Overexposed Video

Color Management 101 ... yea, some study involved.

First ... there are two main color ... stuff ... to worry about. SDR, standard dynamic range or "normal" video, and HDR, high dynamic range new stuff.

The HDR has both a much wider range of data from light to dark and a much bigger color 'space' or volume to work with. And it's new, not very many screens handle it well, and ... unfortunately ... the phone makers especially are touting this as the cool new way to do video capture.

So you need to decide whether you want to work in SDR, using the Rec.709 standards that are in wide use, or work in HDR, which is rather more difficult to pull off plus doesn't show that well on all screens.

SDR Workflow in Premiere Pro 2023 and on

• If you don't know the color space of your clips, check the color space of your clips in clip properties in the Project panel: right-click/Properties, look for Color Space.
• If Rec.709, move on down.
• If HLG or PQ is the color space, select one or more clips, right-click/Modify/Interpret Footage, and at the bottom, set the color management Override-to option to Rec.709.
• Make sure for most users that the Preferences option for Display color management is checked. Unchecked work is only for advanced users that know their system well.
• Make sure in your Sequence setttings your working color space is Rec.709.
• Do any color/tonal correction as normal.
• Use ONLY the presets that do NOT include HLG or PQ in the name.

This should then give you a consistent SDR/Rec.709 image.

HDR HLG Workflow in Premiere Pro

This again is the Wild Wild West, and will need you to test your setup and how your media appears across other devices to get the best chance of making decent  HDR media. And currently, Premiere is far easier to work with in HLG than PQ for most users.

• Make sure your clips are HLG ... use the Interpret Footage to set the Override-to option to HLG if they are not.
• Make sure you Sequence Settings are set to Rec.2100/HLG.
• Make sure your Preferences options for Display Color Management and Extended Dynamic Range viewing are both checked (selected).
• Make sure your Scopes panel is set to Rec.2100/HLG.Right-clicking in the Scopes panel brings up the menu for setting color spaces.
• Use the 10-bit scope scales for grading, and the HDR scales for checking your speculars after basic grading. Found in the lower right corner of Scopes panel.
• Make sure both your OS and your Monitor are set for working in HLG.
• Use ONLY presets with HLG in the preset name.

Again ... this can be made to work, but it really needs you to test out your first few exports across different computers, tablets, and TVs to see how they handle what you've done.

Neil