Colors of Corrected Clips Changing Between Macbook Pro and Mac Studio

Question

Hello, I am hoping someone here can help me out, as this is driving me a bit crazy. I have a project created a few months ago in Premiere on my M2 Max Macbook Pro. I eventually continued work on my Mac Studio, and everything went as expected. However, today I opened the project again (after having to create a copy for the newer version of Premiere), only to find it has all kinds of issues. The biggest being that clips I had color corrected with Lumetri are now super-contrasty and oversaturated. In addition to that, Premiere gets stuck generating peak files about 60 seconds in from opening the project. If I attempt to do anything after that happens, the program monitor remains frozen, and when I attempt to quit Premiere, it crashes.

I took the drive and plugged it into my Macbook Pro, which it running the exact same version of Premiere. It opens it fine, performs fine, and there are no color issues. Everything is exactly as it should be.

So now I was very confused. I reinstalled an old version of Premiere on my Mac Studio, and opened the original project (not the copy for Premiere 2024), and it had the exact same problems! Colors all wrong, and gets hung up generating peak files.

Also, I noticed that now if I try and Modify>Interpret Footage on any of the clips, the entire color management section is greyed out. This was NOT the case before. The clips are MXF files from a Sony FX6, shot in Slog3. Previously there was a change to Premiere that would cause these clips to import with the Rec709 look already applied, and that was what seemed to be happening based on how the clips looked. But the fix for that was changing the color management settings. I do not believe this is the cause in this situation though, as I said everything looks normal on the other machine, and had been normal on this machine a couple months back.

It's really mind boggling to me. And a problem! I need to make updates to this video, and would prefer not to have to build it from scratch. Any help is much appreciated!

Hecubus114 · Accepted Answer

So, as these things tend to go, I figured out where the problem was coming from since I posted this!

I remembered I had installed the Sony Catalyst Prepare Plugin for Premiere on my Mac Studio. I had opened and worked with other projects since doing this, which is why it hadn't immediately occured to me that it could be the problem. But alas, I removed the plugin, and like magic everything works fine again.

Whew!

R Neil Haugen · Answer

There are differences between color handling internally on some Macs, as I've heard, and of course between Pr versions.

Pr 2023 was a different color managment/operational 'thing' from Pr 2022. And ... also in Pr 2024, it's got some new color management setups.

All of those ... differences between Mac setups, between Pr versions, will probably be in play here.

The Pr2024 (24.x series) has vastly improved CM processes, much easier for the user to control. But ... may initially "look" different from previous versions until you know how to set it up on your system.

So go to the Color Workspace, Lumetri panel in 24.x. There's a new tab, "Settings" ... where all of Premiere's color management controls now exist in one space, as I requested what, four years back now? Anyway ...

Project settings ... make sure that on Macs you have the Display Color Management option set on, and also the Extended Dynamic Range option. On Pcs, unless you have a full-on broadcast compliant system setup for monitoring via external device (not your GPU) ... also probably best to set DCM on, though EDR isn't needed as far as I know.

Also, set the auto log detection to On for most users.

Then in Sequence settings, set the auto-tonemapping to On. This will provide a vastly improved 'normalization' routine for most log formats over the old LUT based normalizations. It will probably look slightly different, but your pixels are probably safer. So you may need to slightly modify your color correction practices or presets with the new workflow.

Next, select the monitor setting. For Macs, well ... whaddaya want to get? Something that looks consistent on Macs, but don't care about broadcast standards/PC/Android viewing? Or ... something that is closer to b-cast specs, looks as expected sort of across PC/Android/TVs, but might be light on many Macs? Or ... ?

As Mac SDR/Rec.709 video display is handled differently than the rest of the systems do. That's why the biggie decision is in play here.

Setting the Display gamma to Quicktime 1.96, means you'll be looking at a Program monitor more closely resembling the QuickTime Player/Chrome/Safari views outside of Premiere on a Mac. (VLC typically doesn't allow Colorsync to mess with the image, so VLC will typically use gamma 2.4 even on Macs ... though not always.)

There is the "web" option of gamma 2.2 for display ... which is somewhat lighter in shadows than 2.4, not nearly as light as 1.96.

Then there's the broadcast/2.4 gamma setting.

Your choice.

One caveat: all colorists are taught that you set your system up as tight to the specs as possible, BUT ... understand: no one else will ever see exactly what you saw on your reference monitor. Not in broadcast, streaming/OTT, or theatrical release. Every screen out there will be different than yours.

So you grade to the standard, then let it go out Into The Wild. You have no control on any other screen. And if you set yours to the 'standard', then ... your media will look, in relative terms, like all other pro produced media on any screen.

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