Random colour artifacts/ black blocks being introduced when colour grading.

[dougm36216729]

We are having a major issue since the upgrade to pp2018,  random artifacts appear to be being introduced when we apply any colour adjustments...

This Is appearing entirely random in the timeline during the edit and previewing,  and then in different places again randomly when rendered out in the final output. 

Again render a second time,  and the artifacts are in different places.  

Secondary grading appears to introduce more issues,  but even primary grading is introducing issues on occasion.  

Turn the colour adjustments in the lumetri panel off... they disappear...  turn back on again, they reappear randomly.

This has just started since the upgrade.  (Ps;  urges are now also rubbish,  but thats a separate issue.)

We are Mac.   This is happening on multiple 27' inch iMac 17 machines,  on multiple projects.

If we grade in resolve,  we don't have an issue.

Here are some frame grabs of the problem...  See top right of frames... whilst this appears to be the dominant location,  they can also appear left hand side..  footage is 1080p 25fps

If we can't solve this,  We are gonna have to dump premier.

[Mike Dziennik]

What format is your footage and what sequence settings are you using?

[dougm36216729]

Footage is original h.264 .mov 1080p

Sequence settings are as above at 25fps.

We have changed the sequence and rendered to 422 pro res and same result. 

This appears to be directly linked to secondary HSL grading in lumetri....   If we haven't done any secondary grading and the HSL is OFF,  we don't appear to have an issue....  turn HSL on,  and it does...  even if we have done nothing in the secondary adjustments... 

We have tried doing Secondary grading as a separate layer,   same result.

Noise is random,  and changes when and how it appears even as you scroll back and forth through the timeline...   there is no correlation between the preview render and the final output... so even if we have a clean frame in the preview,  it might get crapped up in the final render.

Grading in resolve and introducing the footage back to output etc,  we have no problem.   

[Mike Dziennik]

Try converting a few clips to ProRes or DNXHD before importing to Premiere and putting them on the timeline. Apply some grades with secondaries and see if you get same result. It's not a fix but it will indicate if the issue is related to the decoding of the H.264.

[dougm36216729]

Its still doing it on pro res footage on a prores timeline,  as well as h264 on a pro res timeline,  or pro res footage on a. h264 timeline.

We have done a lot now of turning various corrections on and off in the lumtri,  and its HSL selection that sets it off.... we can have all the other selections on,  and HSL off,  and we get no issues... add HSL,  issues. 

Turn everything off,  no issues.

Turn HSL on its own on... Issues.

So its related to the HSL secondary grading selection.

[Mike Dziennik]

And this didn't happen on 2017?

I'm on a PC and I haven't see this issue using secondaries on 2018. If you have any other machines other than i7 iMacs, try it there to see if it is exclusive to this machine.

[dougm36216729]

No Problems in 2017 like this.   In fact Ive never seen this before on any previous version or in FCP or WHY....

We only have i7 iMacs... we have a couple of 3.2ghz,  but we only do stills and rushes and audio on those...  so its the 4.0 ghz's which are doing it.

Anyways,  its definelty an issue with Lumetri and the HSL selection.  

Turn it on and you get the artifacts... interestingly if we have done the HSL in AE,  link the project back into PP,  leave all the lumetri choices selected "on",  even with no adjustments...  we get the same issue.   Turn off the selections in PP,  but keep the adjustments in the linked project... No problems.

So we are now turning off ANY unused adjustments in Lumetri in PP,  plus on the existing projects which are having an issue,  shots with the HSL needed are being graded in Davinci,  and then brought back in already sorted... 

Thats seems to be a workaround.

Frankly though we might as well do ALL the grading in Davinci.... but then I ask,  what use PP?

So if anyone can still help as to why HSL is causing issues now in 2018,  I would be keen to get it sorted.

PS;  we also are no longer able to use the curves,  but thats because they are just useless as fine adjustments instead of causing a root problem.

I think adobe have a real issue with the Lumteri controls... despite this being a major improvement last year.

[R Neil Haugen]

A little known thing that Jarle Leirpoll has in his book ... PrPro will process all Lumetri tab sections as if you've used them even when you haven't. Uncheck any unused section, and it won't ... thus at times drastically reducing the load it puts on your computer. Which you seem to have tumbled to.

Like Mike, HSL (which I use a ton!) is working perfectly on my Win10 rig running a GTX1060/6Gb GPU.

What this sort of thing typically is caused by is an issue with the GPU itself ... so, have you tried changing video drivers? Sometimes computers miss that there's a new driver for that GPU available, and moving forward is 'the fix'. Sometimes a new driver causes the issue, and rolling back is the fix.

You could also try changing your Software Rendering options ... to any other available option, including Software Only, just to check if the GPU or rendering mode is the issue.

Neil

[dougm36216729]

Thanks Neil;

The GPU is looking like its part of the problem.

We updated the Mac OS at around the time this started....   And we have done some testing on some new footage this AM and using software rendering alone there is no issue on the new footage...

