Colour grade not exporting with Premiere Pro

Hey man,

I had the same problem. Im using a a PC and noticed that most of my color grading did not export. I used windows media player to play my exported video and that is why it looked washed out. I played the same exported video using the windows default app "Film & TV" and VLC and all the color grading was there. So in my case, it was windows media player that made it look washed out. Hope this helps you.

Cheers,

Hi all,

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​Thank you to all who have commented on this issue, I am disappointed to have discovered it, not least since the investment of an iMac Pro has highlighted it.

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The current solution is to use my old iMac as a target monitor and use that to check colours on (which is crazy, I know) but since Adobe Premiere Pro DOES NOT allow you to change the colour space of it's own Program Monitor window the only other way is to grade footage and then throw another adjustment layer on top so it looks correct on export.

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​I am told that Adobe are working on a solution to this issue (just allow us to change the colour space of the Program monitor - problem solved) but this will happen faster if YOU get involved and request the feature.

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​You can do this here:

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​Creative Cloud Wishform (not product specific)

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​Once again, thanks for all your input.

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​Alex

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I should add that allowing the PPPro program monitor to map correctly to the i-mac's wide gamut space would not have anything to do with the export being targeted for Rec 709. Those two things are independent of each other. The Rec 709 space is appropriate since it is the standard for broadcast and also because video is not currently able to embed and use color profiles. This is just like the early days of photo images on computers when there was only one RGB standard and it was assumed to be the profile for all devices...I think that was where standard RGB, or sRGB came from originally...

OK, this took me a while, but I have figured this out. The reason you weren't seeing the problem with your 2011 I-mac or your 2014 MacBook Pro is because those screens are not as wide gamut as your new i-mac pro. Here is the problem, since PP Pro doesn't allow you to make the program monitor adjust for your wide gamut screen, what happens is that the Rec 709 space, being a relatively narrow color space, (like sRGB), is inappropriately mapped to the wide gamut screen. As you can see in Photoshop, if you have an sRGB image file but you ASSIGN a wide gamut profile, such as Adobe RGB, you will see that the image becomes very saturated. This is essentially what is happening in PP Pro on your new i-mac. If you have a calibration device, you could calibrate your i-mac and make it emulate an sRGB gamut screen. Now the problem with that is that when you watch your videos on YouTube or vimeo, they will be even more washed out since you are emulating sRGB. IMHO, every video editor should be working on at least 2 screens, so the practical work -around while we wait for Adobe to come to their senses, is to have a second screen emulating sRGB and that is where you should put the program monitor panel. Keep your i-mac screen set to the i-mac profile, or better yet, profile is to something like D65, 120 cd/m2, and native gamma. That way, your web browsers will look good, & your play back with Quick Time will look good, and so will YouTube and vimeo.  VLC, will look over saturated on the i-mac screen since it has the same problem as PP Pro, namely being stuck in Rec 709, but it will look good on the second screen that is emulating sRGB. This may not be as belt and suspenders a solution as a dedicated broadcast monitor, but at least your clients won't question your abilities. I happen to be working with a Mac Pro, so I have 2 external screens, one is an NEC multi sync PA272W, which can be profiled to a wide range of working spaces including Adobe RGB, sRGB, Broadcast tv, and even Digital Cinema via its excellent Spectra-view software. I highly recommend this monitor if you are looking for a monitor to sit beside your wide gamut i-mac. My other monitor is an Eizio, which I have deprecated to run in sRGB emulation. I have profiled the Eizo with the Color Navigator software and an X-Rite Color Munki. It is easy to convert the Eizo back to a wide gamut profile when needed. I sometimes edit video on my 2013 MacBookPro, and I don't see such a problem because the MacBook Pro screen is not wide gamut, which hides the problem (even if the problem is still there)….  hope this helps...

Am I right in assuming the original title of this post "Colour grade not exporting with Premiere Pro" is a bit overstated?  Your color grades ARE exporting, they are just not exactly looking the same when you view them in certain players?

It's not a new problem, and it's small enough that it has gone largely unnoticed for the vast majority of people.  But video pros have been battling hardcore with this problem for something like 10 years - no joke.  It's quite possible that your eye is just now picking up on it.  I remember that moment for myself - crazy-making!

To be absolutely clear about the "wrongness" I am talking about - it's not a huge wild shift.  It's a slight lift in Gamma - meaning that absolute black point and absolute white point are not affected, but the midtones a lifted a bit.  This causes the image to look a little less contrasty and sometimes a bit washed out.  But I'm not talking about wild shifts here. 

If you are experiencing crazy big shifts, that is something YOU are doing I am very sorry to say.  This small display gamma problem will most likely sail right over your clients head.

Grade your project and make it look good in PPro on a monitor that you trust - then export using one of the Vimeo presets.  It's as simple as that.

This is part you are not going to like - Safari and Chrome will display your video incorrectly - it's not Vimeo's fault - it's not Premiere Pro's fault.  But try viewing your video in Firefox, or on your phone, or on a smart TV.  As R Neil Haugen has mentioned, the best we can do is stick to the standards and not try to out-guess them. 

Welcome to the wild wild west of video color management.

jsyboy75 has put his finger on the problem and that is that Adobe has rigged PP Pro to ALWAYS have the program monitor display rec 709 NO MATTER WHAT the actual monitor profile is. This is being done behind the scenes and there are no controls to override it. That is fine if your output is ALWAYS going to be displayed on a reasonably new or calibrated TV screen, but since anything exported from the timeline in PP Pro is "untagged" in terms of a color profile, the export will display in the monitor color space, which for most of us is NOT rec. 709. If you want to see it in rec. 709 on your computer, you need to profile your monitor to rec. 709. This is true both for QuickTime and for Vimeo and YouTube as displayed on a wide gamut screen. The closer the computer monitor is to sRGB or rec 709, the closer QuickTime and Vimeo and YouTube will look to what is ALWAYS displayed in the PP Pro program monitor. Neil is correct with this statement..."One of the issues with PrPro is that some folks are now getting specs to deliver in P3 or Rec2020, and PrPro isn't really setup to do that. Which is why we all need more color managing tools so PrPro isn't only Rec709.

I don't know if it's sRGB but it doesn't change. Agreed, however this is not for personal use - an iMac Pro may be overkill for the home user!

As R Neil Haugen suggests, the first thing you should do is set your display profile to Rec709 Gamma 2.4.  That is the first step in being able to trust anything you see in PPro or out.   Then - it sounds to me like you may be getting sucked into the dreaded Quicktime player gamma issue. I recommend using VLC player to evaluate your exported files.  If it looks the same in VLC player and the Premiere Pro program monitor, that rules out other issues  Quicktime player has had a LONG standing issue with displaying video at the wrong gamma setting and there is no way to force it to display correctly - in short, do not use Quicktime player to QC videos.

When you bring exported footage back into PPro it SHOULD look exactly the same as the project in the Program Monitor.  If it does not, you've got some other problem

And now on to the real fun - web browsers are also mostly displaying things at the wrong gamma.  Try comparing your video on Safari/Chrome/Firefox.  In my experience, Firefox looks "correct" while the other two do not.  One approach to mitigate this is to over-grade (as you state above) for web delivery.  Of course, this does not instill confidence, does it?

In the end, Premiere Pro does create accurately renders; if it does not, you have a problem that can be fixed.  The real problem is with players and browsers not displaying these files correctly.