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December 25, 2018
Question

COLOR SPACE at export in Prores

  • December 25, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 12644 views

Merry Christmas everybody !

We edited a feature film in Premiere Pro and preparing for final steps of postproduction now.

Source material is from a Canon C300 Mark 2 (98%) and in smaller amounts also Sony Alpha 7s Mark II (2%).

As there was plenty of reframing and panning done, the postproduction facility who will do the color grading agreed to work on a Prores 4444 file (rebuilding all the reframing would be way to time consuming / expensive). The Prores file for grading we want to export from our Premiere Pro timeline.

Only requirement by the postproduction facility is, that the Prores files have to have the same color space like our source material.

My question now - how do I make sure this works properly ? I understand Premiere Pro does not have any opportunity to edit / change color spaces. But what happens upon reframing shots ? Is this considered an effect and some background RGB conversion applies ?

Our idea for an exporting workflow is to separate Canon and Sony materials to their own timeline and export each one out of Premiere Pro as a Prores 4444 - with the following key settings in the Premiere Pro export window:

Format: Quicktime

Preset: Match Source (rewrap)

Video Codes: Prores 4444

Check Box: "Render at Maximum Depth"

Check Box: "Use Maximum Render Quality"

Uncheck Box: "Use Previews"

As the whole process of color space management is happening in the background, I hope this will present us with a decent outcome and not compromise our footage...

Is there anything of importance to consider ? Any trap - or anything else we might have missed ?

Any comment or advice on this would be highly appreciated !

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Mo Moolla
Legend
December 27, 2018

This is an interesting one but. no complex to solve at all.

I will have ti reply tomorrow though. Its 1am and I need to get into a meeting very early tomorrow.

So you are shooting 10bit and can't see the bit depth in AE.

AE shows 8 and 16bpc and of course 32 bit (floating)

Are u shooting HDR content?

Also please state the RAW Footage codecs for both cameras incl fps, res and bit rate.

Just need these answers if you don't mind?

Will revert soonest if someone else doesn't do it first

Mo

December 28, 2018

Sorry - now I was unavailable for a while. Here are the requested facts - hope you can abstract the German descriptions

R Neil Haugen
Legend
December 25, 2018

Pr works internally in 32-bit float on most things. If you are using a GPU render max depth is unnecessary as that just tells the app to do GPU- depth render if no GPU is present.

Pr exports as it works  ... Rec.709/gamma 2.4. For screen use you may wish another space, and take your final print from Pr into Resolve is one way to export to other spaces for specific needs.

For features, they have a "Hollywood" section for those working in feature films. Headed by David Helmly and Karl Soule. You can find them by searching the web, and they would have the best advice and resources to help with features needs.

Also, in general, the most in-depth complete look at using Pr in various workflows is Jarle Leirpoll's ebook "The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro" found on his site.

premierepro.net

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
chrisw44157881
Inspiring
December 25, 2018

I was hoping you'd delve into the large color gamuts that the Canon C300 can use.

afaik premiere will clip those color gamuts into rec. 709 with luts. it has some rec. 2020 support that I haven't fully tested. where's the documentation on all this stuff? It's like, every question needs a new manual. the latest I've read is Rec2020 EXR files are not currently supported as part of a Rec2020 workflow in Premiere Pro and scopes won't reflect rec 2020 color. I'm not sure about Prores yet or if it can even export rec. 2020.

Premiere Pro still not color matching After Effects (using EXR files)

Although, if premiere will dumb interpret all files into rec 709, then all of this is a mute point, especially if you don't need large color values for grading P3 primaries into theatres etc.

chrisw44157881
Inspiring
December 26, 2018

https://forums.adobe.com/people/R+Neil+Haugen  schrieb

Color space won't affect reframing and panning of course.

At a family dinner so can't respond further right now.

Neil

Hey Neil - please enjoy your dinner - this can wait ;-)

Just for the record - I'm aware that the color space does not affect the reframing and panning.

I want to export a Prores 4444 file out of Premiere Pro, so my reframing and panning is preserved.

BUT - I need the original color space of the source material (mainly MXF files with cinema gamut color space) in the Prores after export.

chrisw44157881​stated above that this is not possible - that is a problem as I do not want my footage to be converted to Rec709 color space.

Any ideas how to make this happen:

1. preserve refraiming and panning

2. preserve original color space of source material


all this stuff i tested in an older version, you'll have to test all over again for cc 2019 as I doubt you'll get a clear answer from adobe

proof that premiere clips at srgb colorspace

although i do find it fascinating that the old EXR bug I found for them a long time ago still isn't fixed....

the adobe help says it supports importing prores hdr rec. 2020. that's all fine and dandy, but if you can't export true rec 2020 because it rec 709 clips it as soon as you drop it into the rec 2020 timeline, true large gamut editing ain't gonna work. I guess you could export a xml to another grading app but xml's sometimes get messed up.

I don't know if they've fixed this either, if you shoot cinema DNG RAW. I'm not sure if it fully supports 3:1 compression or RAW color import(it used to add a rec 709 lut that blocks access to RAW data that you can't remove.

and here's a fun one. it used to be if using DNG, pan and scan code from AE and premiere is different. They used  slightly offset horizontal pixels from the aperture scan to the resolution pixels so vfx work may not align up, again, I haven't tested this in a long time, so I'd test this as well.

Good luck, beta tester.