Sony A7III clips color look greener and darker in Premiere Pro than the are

[carlanguero]

I shot several clips using a Sony A7III camera and the color profile 10 (HLG) and the color balance was alright. If I preview them in my Mac, they look as I shot them. But in Premiere Pro, the color looks completely different. I wonder if the software is having a problem intepreting them.

The first snap is how they looked in my monitor when I shot them (and they look the same in Mac's preview) and the second one is from Premiere Pro's preview. Please advice!

[R Neil Haugen]

This thread ... “Why does my footage look darker” ... includes a lot of the data. And also ... please understand no camera made has actually accurate color displays on the camera screen, and I include top-end rigs in that ... unless they're using a LUT built for that camera's screen and stored in that camera for that use.

Now, onto the bigger problem. And it is a problem.

Basically, Apple created a new and very unique color space for the Mac OS, they call Display-P3. It uses the wider P3 color gamut, not the video form of sRGB that nearly all video media is referenced into.

Then they compounded the problem when they built their Color Sync utility to only use the first half of the two parts of the Rec.709 standard when displaying Rec.709 media. Color Sync tells the OS to apply the camera transform function, but does not apply the display transform function.

So, essentially, the OS displays the media with around a 1.96 gamma instead of the 2.4 that Premere is designed to use ... according to the professional Rec.709 usage for most broadcast. Premiere properly applies both the camera and the display transform functions according to the standard.

If you put the two Apple choices together, what you get ... colors are not mapped correctly from the Rec.709 media into the monitor's P3 primaries/gamut, and ... tonalities are also not mapped as expected. This is a problem the BBC actually created a unique and complex applet for in-house use to try and force Apple's ColorSync utility to perform correctly. (It's an amazingly complex odd app ... )

Premiere is tightly color managed internally to be used on a system built to the professional standard that's been in use for over a decade. It assumes the user will have provided a monitor properly setup for video sRGB, calibrated to Rec.709 using a gamma of 2.4 at 100 nits brightness.

But you're not using Premiere on a monitor remotely resembling that standard ... which is the issue. If you attach a monitor to that Mac that is set to that full Rec.709 standard, on that monitor, what you see inside and outside of Premiere on decent players will be very close.

Now ... because of this problem with the Macs, the Premiere team included an option a cycle back, in the Preferences/General section, called "Enable Display Color Management". As shown in my image here ... and that looks at the ICC profile of the OS for the monitor, and attempts to adjust the internal dsiplay on the monitors of Premiere ... the Program, Source, and Reference ... to display an appropriate Rec.709 image on whatever the monitor is set to in the ICC file used by the OS.

It makes working within Premiere much more reliable for when you export and send media out to other systems with proper setups. However, it doesn't (nor can they) fix the problem of the difference between video media within Premiere and outside of it on that computer.

Neil

[carlanguero]

Hi Neil, 

Thaks for your answer. I've checked the "Sisplay Color Management" option but I still get the same result, as you can see in the attached snaps.

I shot the clip balancing whites againsts a color card and I think the clip looks pretty decent out of the camera in any monitor I've preview it. I just want Premiere to import it as it is and is not happening. The difference is huge, it looks under exposed and tilted to greens.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[R Neil Haugen]

So ... you're looking at your clips on all non-calibrated and off-color situations, and unhappy that Premiere doesn't look exactly like the off-color display. That's ... to me, an odd way to approach the question. But really, it's a pretty typical one. Most of us simply don't start out with training in color management. And we tend to just assume if we buy a "good" computer and supposedly good monitor, well ... everything is copacetic.

Reality isn't like that, though. And ... you want your exports to look correct relative to other professionally produced media on other systems, right? Well ... that's what the aim really needs to be.

The first thing one does is setup a system to be within the color standards. That is the only way you can actually know what the true colors are. I tend to 'hang' with colorists both online and at NAB/MAX ... and am a contributing author for a colorist's subscription website. None of them would ever accept a comment that the "accurate" color was off a camera back or an un-calibrated computer monitor that's probably not even in the correct color space.

Now ... they go to what for most of us would be ridiculous and tedious (not to mention incredibly expensive!) lengths to assure that what they and their clients see is dead-on accurate. And I've learned a lot from being around them.

So ... I would never assume anything was "correct" for either hue, saturation, or tonality without seeing it at the least on a monitor capable of well more than 100% of video sRGB, calibrated with a puck and software system to Rec.709/gamma-2.4/100-nits brightness. And then ... I run a profile using "joined" Lightspace and Resolve using my i1 Display Pro puck. And go through the profile ... how close are my R, G, and B gamma curves to "perfect" and each other ... what's the DeltaE variance graph, is everything under the 2.1 visibility level?

My colorist friends still consider this way under-done, as it's only about a $1,000 computer monitor, and no matter how well the Lightspace profile looks, they know ... it doesn't compare to their Eizo and Flanders rigs. Well, true. But ... I've had a few things checked elsewhere, and ... I'm within limits. I'd pass QC for broadcast on all I've had checked. (Note: I've never delivered for broadcast! Total web/individual production.)

So ... how about drop-boxing me a couple short clips, and let's see what your original media looks like on my rig?

Neil