Sadly of course with the Mac I can't make any updates to the GPU drivers without updating the entire OS... 

So it appears that there is an issue with the latest iMac OS GPU driver not playing nicely with the PP 12.0.0 rendering when using  HSL in lumetri.  

The two machines both are top spec Retina 27 inch I7's with the high end GPU etc etc... 

I have added to the SOP turning OFF all the controls in the lumetri panel unless they are being used in light of your feedback.

I will put another bug report in to both Adobe and Apple (Not that it will do any good of course...) and hopefully in the future something will change and we will get proper colour grading back onto our Macs...  

We have just put into service a new dedicated grading suite this AM using Resolve...  so we are gonna change the workflow around a bit to put everything a bit more needy through that.

Pretty annoying though.

Thanks again for your help.

[R Neil Haugen]

I'm going to have to test it, but I have heard that the current issue of PrPro has the capability to pass over unused sections (tabs) without processing them.

I'll test that today.

Yea ... upgrading Macs is a pain.

Neil

[R Neil Haugen]

Just completed a bunch of testing, different scenarios. Confirmed, unused sections of Lumetri aren't processed. I added extra instances and did nothing ... or used one section ... used multiple sections ... disabled unused sections, and left them all enabled.

The only thing that made a difference was how many sections of Lumetri were processed, not how many instances. Which is a big improvement!

Neil

[jnmccabe]

Thanks! By unchecking all unused boxes this fixed the issue for me.

[ddiniscod76813477]

We have found this to only occur when using the Secondaries panel. Switching off the unused panels did not help the problem. This only seems to be a problem with users running High Sierra. Users on El Capitan are not impacted.

[R Neil Haugen]

This would be something useful to post in the UserVoice system, which goes right to the engineer's system.

Neil

Adobe Bug /Feature service: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro

[equenzel]

We have seen this in both High Sierra and El Capitan. More prevalent in High Sierra.  I have posted this in the User/Voice section.

Setting the Renderer to Software only will fix the problem but of course is too slow to be useful. These are all AMD GPUs. I will try using

Nvidia

[equenzel]

Does not happen using 1080TI or GTX 680 GPU in either CUDA or Open CL

[R Neil Haugen]

That is definitely something useful to update that UserVoice post with ... only happening with those AMD cards. The more specific the data, the quicker it normally is to nail down the culprit in the coding.

Neil

[caroline_edits]

Hi everybody!

First and foremost, I'm so sorry that Lumetri is causing these visualizations on your projects. That's incredibly frustrating. Our engineers are informed of this behavior and are actively working on a solution that will be made available to users as soon as possible.

The problem lies somewhere within the HSL Secondary adjustments, so if you can avoid using those, you should be okay. The new Hue-Sat curves introduced in 13.0 can achieve similar corrections as the HSL panel, so I'd advise users to focus their color-correcting energy there.

Thank you so much for working together to find a temporary solution and allowing us time to improve our software.

-Caroline

[Mo Moolla]

Thank you for your feedback Caroline

Would you keep us updated please

Mo

[equenzel]

To the best of our recollection this did not happen in the first release of 2018 but appeared in the version 12.1 or12.1.2.

Would it be possible to make that version available again?

[caroline_edits]

Here's a walkthrough on how to re-download previous versions of Premiere!

Install previous version of your Creative Cloud app

CC 2017 version 11.1.4 is available through these steps. As I'm sure you know, the projects aren't reverse-compatible so if you created it in CC '19, you won't be able to open it in the re-installed 2017.

You could go ahead and export your video from CC '19 without any color on it, then import it into CC '17 for coloring without those crazy blocks showing up.

You could also export your project file from '19 as an XML file and I'm 90% sure it'll open in CC '17. Haven't tried it myself.

Here's an off-Adobe forum with a couple of ideas about how to take projects made in the most recent version and open them up in previous versions.

CreativeCOW

Check back in if any of these ideas work for you! I hope you all can color correct to your heart's content.

-Caroline

[FS1234]

I have the exact same problem with the video artefacts appearing when using secondary HSL on my iMac 27" Retina. Not sure if you have the option available or have already tried this but I switched the Renderer - Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration from (Metal) to (OpenCL) under the General Tab in Project Settings and it seemed to remove all of them whilst still leaving the secondary HSL on. Might work for you if it's an option?

[iamprisonmike]

Made an account just to say thank you Felix, that worked for me finally.

[Kevin-Monahan]

DougM,

Have you tried what Felix suggested? Let us know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Guest]

I'm getting this issue with warp stabilizer being applied on one specific clip, but the black artifacts line up perfectly with the most exposed parts of the clip. SO frustrating. I can't use this clip and stabilize it?

See screenshots: Black Artifacts when applying warp stabilizer

any other ideas apart from the OpenCL vs Metal?!

Premiere 13.1.2 (Build 9)

System:

2017 iMac Pro

3.2 GHz Intel Xeon W

32 GB 2666 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro Vega 56 8 GB