Skip to main content
R
rexrodall
Participating Frequently
January 5, 2017
Question

Premiere (and VLC) are overwriting whatever profile/calibration I set to display?!

  • January 5, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 3539 views

HELP!!!

I posted a few days ago about how now I've got a new MacBook 2016 and LG ultra fine display (both p3 wide color gamut display) I've noticed more than ever that what I see In Premiere (and also VLC and FIREFOX Vimeo/youtube) all look very different to what I see on an iPhone, iPad, Quicktime, Vimeo/youtube in Safari/Chrome etc (which all look very similar to each other). Premiere/VLC/Firefox all are considerably more saturated than all the others. I appreciate quicktime is normally a bit lame in terms of draining colours on export, but it is still very similar to what I see on my phone, and Vimeo in chrome. At the end of the day, if I grade something on Premiere and it looks very drained on my iPhone, something is wrong...

I have come to the point where I started to wonder if the problem was actually something happening in Premiere/VLC/Firefox (which I assumed to be correct)...

I started messing around with the display profiles on the Macbook, and it seems there IS something wrong on that side. When I change the display profiles, with everything loaded up on their different browsers and programs, everything (as you might expect) responds, the background, icons, colours in the videos .... APART from the videos in Premiere/VLC/Firefox, which as I change the display profile.. briefly glitches for 1/2 second, then immediately returns to what it was. This even happens when I choose a ridiculous display profile such a DCI projector profile that makes absolutely everything on the screen midnight blue, APART from Premiere/VLC/Firefox, which stays the same....

This can't be right! This means that Premiere program monitor is not responding to any different display profiles ... and would explain why there is now such a huge difference (more than normal) between Premiere/VLC and Quicktime/IPhone etc. Can I turn this off?!

What also even more strange is that the video in Premiere/VLC DOES respond to manual calibration (white balance) in the display profile settings

Is there a setting somewhere? dodgy codec? dodgy graphics card?

I should also mention, on a couple of occasions VLC and Firefox have both crashed at the same time, as well as color sync utility. Not to mention my screen is quite yellow and finder/safari/notes all keep crashing

      This topic has been closed for replies.

      2 replies

      E
      excited_Genie16B8
      Legend
      August 25, 2018

      Simply put, you're doing it wrong.

      You need to view your content on the most accurately calibrated display you can afford played from a hardware device.  How it looks there is all that matters.  How it looks anywhere else is beyond your control.

      R Neil Haugen
      R Neil Haugen
      Legend
      January 5, 2017

      You're coming to conclusions that to me seem 180* backwards from your testing.

      "At the end of the day, if I grade something on Premiere and it looks very drained on my iPhone, something is wrong..."

      Huh? You're assuming a consumer device has a better screen calibration concept than a pro NLE? Really? You are aware (I hope!) of how blasted far off "correct" most consumer TV's are coming out of the factory? Signal all "hopped-up" to stand out in a display area of 20 tv's, NOT for correct color/gamma/saturation.

      PrPro uses a basic full-range 0-255 (for 8-bit material) display mode, period. If you've set up a manual calibration of your screens, PrPro will "accept" that, but ... if you choose one of several profiles that don't use 0-255 "standard" gamma, PrPro may not choose to follow along.

      There are naturally a number of people that would like it if one could choose the base video profile used as in AfterEffects (and similar to Resolve, say), and I tend to agree. For that, feel free to put in a Feature request form ...

      https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

      And I would note that VLC is one of the better consumer video players out there ... so when that and PrPro agree, and others that are much dodgier do something different, you see that as proof that PrPro & VLC are wrong ... again, that seems 180* backwards.

      Neil

      Everyone's mileage always varies ...
      R
      rexrodallAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      January 5, 2017

      This issue here is that I wasn't getting this problem with my 2012 MacBook. I went back to it today and I tested videos with vlc/premiere etc and also with quicktime/safari/chrome etc. There were slight differences between the 2 groups, but my new display seems to exaggerate these differences, VLC and premiere seem MORE saturated even though every single other thing on screen is similar to the old MacBook. You asked about doing things backwards - 98% of my clients will watch my videos on one of Vimeo/youtube/facebook (through chrome and safari) iPhone, iPad, Instagram, even keynote(!) ... and they all manage to look the pretty much exactly the same as eachother, and look good, as well as what I see in Premiere/VLC also looking good (which is obviously where I start) for those same videos.

      But 2 days ago I handed a video to a client I have worked with for a long time producing similar videos, and they commented how desaturated and lifeless it looked compared to usual. This has never ever happened before and the only thing that has changed is the display. Not the players or the editors. as usual I edited and graded in Premiere and watched back in VLC, it looked fine, but because the new monitor I have seems to completely over-saturate only in VLC and Premiere it left a very lifeless looking video for the client and potentially all the customers ... unsurprisingly, none of whom view the video in Premiere or VLC. Again, this was never a problem before as the was negligible differences between the VLC/Premiere bunch and the quicktime/iphone/safari bunch

      To get a decent looking video which matched the look of previous videos I had done on the clients platform for viewing, I ended up having to completely over-saturate (at least thats how it looked, the vectorscopes will still ok) in premiere. Which makes editing very difficult now.

      There is definitely something going on with these displays and the way they seem to

      R
      rexrodallAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      January 6, 2017

      Have you run a puck-based calibration system on the monitor? If not, well ... that's what you're going to get. NO monitor, whether laptop or separate "desktop" style, comes from the factory nor stays usably calibrated. Period.

      What changed in your setup was your computer/display ... and as it doesn't sound like you calibrate, you were simply lucky with your old setup that it worked mostly sort of.

      You have to calibrate a display. That's part of computer post-production Life. You can't blame the software if you don't set your gear up correctly.

      I use the X-Rite puck & software ... it did cost several hundred but if you're delivering professionally it's a tool you must have or you'll have more episodes like what you're in now.

      Here's a couple options from X-rite:

      i1Display Pro Monitor Calibration; X-Rite

      http://xritephoto.com/colormunki-display

      There are others available. They will help quite a bit, though you still should check them off the computer (as Jim always says) via either an external box (AJA, Kona, BlackMagic) to a calibrated monitor, or to a b-cast setup/calibrated full monitor-built TV. Note ... all of these options, also calibrated.

      Neil


      After a little more research it seems that the problem is the fact that both displays are p3 wide gamut but apps like premiere, vlc, Firefox aren't colour managed.... I assumed that a wide colour gamut is just the same as srgb but better, but from what I understand if apps/browsers don't have colour management, an image/video made in sRGB gamut could end up looking weird and over saturated on a wide gamut monitor. Its explained much better here -

      https://blog.conradchavez.com/2015/10/26/a-look-at-the-p3-color-gamut-of-the-imac-display-retina-late-2015/  - "One of the challenges of wide gamut displays is that the colors in untagged objects (objects without a color profile) can appear oversaturated. This can happen when the color values of untagged objects are defined in a smaller color space such as sRGB, which is usually the case. When those untagged color values are displayed on a larger gamut display, if their gamut is simply scaled up to match the larger gamut the color values can end up further out than they should be in the larger color space, appearing oversaturated."

      and here -

      The New Apple iMac and the DCI P3 colour gamut - ​(under 'why p3 gamut is not a good idea")

      I found these articles quite a relief as I thought I might be going crazy, but it appears to explain my suspicion that VLC and Premiere are exaggerating the saturation because of the p3 wide gamut, I will be sending back my apple display and getting an sRGB one

      Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
      Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices