Participant

Answered

iPhone 12 Footage Colour Completely Different When Imported into Premiere Proi

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
June 25, 2021
10 replies
58570 views

I've just been recording on my iPhone 12 and I've just imported the videos into Premiere Pro, and the colour is completely different to the original file?

It is really saturated and bright, but I haven't even touched any colour grading settings. I even tried to export it without touching any colour settings, and it outputs the video with this weird saturation,

This is the original file from the iPhone:

This is what happens as soon as I load it into premiere pro:

I've tried uploading the iPhone 12 footage to an old 2017 version of Premiere Pro that I have and I don't have this issue at all.

Has anyone seen this issue and got any advice?

Thanks!

Error or problem

Correct answer calvaryc37394405

I unfortuantely didn't get it sorted. I was on support chat, phone calls etc for a long time but nothing fixed it!

I just was on support chat and found a work around. If you import the footage into iMovie, when you're exporting, unselect HDR. Then it imported with accurate coloring. They said they are working on fixing this within the Adobe programs and it will hopefully be fixed in the upcoming updates.

A

AllFly

Participant

One thing I tried was importing the footage inito After Effects, because I needed small portions of clips in a sizzle reel I was making. I also sent it to Media Encoder and set the export option to be Match Source High Bitrate, that seemed to keep the color and intensity relatively similar. Obviously working in AE isn't practical for video editing, but it was handy in a pinch.

Z

z-z-z88

Participant

I had same issue, but fixed it:
1) In settings turn on Display color management

2) On video file: modify->interpret footage->color space override to rec 2020

3) when you export video use hevc(h265), otherwise in premiere pro colors will look fine, but exported video would be wrong again

R Neil Haugen

Legend

In that export, you need to use the HLG variants of the Hevc/H.265 export to keep consistent color space.

That's actually THE issue here ... you have to have consistent color spaces from clips through sequence through export.

Then it ALWAYS works.

Leave out one part, it breaks.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

T

Taylor25692933o0ma

Participant

Hi, I've read through this thread but I'm still not sure how to go about solving my issue. I am working with footage from an iPhone 12, editing on a PC, and trying to get the finished product back onto the iPhone for posting. I am getting really frustrated though because when I export there seems to only be one setting that will actually save to the iPhone photo library properly, every other codec fails even if it still output the same file type. I'm not super familiar with color spaces and codecs etc. so sorry if I missed something in this thread

This is what the footage looks like on my phone:

This is what it looks like in the premiere pro preview:

When I match sequence settings or use HLG it exports looking much better but won't save on iPhones properly. This is what that looks like:

When I export with QuickTime it's super overexposed and there are parts where you can't see anything, but it will save on iPhone. This is what that looks like:

Is there anything I can do or am I just screwed to using horrible export settings so that it will work with iphone storage system.

G

GraphosDiseno

Participant

I'm really frustrated too... im about to get fired just beacuse my client do not understand alll this technical stuff... for her is "if i can do it in my baby editing software as is iMovie" why you can't get the same result in you super pro software?... you can't... well bye!".... Do i need to run and buy an iMac and do my stuff in dumb iMovie???? This is just uuuuugh!

R Neil Haugen

Legend

First, HDR is still the Wild Wild West. Seriously!

I work for, with, and teach pro colorists. Some of them were the first adopters of DolbyVision for streaming/network use, and were hired by Dolby to produce the in-house training for professional use of DolbyVision.

But most of the colorists I'm around have still never delivered a single HDR show for a paying client. They're studying & practicing at it, but ... haven't had a client pay for it yet.

And most screens do a poor job of displaying HDR if they can handle it at all. SDR/Rec.709 is still the most reliable game in town.

Next ... if you need to deliver HDR for a client ...

make sure that you have the Preferences options for both Display color management AND Extended range monitoring when available checked
make sure your OS and monitor BOTH show you are working in HDR
check your clip properties and use the clip-level color management to set them to Rec.2100/HLG
check your Sequence settings, and make sure that is set to Rec.2100/HLG
make sure the Project settings for Graphics White are set to 203
make sure the scopes are in the Rec.2100/HLG color space in the lower left corner of the Scopes panel
probably set grading while using the 10 bit scope scales (lower right of scopes panel)
keep the 'general' content below 200 IRE on the HDR scope scales, or around 750-800 on the 10-bit scope scales, the only thing above that should be the speculars without detail
check your grade with the HDR scale (lower right corner) prior to export
use ONLY the presets with HLG in the preset name.

Doing the above should get your project through the pipe.

And no, the players outside of Premiere will not normally show anything exactly like in Premiere or anything else for that matter. Which is something pro colorists suffer with all the time, and they work mostly in Resolve or Baselight. But what they see on a proper Reference monitor and what the client sees within QuickTime on a standard computer monitor will not precisely match.

Because it's near impossible for any consumer screens to actually be correctly set for color management.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

B

Barry256780630wuf

Participant

As a stopgap measure as of August 2022, Adobe has suggested importing the iphone video into Imovie. Then exporting as a ProRes file. If you import that new file into Adobe Premiere Pro, the colors should be more accurate in Premiere Pro (relative to the original iphone video file.)

