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PowerMike G5
Participating Frequently
June 4, 2016
Answered

Premier Color Management on GUI monitor - always REC 709?

  • June 4, 2016
  • 4 replies
  • 12132 views

As I was editing the other day, I was changing the ICC monitor profile on my Mac with the Premier editor open and I noticed that the displayed video in the program window didn't change color with the ICC profile change.  It caught me by surprise.

So it seems that Premier manages the color output of the video you're editing on your GUI monitor by assuming it is always REC 709.  Am I correct in saying this?

If so, is it also doing an internal conversion on the fly to output the video to view on sRGB?  I know there is a gamma difference between REC 709 and sRGB.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.  Just want to make sure I understand exactly how the video is being interpreted in the program and source windows within Premier.

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Correct answer chrisw44157881

ah! ok, I see what you mean. Lemme see if I can break it down. Here's a quick rundown of YUV vs RGB interpretation.

How does P Pro handle YUV (YCbCr) and RGB color spaces?

as you have proven, the cuda renderer engine is separate from the UI. You can control it a little with the Nvidia control panel playback

software which controls your video driver.

This is why you should calibrate your monitor to sRGb or Rec.709 0-255 gamma 2.2. Premiere will act as a passthrough.

You aren't actually controlling Premiere, just what your eyes see. Make sense?

Also AE with color management off, works the same way..passthrough. It's the same concept as turnining on AE's color management,

then using view-simulate Rec.709. It will look exactly the same! (in this scenario, just leave off in AE as it slows down!)

also:

mercury transmit is still also crippled to Rec. 709. You have to calibrate your external monitor to that as a passthrough                                    

details of video preview with Mercury Transmit in the 2014 update to After Effects CC | Creative Cloud blog by Adobe

like I said, if you want to preview with P3 or Rec. 2020, you'll have to make a custom LUT for Lumetri to "burn" in the correct color.

4 replies

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PowerMike G5Author
Participating Frequently
June 5, 2016

Thanks Chris!  Your info is incredibly helpful!

Yes, makes sense re: monitor.  For my Mac Pro, I am running the GUI monitor currently in sRGB mode and using the sRGB ICC profile from my GPU, so everything looks great there.  I use an AJA Kona to feed uncompressed 10-bit 4:4:4 video out via 3G SDI to an external broadcast monitor (a new FSI CM171 monitor, which I have coming in shortly!).

The info on the mercury transmit was super helpful... confirms that Rec. 709 is definitely being used on GUI preview. 

Seems best to leave the setup this way and if I ever want to preview in other color spaces, I will just use the AJA/FSI output as that's more capable, accurate and is capable of using LUTs on the monitor itself as well as apply one on the AJA SDI output.

Curious about the YUV and RGB handling thread you forwarded.  I shoot with a Canon C300 Mark II, which shoots both in YCbCr and RGB.  Do you know if I shoot in 12-bit 4:4:4 RGB mode, will Premier keep everything completely in RGB?  I would think so, but your expertise may know!

P
PowerMike G5Author
Participating Frequently
June 4, 2016

Thanks guys.  But I just want to make sure I understand what Premier is really doing to the video output in the program/source windows. 

Let's take my Macbook Pro Retina for example, which the screen's output is completely driven by the ICC profile you use in OS X.  I noticed that whatever ICC profile I switched to, the video in the the Premier GUI never changed in response.  i.e. I switched ICC from sRGB to DCI -P3, tested different ICC profiles with gamma ranges of 1.8-2.6, etc.  Even though the OS GUI and Premier GUI changed accordingly and got brighter, darker, color changes, etc... no matter what, the video output in the program/source windows in Premier always stayed the same. 

On my Mac Pro system, which I use the LG 4K DCI monitor as my GUI monitor, I can change color settings on the monitor itself, which does change the output of the entire screen of course. 

So should I assume that Premier is defaulting to a Rec. 709 output within its viewer windows regardless?  If so, it seems that it doesn't necessarily matter whether I use sRGB or Rec 709 as my ICC profile, as it doesn't change the video preview output in Premier regardless.

chrisw44157881
chrisw44157881Correct answer
Inspiring
June 5, 2016

ah! ok, I see what you mean. Lemme see if I can break it down. Here's a quick rundown of YUV vs RGB interpretation.

How does P Pro handle YUV (YCbCr) and RGB color spaces?

as you have proven, the cuda renderer engine is separate from the UI. You can control it a little with the Nvidia control panel playback

software which controls your video driver.

This is why you should calibrate your monitor to sRGb or Rec.709 0-255 gamma 2.2. Premiere will act as a passthrough.

You aren't actually controlling Premiere, just what your eyes see. Make sense?

Also AE with color management off, works the same way..passthrough. It's the same concept as turnining on AE's color management,

then using view-simulate Rec.709. It will look exactly the same! (in this scenario, just leave off in AE as it slows down!)

also:

mercury transmit is still also crippled to Rec. 709. You have to calibrate your external monitor to that as a passthrough                                    

details of video preview with Mercury Transmit in the 2014 update to After Effects CC | Creative Cloud blog by Adobe

like I said, if you want to preview with P3 or Rec. 2020, you'll have to make a custom LUT for Lumetri to "burn" in the correct color.

    chrisw44157881
    chrisw44157881
    Inspiring
    June 4, 2016

    first off chromacity and white point are the same for both. just the "native gamma is different and the NTSC legal range is offset.

    Rec. 709 and sRGB are the exact same if you setup Rec. 709 as gamma 2.2 and 0-255 instead of 16-235 vs sRGB native 2,2, the gamma curve transfer function is a little different, I found a nice picture of a graph that illustrates this.

    Color spaces - REC.709 vs. sRGB

    so basically they are interchangable if you use the altered Rec709 gamma 2.2 0-255

    as for Adobe software:

    "connected over Dynamic Link, video will be transformed using the HDTV (Rec. 709) color profile."

    After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1): what’s new and changed in this update | Creative Cloud blog by Adobe

    if its not Rec.709, use AE's utility profile converter or lumetri LUTs that can transform color management with dispcal/brizsoft

    Is there a way to assign Color Spaces in AME (Adobe Media Encoder) CC?

    so, to answer your question, the reason why it doesn't look different is that sRGB and Rec. 709 full range values at gamma 2.2 are exactly the same thing.

    simple calibrate your monitor and it will accurately present Premiere as seen on an external monitor.

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    June 4, 2016

    Premiere doth default to Rec709, and so I calibrated my monitor to that with the i1 puck/software, rather than sRGB. I'm not doing broadcast work like many here, but have tested by putting material on DVD and loading into a well-setup tv (calibrated with pluge & bars & color filters) and it looked perzactly like purchased DVD's did ... and have watched output on numerous other tv's and also computer screens.

    I'm comfortable for my needs.

    Neil

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
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