Preview quality problems when downsampling (8K content on 4K display)

[Tadej_Droljc]

Hi there,

I am colour correcting 8K content on a 4K display and what I see in a preview window (paused playback) is very different to exported video files or exported individual frames. Pixels in preview window seems bigger (maybe also brighter but probably just bigger) which causes more "foggy" image and consequentially I can not really rely on preview window. To me it seems like the downsampling in Premiere is doing something weird because when I export files and check them outside Premiere everything looks fine (either videos or stills). If I re-import videos/images back into Premiere I again see wrong image.

Please see images (I've uploaded them to WeTransfer due to size limitations here)

WeTransfer

Image 1: Frame exported from Premiere - this is what I would like to see in Preview window (8K image, in my case downsampled to 4K on my monitor looks as I would like to)

Image 2: Screencapture of Premiere preview window - you can see the image has much more mid tones and I would say bigger pixels, look especially in the middle of the image....so this is the problem, downsampling in Premiere is doing something weird here

Image 3: Just for the sake of testing, I dowsampled Image 1 (8K) to 4K UHD in Photoshop and the result is fine - so again all pointing at donwsampling problems inside Premiere

I might be of course doing something silly in Premiere as I am new to Premiere. However, I tried various settings, including:

- setting preview in Sequence settings to Prores4444 (source file is Prores4444), 8K or 4K res, best render settings, maximum depth

- hi-quality playback enabled

- full res for playback and paused playback

Your help would be much appreciated:)

[Jim_Simon]

"Variants of this question have been covered to death on this and every other color grading forum. The answer is always the same.  The only way to get a [proper] image you can trust is to run SDI [or HDMI] out to an accurately calibrated reference monitor.  Grading by viewing the image in the GUI just doesn't work."  - Jamie LeJeune

B&H Photo Video

[Tadej_Droljc]

Jim Simon​, I think you misunderstand my problem. I am not viewing the image in the GUI but on my second monitor (BenQ SW271, 4K monitor, calibrated), also my cable is fine;) I guess I used the wrong terminology - by preview window I mean Premier's window where one can see the image.

[Jim_Simon]

I may still be confused here.

How exactly is that BenQ connected?

[Tadej_Droljc]

@Jim Simon: What you need to do to understand the problem is:

1. Import the first image I've uploaded (01-ExportFrame-8K.png) into the Premiere.

2. Open that same image (01-ExportFrame-8K.png) in some app for looking images (Photoshop to be on the safe side)

3. Compare the two results - what you see in Premiere will have much more mid tones. To me it seems like a downsampling problem within Premiere

If the problem would be in the cable, it would mess up the colours in both cases, hence I wouldn't be able to spot the difference between Premiere and "any other app". But anyway, I am using the HDMI that came together with the monitor (it is capable of 4K@60FPS so I guess it's HDMI 2.0 or more).

[Jim_Simon]

3. Compare the two results - what you see in Premiere...

..is not reliable.  That'y why my original post.

[Tadej_Droljc]

PS: And when you export the image with lots of mid tones from Premiere, the mid tones are back to normal. So the problem is only in previewing inside Premiere