Display Color Management With External Monitor

Report · Jun 05, 2020

Hi All,

I use a 27" iMAC pro to edit my footage in premiere. For those familiar with the iMAC P3 retina display you know the dreaded gamma shift issue that happens when exporting out of premiere. I've tried all the alternatives and while there are some decent suggestions, I never like to use workarounds.

As a result, I bought a 10-bit Benq monitor in my quest to achieve more accurate colors before export. Before I got an external monitor it was recommended that iMAC users enable the display color management feature to to account for the colors of P3 displays.

If i'm now planning on using the external monitor to color grade my footage from the premiere program monitor, do I still need to have display color management checked?

Additionally, what color profile would you recommend I set my external monitor to? Almost all of the work I do is viewed on the web.

Report · Jun 05, 2020

Here's a good additional resource to go through ... by Jarle Leirpoll:

How Display Color Management in Premiere Works

Pro video is nearly all produced to the full Rec.709 standards ... which are:

sRGB primaries
D65 white point
Rec.709 profile
gamma 2.4 (2.2 at times used in bright-room/web work)
brightness 100 nits

So, to have your material look relatively like other pro-produced material on whatever screen it is viewed on, the pro colorist will simply state: produce your work while your setup is as close to the standard as is humanly (and financially) possible.

Premiere is built for use on systems that adhere to the pro Rec.709 standards. Sadly, Apple chose to improperly apply only part of that clearly stated standard within their ColorSync utility. Yea, it's a right royal pain. That second monitor should help immensely.

I've a BenQ PD2720U monitor, and they have a claim of high calibration for that also. I tested the crud out of it on arrival, including running LightSpace profiling software connected with Resolve as a patch-generator to check color. Um ... no, not close. The Rec.709 mode was WAY too bright, up near 200 nits. The white point was closer to 63k, and the gamma was not ... even.

So after figuring how to set the monitor's controls while running a calibration with the i1 Display Pro puck/software, I finally got a very tight set of profiles when checked with the Lightspace/Resolve combo after calibration. I'm now pretty comfortable with color/gamma/brightness/shadows, but of course, my colorist friends do let me know that is not a Grade 1 Reference Monitor ... and yes, that is an official class of monitors.

It does for my web work. Including the tutorials I make for a pro colorist website, and no one there has complained about my images being 'off'. Ha.

I know many colorists who love their Retina monitors as a GUI monitor. I know of no colorist who would ever grade professionally on that monitor. (Yea, they're picky but they have to be.)

So ... calibrate it, then enjoy that BenQ!

Neil

Report · Jun 07, 2020

Thanks Neil,

Really appreciate that in depth and well thought out response. Totally undestand that the BenQ is no a grade 1 reference monitor. Knew that when I was buying it (don't have the budget for anything better). I bought it just so I could get something that could give me a bunch of different color profiles to check out and edit my work.

Given that link you sent, and what you are saying, it seems like if the BenQ is calibrated and set to Rec709, and i'm using it to grade my footage for the web, than it's not neccesary to turn on the display color management in premiere. Is that Correct?

Also, I thought the BenQ came factory calibrated. Are you saying that it's worth another calibration with the i1 displaypro? I have one and can run that calibration if neccessary

-AK

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Report · Jun 07, 2020

Hey, I'm running that BenQ of mine because the Flanders rigs I'd prefer cost rather a chunk more than I can justify from a business standpoint. And yes, I've been around full Grade 1 monitors and yea, I want one. Ah well.

The calibration of the BenQ units is not actually correct as far as I can tell. They had two Rec709 modes for mine, the normal one and a "darkroom" version. The normal ran brightness up to around 250 nits or so (I don't recall, the data is on my studio computer and I'm at home today). Which is WAY above the 100 nits in a semi-darkened room according to standards.

After getting the brightness down, I ran a profile using the Lightspace (free version) software connected with Resolve as the patch generator. It didn't show a particularly "tight" RGB profile nor correct gamma response. So I used the i1 Display Pro software to run a few calibrations, then checking with a profile from Lightspace. And yea, this took most of a day.

But by the time I was done the Lighspace profile generated was very, very tight for RGB and gamma, white point and brightness. dE values only approaching the 'visible' marker down in one spot in the deep shadows, and still not touching. I've had exports viewed by colorists on their full Flanders setups on rigs with external scopes, and they were all both within all standards requirements and looked good visually.

So my saturation and colors/tones all seem pretty accurate.

Uniformity ... no, this is not a Flanders or Eizo ... but then, it cost a lot less also. For the web work I do, it's fine.

I've tried it in Premiere with the Color Management option both 'on' and 'off', and there's not much difference. The exports that were checked were all with CM off.

Neil