Z

Zac5E7C

Participant

A workaroud I've found is when you import it into PrPro. Right click on the video file in your project bin and select "Modify > Intrepret Footage". In the pop up window, go down to the last seciton "Color Mamagment" and select the "Color Space Override" and you can select "Rec. 709"

Ann Bens

Community Expert

Premiere Pro V22 - Understanding Color Spaces, HDR, and what that might mean to you - YouTube

S

sharon5E54

Participant

In response to @calvaryc37394405 , here was the video tutorial to turn the HDR off. If you shot your videos in iPhone HDR (that's what's messing it up) you have to import those videos into iMovie (download this app on your phone) and manually turn it off (what Calvary said) but here's the video tutorial. This saved me!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGaU9CZE7_Q

woolypronto

Participant

Just want to pop in for anyone else searching to resolve this - I was able to work around this by re-exporting the footage in Quicktime. This saves it with a different color profile that appears normally in Premiere. Hopefully this helps others!

D

defaultqdyea80rxb4h

Participant

Thanks for this! For anyone else here -- do we know if it can be resolved by changing an iPhone setting, instead of anything on the premiere/quicktime/imovie end? I went into my iPhone 12 settings and turned "record HDR video" OFF, and am hoping this may fix it, though I haven't been able to tell if it does yet.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

That should take care of it. The video with that option on is given the color space HLG, rather than Rec.709/sRGB.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

C

calvaryc37394405

Inspiring

Did you find a solution that worked for you? I am having this same issue in both Premiere and After Effects.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

Did you read this thread through? It's actually covered (fairly? sort of?) well.

There is a problem working with 'standard dynamic range' video with Premiere Pro on a Mac: PrPro is designed to be used on a system using full Rec.709 standards. But the ColorSync utility on a Mac doesn't apply the full standards.

So you can mostly get around this within PrPro with the 'display color management' preferences option selected. Within PrPro, your image will be shown following Rec.709 standards as close as PrPro can do on that system.

But outside of PrPro but on a Mac, the Mac ColorSync utility will for many browsers and players show the file strikingly differently. Because again, it's following Apple's unique sense of color management.

It's a "thing" that's there, and there isn't any real fix. Just that once you understand where the problem comes from, you can decide what you want to do to work around it. And yes, that's very frustrating.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

C

calvaryc37394405Correct answer

Inspiring

I unfortuantely didn't get it sorted. I was on support chat, phone calls etc for a long time but nothing fixed it!

I just was on support chat and found a work around. If you import the footage into iMovie, when you're exporting, unselect HDR. Then it imported with accurate coloring. They said they are working on fixing this within the Adobe programs and it will hopefully be fixed in the upcoming updates.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

If you're working on a Mac, there's a spot of trouble. The Mac ColorSync utility mis-applies the Rec.709 standard in two main ways:

Applies only ONE of the two required transforms, as it applies the scene referred tranform function but NOT the display referred transform function;
Uses what Apple calls "sRGB Gamma" which is apparently between 1.95 and 1.96, depending on who tests it; the proper Rec.709 gamma is 2.4.

This makes working on a Mac somewhat difficult, as it isn't showing the file correctly according to the Rec.709 standard. And Premeire Pro is hardwired internally to be used on a system with monitors running according to the Rec.709 standards.

That's why they added that display color management option, so that PrPro will instead look at the monitor's ICC profile, and remap the image to more properly show Rec.709 data correctly. Which mostly 'fixes' the issue inside PrPro.

However, due to the Mac ColorSync utility improperly displaying Rec.709 media in most any browser/player app, outside of PrPro it's dicey. My understanding is there are a couple players that do not allow ColorSync to manage them ... might include VLC, not sure about that ... but most everything will have color by ColorSync.

Understand ... every screen out there is different between screen type and calibration (if any, likely not), brightness of viewing environment, the player involved, and any user settings. There's no way anyone will ever see exactly what's on your screen. Many screens will not even be particularly close. No colorist can get around that problem either.

So the 'standard' working process is to work on a system as close to the standard as possible, and then just let it go. This at least gets your media looking relatively close to other professionally produced media on most screens. And that's the best you can do.

Out in "the wild" you don't have any control. And if you change the image to look better on one non-standard screen, it will now look worse on at least half the screens out there

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

N

NemoRoman

Known Participant

If I'm understanding correctly, this is 100% unacceptable. Are they even working on a fix?

If I set everything correctly and the export doesn't look like it does in Premiere, that means the update isn't ready for release. It's obviously come at an expense to quite a few of Adobe's customers, it's now costing me sleep on top of chipping into my project rate.

Often times it seems Adobe operates like a bull in a China shop full of the people who's backs they build their fortunes on.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

If you're understanding the issue on Macs between inside Premiere and outside correctly, then you understand why there is no actual fix possible. As that issue is due to the Mac mis-application of video standards to Rec.709/SDR video files.

If you are referring to issues with HLG footage from iPhones being shown as HDR on Rec.709 timelines in Premiere ... an altogether different issue ... that has a fix available.

When you tell us which issue you're bummed at, we can discuss fixes or workarounds. My guess is the difference between Premiere's handling of display of video files and the Mac ColorSync. And it's ColorSync that is causing the problem ... NOT Adobe.

It's simply impossible to create a file that will look the same when displayed with a gamma of 1.96 (Mac's ColorSync settings) and when displayed with normal and expected gamma 2.4 or 2.2, which is everything but the Mac's. Including all pro work in broadcast/streaming.

Do you realize that when you're watching pro content on that screen, that the image you see on that Mac screen is never like the image as graded by the colorist? Because no colorist grades pro material on a screen with a gamma of 1.96 ... ever.

So how do you deal with that problem? Or ... do you even notice it? Because you don't have an absolute reference, you probably don't even realize there is a difference.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...