LUTs Wont Export via Premiere Pro or Media Encoder

This can be so confusing, and is far more complicated than most of us think it should be!

Neil

Thanks for getting back so quick! As it turns out, they are exporting correctly, and playing on the VLC looks like the premiere version. I didn't realize what the gamma thing meant until you brought up the VLC. Thanks again!

Sounds like there's a couple things going on here.

The first I'll deal with is the display issue, because that's the problem, not that the LUTs aren't being included in the export. 

Technical Basis For Display Issues

The long-time standards for all professional use of Rec.709 have included a camera transform of (essentially) gamma 1.96, and a display transform of gamma 2.4. As an app built for professional broadcast use, Premiere is built to abide by that standard.

Apple, for some unknown reason, chose to set the camera transform of gamma 1.96 as their display transform.

So for working on a Mac, Premiere will normally use gamma 2.4 for the Program monitor, and you see the image accordingly. But on export, when viewing the image in a ColorSync managed app like QuickTime player, the image is lighter because of being displayed at 1.96 instead of 2.4.

Note, that same file, back in PrPro on that Mac, or on any broadcast compliant screen, will be shown pretty much the same as in the original working you did. NOT the lighter version you see in QuickTime player.

In fact, install VLC on your Mac, and check the image there. It will probably look very close to the Premiere Program monitor image, with the same file that looks lighter in QT player.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, most of whom are total Mac geeks, and they are furious with Apple over this mess. But then, there isn't any one absolutely the same view of any material anyone produces for others to view on different screens.

All broadcast/streaming media is produced compliant with a 2.4 gamma display. Have you realized your display wasn't showing what the colorist saw? I doubt you have, as you are used to your display showing pro media as it does. And think that must be the "intended" view.

The reality is, none of us controls how anyone else sees anything, as all screens and viewing environments are different. So one tries to match the standard for producing media, simply because then your media, in relative terms, looks similar to other professionally produced media on any screen.

It will never match exactly what you saw making it ... anywhere.

As an additional note, in the public beta version, they have added the ability to set the Program monitor to either broadcast standard 2.4, or Mac setting of 1.96. Note, producing media at 1.96 will mean it will probably be way too dark, if not crushed in the shadows, when displayed on a broadcast standard system.

But it will be fine for Mac only viewing.

LUT Isssues

There may be several things there also.

First, never ever add LUTs to the Package/Program Premiere Pro folders. Nor remove what's there, for any of the Adobe video apps. Those folders are expected to be identical for contents between apps, and any LUTs used from those locations are accessed not by name, but by relative position in the computer alpha-numeric sorted folder.

They have a couple locations for USERS to store LUTs, that are then viewed by Premiere at launch, and added to the proper folder dropdown.

I prefer the Program{Package} files/Adobe/Common/LUTs location. Others take the other option listed in their documentation for User placement of LUTs. I have created the Technical (Basic tab), Creative, and Input LUT folders there. And Premiere sees them just fine.

Anything you have in the correct User placement locations will be scanned and added to the list at launch. Meaning ... if you create a LUT with Premiere open, and save it in the correct location, you have to close Premiere and relaunch it to have that LUT now appear in the listing.

So ...  one issue you may be having ... is it sounds like you may have messed with the installed LUTs, an absolute no-no. And I'm not sure you have put your created/acquired LUTs in the correct spots. 

If you could list the details of that, it would help sort this out.

The other issue you may be having ...  is the total number of LUTs you've got. I work for/with/teach pro colorists, many of whom "roll their own", but the number of LUTs you're talking about would have them shaking their heads. So you are definitely in a narrow niche, for using hundreds of LUTs.

As for many of us, it would be faster for me to grade the image than search through several hundred LUTs.

So Premiere isn't designed to work with TONS of LUTs. The practical limit seems to be somewhere around 100-150 added User LUTs.

There have been other users that have requested the ability to create subfolders in LUT lists, and to have several hundred working in Premiere. I would suggest searching through the Ideas section of this forum, and either adding on to a request you would like, or creating one.

Either way, please post what you do on that back here. I don't have need for that many LUTs, but I'd be happy to upvote a request.

Neil