Lose grading when exporting

[niklasbyssa]

Hi.

I have a problem losing some color when exporting in Adobe Premiere. The color I can se in the preview window in Premiere are not matching the color I get when exporting. As you can se in the inserted picture it is a difference between Premiere, Quicktime and VLC.

Do someone have a answer for this and is it something I can do to get the same export colors?

I'm working in Premiere Pro CC version 12.0.1 on a brand new Imac Pro 3,2ghz , 32gb ddr4, Radeon Pro vega 56 8gb.

Grading in Lumetri Color using luts from Deluts (Intensity 50%)

Shot on a Sony a7sii in Slog2. 

Exported from Premiere: (I get the same problem exporting from Media Encoder)

Format: h264

Frame rate: 25

Field Order: Progressive

Aspect: Square Pixels (1.0)

Profile: High

Level: 4.2

Render at Maximum Depth: yes

Bitrate Encoding: VBR, 2 pass

Target Bitrate: 20 Mbps

Maximum Bitrate: 40 Mbps

Use Maximum Render Quality: yes

Best regards /

Niklas

[excited_Genie16B8]

I think Jamie LeJeune has it right in the following thread from the Blackmagic forums.  He's specifically talking about Resolve, but the idea holds true for all NLEs.  The upshot is, "The only image you can trust is to run SDI out to an accurately calibrated reference monitor."

http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=68410

[francis-crossman · Accepted solution]

You have stumbled upon several pretty major problems and I'm afraid that what Jim Simon suggests is true.

Let's break it down . . .

1. The new iMac Pro has a wide color gamut display (DCI-P3) and cannot reproduce traditional Rec709 or sRGB color space.
2. Premiere Pro only operates in Rec709 color space (for now).  Changing the display profile in the OS system settings will not change the way Premiere displays or calculates colors.
3. There is no way to set the iMac Pro to display Rec709
4. If you want to view your colors accurately, you will absolutely need an external monitor that supports Rec709
5. Quicktime player has had a long standing problem where it does not display video at the correct gamma setting. Your video will look a bit washed out.  It should not be used to QC videos - ever.
6. VLC player is the recommended app for QCing video currently - but it is not color managed, so on a P3 display, the colors will still look wrong.  On a Rec709 display it should match what you see in PPro and be correct.
7. Web browsers are also displaying your content wrong!  In my experience, Safari and Chrome will mess up your colors the same way as QuickTIme player but Firefox will look correct.

Conclusion:  Premiere Pro is creating accurate renders in a purely Rev709 environment.  There is no way currently to configure the iMac Pro to display Rec709.  An external monitor that supports Rec709 is necessary.  Watching a properly graded Rec709 video on a P3 screen will look overly saturated and artificial vibrant.

Solution:  Premiere Pro needs to introduce color management so that it can do it’s own internal transforms to the display color space.  Apple needs to consider backward compatibility in their design and give us a way to display Rec709 and sRGB on their new wide color gamut display.  Browsers need to do proper color management too.

[tmksr]

Just updated to todays update Premiere 12.1.  The Problem is still the same!  So frustrating, having spend a lot of money on adobes PRO application for years and now for the (only) PRO Hardware that is available from Apple, and its impossible to work with!  You can't be serious! Now I have to spend another 300$ for Final Cut X ?

[excited_Genie16B8]

The Problem is still the same!

You mean, you're still not using a calibrated display connected to a supported I/O device?

I don't think Adobe's ever going to fix that problem.  It's up to every editor to fix this one on their own.

[tmksr]

No thats NOT the Problem. I am not a colorist and its not about the worlds best possible accuracy its about consistancy. On an iMac Pro, Adobe Premiere is displaying WRONG colours. If they will not fix that issue, that will seal the total uselessness of adobe premiere pro on an iMac / iMac Pro. Adobe is advertising its own software with claims like "User-friendly color workflows" and even explaining Premiere Pro basic functions on an iMac... they should fix it.

[francis-crossman]

I am happy to announce that we have just released Premiere Pro 2019 (version 13.0) and it has Display Color Management as a new feature.  Find it in Preferences/General/Display Color Management.  It requires GPU acceleration so be sure to choose your renderer of choice Metal/OpenCL/Cuda etc. in File/Project Settings/General.  What DCM does is it reads the ICC profile of your display and converts the Rec709 color space in Premiere to display correctly on your display.

New and enhanced features | Latest release of Premiere Pro CC

This has absolutely no effect on exported colors.  If you view the exported file in a properly color managed app, the colors will match PPro.  Quicktime player and most web browsers are NOT following the correct specifications for the Rec709 video standard and will display colors slightly off.  We do not have a solution to that problem at this time, because the problem is not with PPro.