Premiere Pro CC crushing the blacks of my footage in new Mac OS Monterey update

That looks totally like the expectable Mac issues of ... the mess with Apple's ColorSync utility.

First thing, make sure you have the Display Color Management option checked in the Preferences of Premiere. That tells Premiere not to assume the image is on a proper Rec.709 system, and instead look at the OS/ICC profiles to choose how to remap the image within Premiere's viewers to get the best match to actual Rec.709 possible.

Next, with a file you've worked with the DCM option on, export it ... and reimport it into Premiere. If the file looks a match to the original within Premiere, you're good to go as far as proper Rec.709 viewing goes.

Outside Premiere on a Mac, it will be displayed differently because of Apple's choice to do their color management settings wonky from the long-established Rec.709 standards. In two ways.

First, they only apply one of the two required transforms, they leave out the all-important display referred transform.

Second, they use a gamma of 1.96, rather than the 2.4 required for Rec.709 work.

Between the two, outside of Premiere, all Rec.709 media on a Mac has lightened shadows and less saturation. Or, if you assume the mangled ColorSync image is correct, inside Premiere things are darker and more saturated. Same thing, same cause.

Except ... for VLC player, and Firefox browser. They don't allow Mac ColorSync to mess with the color, and tend to show a more accurate view of the Rec.709 image than Chrome, Safari, or QuickTime player. And NO ONE I know of considers QuickTime player a useful tool for checking color. Except to see how a Mac system will show it.

So on a Mac, to check your Rec.709 media, VLC and Firefox browser work far better than QuickTime and Chrome/Safari.

And understand ... I teach pro colorists, most of whom are Mac based, and this whole thing ticks them off royally. They tend to be livid with Apple, but ... it is what it is. And there isn't a fix to make a file display the same visually with two completely different settings applied to displaying file data. But the pro colorists have to stay with correctly displayed Rec.709, which ain't found on a Mac screen. Their reference monitors of course always go through a breakout device to get away from any OS tampering with the image.

Another thing to realize, is the view you're getting on your camera is not a high-Q Rec.709 image, and that would go for ever camera including up through Reds. Which is why movies and serious pro productions use carefully calibrated monitors on set to check the out-of-camera media.

And QuickTime player mis-displays Rec.709 media ... period. Including that not a single bit of pro produced media you watch through QuickTime will be shown as the colorist saw it on their screens. Not even close, and I'll bet you didn't realize that. Because you're used to QuickTime, and what it does to your files and everything you see. That image is "normal" to your senses now.

I wish it wasn't this mess, but there isn't anything we can do about it but understand the cause and how to work around it.

Neil

Hi Andrew,

We're sorry about the poor experience. We can get this checked. Please share a screenshot showing the difference in the preview. Also, would you mind sharing a download link for one of the sample media with which you are experiencing this issue? It will help us to diagnose the issue properly.

Thanks,

Sumeet