Color problem for media in Premiere Pro (grayed out or overexposed)

Question

Hello everyone,

Since a little while, on one of my premiere pro projects, I have a problem with my medias which, in my timeline, are grayed out (the white is not white but light grey)

So I did some research on google and I saw that I could change the active color space in the secance properties. Basically (when it's gray), I'm in rec. 2100 HLG. So I was able to change to rec. 709. But now the media are overexposed and don't have much white contrast.

Namely that most of the videos are iphone videos but even with gopro videos or videos taken from internet, I have the same problem.

I think maybe it's a sequencing problem but I don't know which one.

Thanks in advance for your answers!

R Neil Haugen · Answer

First, working in HDR formats is way more complicated/complex, and realistically, the vast majority of screens out there either don't handle HDR at all or do it poorly at this time. With all the competing HDR ... formats, whatever ... it's far worse than the Betamax/VHS "war" at the beginning of the video tape era.

There's a bunch of different HDR formats that screens and devices can use, and they don't intermix well. That's reality at this time.

It really is the Wild Wild West. I've got a lot of time in discussions on this, as I work for/with/teach pro colorists, a few of whom were the earliest of early adopters, and actually were hired by DolbyLabs to create the inhouse tutorials for pro colorists on how to successfully work in DolbyVision to deliver content for b-cast & streaming services (Netflix et al).

Yet most pro colorists have yet to deliver a single paid HDR gig. So ... you wanna work with HDR, you gotta accept the territory. Which is ... totally non-obvious, and constantly shifting as changes happen with cameras, device specs, everything. SDR ... "standard" Rec709 ... is far more predictable and usable still.

That said, I've seen some of my content on a Flanders $30,000+ pro HDR Reference montior that runs to 4,000 nits (!!!!!!!!!!!) without any auto-brightness crud ... and um ... wow ... that was an amazing experience.

That was back in April 2019, and they've had difficulty even GETTING panels to make the monitors from since then. The main supplier of those panels has gone belly, so ... even getting monitors that work reliably up to 1,000 nits at this point is very, very difficult.

So ... work in HDR, beware the troubles ahead ...

For Pr at this time, taking HDR captured media into a Rec.709 workflow

Select one or more clips in the Project panel/bin
Right-click/Modify/Interpret Footage
At the bottom, for HLG iPhone media, set the Override-To option to Rec.709
With the sequence active (blue focus line around sequence panel) make sure the Sequence Settings from the main menu bar show a Working Color Space of Rec.709
Redo any color you've done to any clips up to this point
For export, use only presets that do NOT have HLG or PQ in the preset name.

Alternatively, if the Sequence settings for auto-tonemapping is on, you may be able to skip the Intepret Footage color space change. Test this first of course!

Neil

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