Adobe Premiere and Colour Gamut limited to BT.709

Thank you Neil. I know you don't mean to or try to be insulting. The fact that you say things that may be construed as insulting has nothing to do with your heartfelt intent. It's just a fact of life.  I won't bother trying to explain this to you anymore because you just don't get it.

No problems.. I understand what you are saying technically and you are helping so many people understand the technology what you might lack in diplomacy is of no consequence.   hehe...

I just chased down a rabbit hole just now. I shot 8 seconds of a house across the frozen lake the other day with a 300mm lens for full chip on a bmpcc 3/4, with crop factor of 2.88.. makes it 864mm. Raw 1080p, 23..97, cinemaDNG.

Wanted to see what vimeo would do with an export of mov DNxHD at 720p. I don't have pro version of vimeo and it was limited to 720p for me. I expected the conversion by vimeo to be to 720p, and whatever they do with the codec. They sorta like mp4, h264 I think.

For some stupid unexplainable rabbit hole reason, they made it full HD and it didn't fail to convert ( I had doubts if it would work).

Is 8 seconds.

It's very grainy ( noise) which I kinda LIKE. It adds another very subtle plane on top of image.  Like grain on prints you used to make in your darkroom.

P.S. I was typing my message while Neil uploaded his, so I didn't see it until now.

What you will find on the black magic forums AND sony forums or ANY forums, basically bears out what Neil is saying in terms of most common work flows, but that isn't the main point. The point is that you are NOT getting your original stuff destroyed by PPro.

It doesn't matter what most people do, unless you want to study the best way to do what you HAVE to do to get out the product for various media ( different TV's, DCI, etc. )  There's tons of info about that and the link I sent about stuff recommended by Netflix, believe it or not, is very informative.

Neil, unfortunately, has a habit of simplifying conclusions to the detriment of individual feelings. That you are chasing down a rabbit hole that doesn't exist is fundamentally insulting. You are just trying to state something you believe ( and happen to be angry about ) and trying to learn how to do what you want done.  It's a learning process.  You don't tell the children you love they are idiots because they don't hold the paint brush correctly the first time they are helping you paint the garage ( I still growl when I think of when my father did that, as I was just having fun and trying to help ).  People have to have patience and respect one another.

Conversely, trying to get some reaction beyond what you've already stated ( you belief and your anger ) is not being productive either. Time to move on.

Please don't be angry with me, but I do have some impressions from this thread.

Firstly, Jim suggested you just switch to Resolve right off the bat, early on in this thread. That way you can SEE on calibrated monitors with proper project settings, as close as you can get to DCP ( digital cinema projection) with current high end monitors. It won't be perfect, but close. Basically you can't grade color for cinema unless you do it within a cinema projection setting.

So that's one thing.  Jim suggested you just jump over to resolve for all of it. And you'll find out eventually what the limitations are for absolute control of cinema projection stuff as you refine your workflow to delivery.

Neil tried to explain that ppro does NOT clip or restrict the source material unless you export to a codec that is limited to rec 709. BUT you can't SEE your better colors in the source or program viewers, due to current workspace options in ppro. Plus he tried to explain that using the scopes with current scales is not very cool.

I tend to believe what Neil says cause he does an amazing amount of study and research and yappin with people about this stuff.

YOU claim that your tests PROVE that no matter what you do the color space is destroyed ( clipped, etc..) by ppro, as tested by you scientifically.  So, we have some fundamental difference of views.

I personally think you should be happy and satisfied with what you are doing and how stuff looks and how it ends up being exported, etc. I think the most important thing is that YOU are happy and satisfied.

This isn't Hyde Park Corner. Not a place to stand on soap box and rant nicely, but rant it is if there's no way to reconcile the conflicting viewpoints.

I know you'll do great stuff no matter what you do, so try to focus on the work ( the story and the magic of telling them to people who want you to express those stories to them ).

I posted this in "Adobe Premiere Pro Editors on Facebook" group, regarding how Premiere handles colour spaces. It was deleted twice be the Admin and then they blocked comments.

So much for open discussion and knowledge sharing.

After complaining and asking why were my posts deleted, here is a response from them:

" Diogo Pessoa Andrade, I skimmed your original post and I assume that what the admins saw (as did I) is that you walked into a barbecue restaurant and started screaming at people for not being vegetarian.

I disagree with your premise, as would most editors in this Adobe Premiere group."

I wonder why are they avoiding this topic to be discussed?

Here is what I posted there:

"Is Premiere a good solution for Professional Cinema? I am concluding that it is not a good tool if you aim to produce for Cinemas in a professional way, mostly due to the way Premiere handles colour spaces (Gamut).

It looks like that premiere can´t handle gamuts / colour spaces. As far as I realised Adobe Premiere works with BT.709 colour space. If you have footage that was recorded in a wider colour space such as S-Gamut, S-Gamut3, S-Gamut3.Cine or DCI P3, once you import footage in Adobe Premiere the colour space is affected and Premiere will clip the colour space to BT.709, a reduced color space used on the web non professional screening and displays.

It seams that the only way to avoid this is to do the editing and export a XML file. This won´t change the colour space because you will be working with native source footage when you open this XML file in another program such as DaVinci Resolve. Although, this may be tricky and you may experience problems when importing the XML file in DaVinci Resolve. So my conclusion is: If you shot your film in a video format using a wide colour space such as S-Gamut3.Cine or wider and if you plan to produce a film for professional theatre release, Adobe Premiere is not recommended to be part of your workflow. You will loose colour information at some point. You will start with a wide colour space, which will then be reduced / clipped when you do the editing in Premiere and then you will increase again the colour space to DCI-P3 when you produce the final version for digital movie projection. As far as I see it, Premiere is not a tool recommended for professional Cinema production. It might be cool for TV, Web production. But not for professional film production such as what is produced by Hollywood or any other professional Cinema Studios.

I have been using Adobe Premiere for many many years.... But this limitation of Premiere and the current project I am working now which involves footage shot in a wider colour space than BT.709, is not giving me many options. I think I will have to start learningis Davinci Resolve.

And in order to avoid any delays and possible issues when exporting a XML file from Premiere and importing it in Davinci Resolve I think the best way to go is to start with DaVinci from the very beggining of the workflow process.. This is my conclusion. It has nothing to do with having an HDR monitor. It has to do with how Adobe Premiere works.

I did import into Premiere video footage shot in S.Gamut3.Cine and also did tests with footage shot in S-Gamut and S-Gamut3 colour spaces and the result was the same. There is no way to keep these colour information once you edit and export footage in Premiere. No matter the export format and settings you choose.

In this Article from Sony they mention that:

"Often, gamuts used in professional video applications conform to ITU-R BT.709 (Rec. 709), established for HDTVs."

Premiere seams to do that but in a destructive way. There is no way to keep the colour space along the workflow if you edit, grade and export inside premiere. You will end up with a reduced colour space not suitable for professional cinema distribution.

Any comments are welcome.

http://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/support/ilc/movie/en/grading/02.html"

P.S. you said you're using SDI out to a monitor I think. If it's Aja it won't work with resolve. Must be black magic.

If you ever do HDMI to SDI capture, there's a cool newish HDMI to SDI converter that works good with black magic extreme 4k thing, and you can use that with your atomos thing...it will pass through the HDMI stuff ( this would be for studio or set type work or small location interiors I guess mostly). So you could see a larger screen than the atomos.. as well as the atomos I guess... but you know what I mean. Can go straight to reference monitor SDI from atomos or to capture thing, whatever.

It might be wise to read that stuff the link above refers to, so that when you start using Resolve with your material you set it up right when you start a new project for it.

That would probably be AFTER you do the tutorials to learn the program via their book and downloaded files. You'll get a good idea from tutorials how to use the UI for media, edit, fairlight ( sound), fusion (VFX and compositing), and delivery.

The book assumes one monitor so some tool locations are different when using 2 monitors. But if I could do it you sure can.

good luck

Soooo, in conclusion....

you need a monitor that can show you what you want to see (4k wide gamut, etc. etc. with DCI P3 for cinema.)

You can't do that with PPro right now.

Things appear to be changing rapidly with all technology including TV's and Computers etc.

In old days TV's hated closed black and hot white. Hence, 16-235 scale. That was safe for old TV's. New TV's can show more than old ones.

The 0-255 number is what your computer monitor ( typical computer monitor ) can display.  It doesn't mind closed black or hot white like old TV's did.

Those numbers and the old IRE scale are changing to meet new stuff, including High Dynamic Range ( HDR) and Wide Gamut cameras and TV's and computer monitors.

PPro cannot SHOW ( in the program viewer or the source viewer ) anything other than REC 709.  It is not clipping the source material. But if you shot wider gamut than that you can't see it no matter WHAT kind of monitor you have.  If you go to resolve you can't SEE a wider gamut there either, unless your monitor is a wide gamut monitor. And that will be limited to specific color stuff and frame rates .. a lot of research necessary to pick the right monitor to edit final grading for cinema projection...

When you have THAT monitor than you can use Resolve and see what you have for real.

If you don't have that monitor you will be limited to the monitor you actually have.  Most monitors ( like mine ) is limited to full HD and Rec 709.  So that's OK, cause I'm never gonna edit a movie for projection.

I do use Resolve, so when I put raw (cinema DNG ) into it I start a new project and tell the program I am using that stuff ( which is raw 12 bit (in this case nothing to do with color bit depth , like 4.2.2. etc. and most raw cameras need to be debayered before it becomes an issue re: color bit depth ..

In my case I just get the flat stupid high dynamic range of the cinema DNG, like pro res looks flat too, right ?? -- and I set my timeline to black magic film setting and I can start doing color stuff.  To Rec 709, which is the only thing my monitor can display.

If you don't have a monitor you can calibrate to something for color work you'll be stuck with adobe RGB ( bad cause that's for printing photos) or sRGB.  You need to calibrate a monitor to be Rec 709.

So first off, you can't see stuff your monitor can't show you.

You can't see anything other than rec 709 using ppro.

People shoot a lot of episodic TV with Arri and Red cameras. TV is rec 709. That's why they can use ppro to do the work.

Premiere will convert all media on a sequence to 32 bit float for internal processing. With the exception of a few "Obsolete" color tools/effects that very few use.

The scopes scaling in Lumetri are confusing. The standard RGB Parade and Waveform scopes have a right side scale with numbers 0-255, which causes people to think it works in 8 bit "full" or "data" levels.

Wrong. It always processes in 32 but float. Period. The right side scale shows essentially "monitor" values. Set the Waveform scale type to YC, suddenly the right side scale for most formats/codecs is 16-235.

Well, that's still 8 bit, right?

Wrong. The bit depth is whatever the media started as. They just don't have the UI set to change numbers on the screen according to a clip's individual bit depth. You have to know that with 10-bit media the bottom number is actually 64.

On export, the range and bit depth are determined by the format/codec chosen for the export. Use say an image sequence format, you might be exporting 12 bit at whatever dynamic range the original clip possessed.

The export processing is original media/32 bit float/export format-codec. Rec.709 would be involved for any format/codec chosen that by standards is Rec.709.

The problem working with wide gamut media in Pr is the app is set to *display* Rec709 sRGB and gamma 2.4. Clicking the HDR options in the Lumetri header menu and the Scopes menu change the scales for scopes and give you controls for wider range in Lumetri including a fourth color wheel for HDR highs.

However, you have to work from the scopes reading as the program monitor can't properly display HDR imagery.

There are a lot of wider gamut and HDR material edited in Pr. But much as I can do with color in Pr, I would not work wide-gamut or HDR media in Lumetri. That's best done still in an app with controls for color spaces like Resolve or Avid or Baselight.

And yes, they need to add user control of color space/profile and the ability for internal monitors to be set accordingly with the user needs.

Neil

The only solution is to edit in Premiere...export the timeline in a XML [for] DaVinci Resolve.

The other (better) option is to do all the work in Resolve.  It's leaps and bounds ahead of PP on Color, but fairly equal for Editing.