require extra prep time and transcoding to prepare media and projects for smooth editing - even if you haven't shot on a phone. Shooting on a phone is going to require a lot of that extra post-production handling if you want it to behave smoothly and predictably.

Would FCX be better if an Apple Phone is essential to your process? I certainly hope so. They design all their stuff to work well together.

anitak67127336Author

Participant

Thanks Philip, first time iphone user here and I was not expecting such issues alright! I know this is not an Apple issue (HDR) but wishing I had not changed right now! I find the moving of edited files back onto an iphone time consuming too seeing as you have to drop them to icloud first and then download them to phone (unless I still haven't figured this out correctly yet). I looked into FCX but looks like you need a Mac to use it (which I don't have)? Now I see why people end up buying all of the Apple products to work together! This is why I was against them for so long lol Thanks, I will continue to read up on the articles about all of this.

P

Phillip Harvey

Community Expert

Yep, that's how Apple gets you stuck in the Apple world. I mean I've used both PC and Mac in my time so I feel pretty neutral about what platform I'm on (although I would be wary about buying a new Mac for editing with Premiere these days because it still seems like there are a lot of random issues with the M1 chips).

I don't work with phone clips much outside of just personal messing around. The workflow that I've tested for correcting a bunch of phone-related issues at once is to batch encode with Shutter Encoder. You can transcode the HEVC to something like ProRes 422 LT (going from a terribly optimized video codec to a very optimized video codec), and Shutter Encoder is able to correct the Variable Framerate while maintaining audio sync, and then there's also a setting in the Colorimetry tab that lets you change the color space to Rec709. The only real drawback to this situation is that your HEVC, which is highly compressed to be a low bitrate and small file size, will now be a larger file size to maintain the quality in a good editing codec. You could probably do the exact same thing but go to H264 if that was too much of an issue.

Again, I haven't stress tested this workflow with actual edits professionally. And I don't have the HDR setting on for my phone. I've only messed around with it since so many people have phone issues and I wanted to explore solutions. I haven't actually heard of needing to take the clips into iMovie to change the setting there. It makes sense, I guess. I've only seen and tested the method of changing the color space either in Premiere or with Shutter Encoder (both yield the same looking results, so if the Premiere thing isn't working for you then maybe your iMovie workflow just gets you a more accurate conversion.)

R Neil Haugen

Legend

The issue is the iPhone is set by default to HDR ... to the HLG format, specifically.

Very, very few screens either monitors or TVs at this time really work well with HDR media. So fiirst, for the time being, you'd get more usable media setting the phone to SDR/Rec.709 standard video media.

Second ... for all of the HLG files you've got, simply select one or more in the project panel, right-click/Modify/Interpret footage ... go to the color management settings at the bottom, and set the Override to Rec.709.

And if you keep recording HDR media, you need to learn about Premiere's color management stuff.

Neil

FAQ:PremierePro 2022 Color Management for Log/RAW Media

How to Set Monitors for HDR work in Premiere Pro 2022?

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

anitak67127336Author

Participant

Thanks Neil, yes I'm used to working with the colour management settings, aware of HDR screens etc. and I had already set up Premiere Pro to Override.709 etc. within Premiere Pro. However, this does not rectify the quality issue in my case (it is not the colour quality but poor hazy video quality that still shows after doing all of this). Adobe advised that the solution is to first save each clip in imovie, unclicking HDR setting, and then resave the clip on my phone before moving it to Premiere Pro. This is working but extremely time-consuming and resulting in several files for each clip. I guess I will just need to turn off the HDR setting on the phone going forward.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

After setting the Override to Rec.709, you will still need to work with Lumetri to get correct contrast/exposure/saturation on a Rec.709 timeline.

I've not found an iPhone file yet I couldn't 'fix' quickly, btw.

Bring up the scopes in the Color workspace, you'll need at least the Waveform either in RGB or YC no chroma, and the Vectorscope YUV.

Look at the image in the waveform scope, where's the top 'white' value, bottom 'black' value ... compared to the center 50 nits reading on the left-side scale. If the values exceed the 100 mark, bring Contrast down. If not ... next step.

Use Exposure to move the total signal up or down to center it on the 50 mark ... then increase Contrast to extend the values closer to the top and bottom of the scale.

Now look at the image ... does it need to be a bit lighter or darker? Use the Basci tab shadow/highlight controls to adjust.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded