Warning: Premiere Pro 2015.3 removes Speedgrade integration and has no backward compatibility

[Seneca_lives]

The latest PPro update (2015.3, updated today) creates project files that can't be read by the latest version of Speedgrade (not updated today or since whenever). It also removes the "Direct Link to Speedgrade" option from its menus. This means, that as of today, Adobe is effectively without a color grading solution.

The new PPro does provide support for Tangent control surfaces - including full customization through the Tangent Mapper application - which is in itself a very good thing. However, this was apparently enough for Adobe to decide that Direct Link and Speedgrade are no longer needed and this is simply not the case.

This leaves any remaining Speedgrade users and colorists in general with very few options:

1. For now, I recommend you reinstall the 2015.2 versions of Premiere/AE/AME through Creative Cloud to finish any current projects - they can exist side by side, at least - but that still means missing out on any new features and compatibility with client files. This is clearly not a sustainable solution. And Premiere versions are linked to After Effects versions, so you'll also lose out there...

2. Use Speedgrade the old-fashioned way, in native mode, using EDLs or exporting DPX. Which was never an ideal solution back in de CS6 days, but the world has moved on even if Speedgrade hasn't, and Speedgrade has no way of dealing with many more recent file formats (MXF being the most prominent). Sad to say this is simply not an option on many projects. Never mind that the roundtrip functionality and flexibility of Direct Link is gone, which was really Speedgrade's biggest selling point.

3. Try to grade in Premiere. Not really an option for serious work: Premiere's Lumetri implementation currently lacks support for layers (other than by clumsily stacking Lumetri effects), grading shadows/midtones/highlights separately as well as setting their ranges, and basic 2-up/3-up/snapshot functionality. I'm sure I can think of many more. Point is, as a color grading application the Lumetri Panel is a joke, a slightly better version of the plug-in effects that amateur colorists used to apply per-clip.

4. Jump ship. I've resisted this for a long time, as it would mean investing in new control surfaces, but Adobe's neglect has gotten to a breaking point. I'd resigned myself to the fact that Speedgrade would continue as a zombie application, never updated and slowly forgotten. Alas, even that was too much to ask.

[Peferling]

I would say to roll back to what works for your pipeline, unless your priorities dictate otherwise.  I've been on 2014.2 for some time now, and do plan to test a move up to 2015.3 for proxies in lieu of 4k.  However, stability is my top priority with regards to getting paid.  Should 2015.3 prove otherwise, then rolling back is the only option as other options would involve drastic changes and introduce their own set of issues.  No thanks.

[Seneca_lives]

Absolutely agree. The proxies for 4K work were my main reason for trying 2015.3, but I'd got used to making proxies manually. There are also some very interesting speed benefits to using After Effects 2015.3, so I suppose I'll be looking at using AE without Dynamic Link (exporting the effect and importing into older versions of Premiere).

[R Neil Haugen]

Interesting. Down at NAB, I asked about whether Sg would still be available Direct Link from PrPro in 2016, and well, no one would answer directly, but implied, probably yes, for now ... sort of.

Much of the 2016 functionality seems to have rolled out with 2015.3 ... which is ... intriguing ... and you're right, there's no Sg Direct Link ... just don't know what to say right now.

Neil

[CineCicale45]

Just to clarify, the Dynamic Link feature with Ae and Au are still available in the new release. However SG Direct Link is very unfortunately gone.

[ToolzVFX]

Hi all, not sure how may this will help but if like me and may others upgraded to 2015.3 but want to roll back to 2015.2 you can check out this forum post i had an adobe staff member put up FAQ: How to go back from Premiere Pro 2015.3 to Premiere Pro 2015.2  not sure how many this will help but sure helped me get back to work

I guess yelling on twitter has it's upsides

Update: the adobe rep says  "This isn't an issue; it is by design. Direct Link is no longer available in Premiere Pro 2015.3. " personally i think it is a real bad move making this pro app feal more like a lite version

[Seneca_lives]

While there are some unattractive workarounds (grade in Premiere for "less serious" work, continue using the older versions with manual proxies if needed, export through Sg with EDLs, etc.), the frustrating thing is that you'd have to make this call upfront for each individual project. And then there are situations where there's no simple solution at all - e.g., if a client provides a 2015.3 or newer PPro project file, especially if the source files are MXF. And I'm 99% certain that something like that will be coming my way in the coming year.

Already looking into lossless transcoding or remuxing utilities to convert MXF files to MP4 or MOV, just to keep the EDL route open for now.

[Seneca_lives]

Also, a little experiment: I tried to "emulate" Speedgrade's functionality in Premiere. Created a new workspace that matched my own Speedgrade layout and mapped my control surface the best I could.

Well, it works, sort of, in a very clunky way:

- There's still a lot of clutter, even if you close all the non-essential panels. Shortcut keys may or may not work depending on what windows you last clicked in. However, by mapping the control surface wheels to work in every mode, I can, at least, simply select a clip and perform basic grading.

- By combining the Program Monitor / Reference Monitor / Source Monitor I can create basic 2-up / 3-up / snapshot functionality (not through Mercury Transmit, though).

- The convenient Numpad-0 key to Bypass in Sg can be emulated either through the control surface or keyboard, BUT it will only work when the Lumetri Color panel is active. I mapped another key on the control surface to "make Lumetri Color active". I haven't managed to get Solo Mode to work, or I'm misunderstanding how it works in Premiere.

- Layer functionality can be achieved by stacking Lumetri effects, but since each Lumetri effect consists of six "modes", it's incredibly hard to see what a particular effect is actually doing. Confusingly, the layer order is the opposite of what it is in Speedgrade (top-down rather than bottom-up). No grouping of layers, no sharing of masks. I strongly suggest renaming each effect.

- You can assign the various Lumetri sliders to the control surface knobs. Unfortunately, the documentation in Premiere is clear as mud as to what they do. It seems that temperature is a basic blue/orange control, tint a basic green/magenta and saturation is INPUT saturation (since Premiere processes the sliders before the color wheels). Contrast is a basic pivot control, or maybe a gamma control that mainly affects the midtones? Exposure brightens or darkens the entire image, but "soft-shoulders" to reduce clipping. Shadows/Highlights are gamma controls that only affect the shadows and highlights respectively and Blacks/Whites are gamma controls near the edge of clipping.

In all, not exactly a great grading experience, putting it mildly. Worse, a few things which absolutely do NOT work:

- Separate grading of Shadows / Midtones / Highlights and setting their respective ranges. This is the real dealbreaker. At the moment, there's just no way to get these controls in Premiere. I'm sure their "effect" can be approximated, at least in terms of luma, by using the shadows/highlights/whites/blacks/contrast/exposure sliders, but it's a fundamentally different approach in that it logically precedes the colorwheel grading rather than acting as a refinement to it. Also, it feels like giving up a lot of control and speed. I don't think there's a way in which the effect can be approximated for chroma. (I don't even want to consider using HSL secondaries for this!)

- Mask controls for control surfaces. Premiere has it own mask controls and they're mouse-driven and cannot be mapped onto the control surface. I'm a bit torn about this one, because while I really miss the trackball-and-ring adjustment of masks, Premiere's mask functionality (and especially its keyframing and tracking) is a lot more robust than Speedgrade's and works like other Adobe products.

- Copying grades is tricky. Browsing saved .look files is very inconvenient. It's not possible to export a single .look or .cube for a stack of effects. Also, you need to watch the order in which effects are applied.

On the positive side:

- Grading is finally possible on master clips for merged clips

- Grading not brought to its knees by LUTs or complex timelines (DirectLink was always a terrible slog)

- Premiere's masking engine is easier, better than Speedgrade's ever was

- Many of Premiere's effects are superior to Speedgrade's

- Easy vignetting

If Adobe could somehow add ranged grading to the Lumetri effects (perhaps hidden behind a checkbox) and make stacking grading effects more manageable and transparent, it would be almost usable. I'd have enjoyed giving it a try in CC 2017. But to lose Speedgrade DirectLink for this... very infurating.

EDITED: I originally wrote that multiple effects couldn't be stacked into a single preset, which fortunately isn't the case.

[Seneca_lives]

And some more findings on trying to use Lumetri:

- The color wheels act as Lift/Gamma/Gain controls, whereas Speedgrade provides Offset/Gamma/Gain. This accounts for what "feels" to me like a lack of control in places. There are no Offset controls anywhere in Lumetri. (Well, ok, I suppose you can use Curves to draw and shift a straight line with a slope of 1, but that's not exactly how I'd use Offset...)

- There is no output saturation control. (Well, ok, if you select nothing in HSL Secondaries and then Invert, you get an extra level of control within Lumetri, which could function as output saturation. Much more of a hassle than turning a knob...)

- The range of the luma sliders for the color wheels is limited to what's visible in the interface. In Speedgrade, you can keep turning the rings/knobs on your control surface, but in Lumetri they just... stop. This means that when the source video has low dynamic range, it's really not possible to grade using the color wheels only. Apparently, Basic Corrections are expected to do the heavy lifting, Color Wheels are the refinement.

- Unchecking "Clamp signal" on the scopes is meaningless in most situations, since Lumetri normally never lets you exceed 1.0 or drop below 0.0. You can see if there's detail blown out by checking HDR and keeping the scopes set to Float. (But this disables any LUTs you may have, so it's self-defeating.) Even in HDR mode, you will never see any detail below 0.0, because there are no Offset controls.

- Various settings which can be assigned to control surfaces (Bypass, Master Clip...) only work if Lumetri Color is the active panel. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to switch to Lumetri, but that's still two keypresses where one sufficed in Speedgrade.

- The HSL Secondaries mode lets you switch between one and three color wheels, with one being the default - regardless, if you've assigned HSL color wheels to your control surface, they _will_ work without switching to three first.

- Solo mode is about de-cluttering the Lumetri panel, not turning effects on or off individually.

[Seneca_lives]

In addition to my earlier litany of complaints about Lumetri as a grading solution - and if anyone else wants to submit these as feature requests, I'm encouraging you to do so! - here's some more wonderful surprises:

- Lumetri "protects" a novice colorist from taking the image "too far" using the various Basic Corrections; most of the controls seem to "roll off" or "soft shoulder" aggressively rather than just behaving as advertised.

- Which means that there is no way to push information out of bounds (where you can see how much detail is crushed or blown out), not even temporarily, say while you work on another part of the image. You just have to trust that Lumetri knows what's best. Weirdly, you can still reach illegal color saturation levels, if you really try hard. And in my experience, those have a larger chance of generating unpredictable results. Not sure how any of this relates to Premiere's "video limiter" effect and media export settings.

- The ranges of the controls that _do_ somewhat behave as advertised are limited to the point of being useless (luma sliders on color wheels). It seems that their range has actually decreased vs. PPro 2015.2.

- Any changes made through the control surface don't have an "undo"! It means that you can't make multiple changes to a color setting and step back through your changes, you have to reset the entire "mode". And if you hit undo out of habit, you'll probably just undo your last keyboard action. Hope you can remember what that was and hope you even notice the change right away.

- The control surface will only ever affect the lowest Lumetri Effect in the stack. No way around this.

- Which means that, if you want to grade using a control surface, you're limited to ONE primary and ONE secondary. Or maybe just one primary, period, because you may need to use the secondary to reach an acceptable range for your basic controls. Or maybe not even that, if you want to use a mask.

I've tried to keep an open mind, but I just can't imagine doing any kind of semi-serious or client work in this environment. And even for dead simple work, I find myself wondering why I'm wasting all this energy on accomplishing something I could literally do with the spin of a wheel in a dedicated application. So I've begun to advise my regular clients not to start any work in PPro 2015.3 at all for now, just to keep an escape route open. In fact, I'm advising them not to install it to begin with, just to prevent any accidental "upgrades" of project files. The reason I sadly have to give is:

"Adobe currently provides NO way to perform ANY kind of quality color grading on Premiere Pro 2015.3 projects. Oh, there is a cumbersome, unreliable workaround that will cost either or both of us a lot of time and effort; and for it to work, your project ideally shouldn't have any effects or transitions, and it absolutely cannot contain .mxf files, or .mov or .mp4 files in the wrong codec, say, ProRes, or Cineform, and it also requires you to have a 100% picture lock. And if you're unfortunate enough to have already started work in 2015.3, the simplest and, yes, cheapest alternative is to export the whole project to grade in a rival NLE that Adobe would presumably prefer you didn't use."

Madness.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Seneca_lives,

Madness.

Please copy/paste these shortcomings into a bug report. Thanks for your excellent feedback.

Regards,
Kevin

[KevinAGI]

Kevin,

Although I have already voiced my displeasure in the Feature/Bug Request, I would like to point out to you Adobe's own Whats new Document. Premiere Pro CC 2015 new features summary Not a single mention of the removal of Speed Grade integration. For a select few of us this had become the backbone of our workflow. I work mostly in the independent feature film arena, and being able to work on color correction while still editing has been a real game changer. No longer did I have to wait to final edit to color correct. It could be part of the creative process while editing. Now Adobe is forcing me back to Davinci, and the way they are going I will be editing in that soon. That will mean bye bye adobe suite for me. Having a tightly integrated post workflow is a big selling point for the Small to medium sized Post production houses. The big guys will always do something different, they can afford custom software and processes. Don't make this the next Final Cut X

Kevin Christopher

Editor/Post Production Supervisor

[Seneca_lives]

Completely agree. Shocking that it's not even in the release notes. It's like Adobe honestly hoped or expected us to be so wowed by the latest improvements to Lumetri (some are ok, but some actually make it much worse for colorists) that we'd instantly forget all about Speedgrade.

I've seen a few comparisons to the FCP X debacle, but that wasn't workflow-breaking and users had literally years to find an alternative.

I know Adobe cannot be expected to read all the forums and that the bug/feature request is the way to go, but I still hope that someone will be able to get not just the complaints themselves across to senior management, but the sense of anger and betrayal on the forum. People are furious and suddenly having to rethink their workflows. And ALL the posts are like that. I haven't seen a single comments along the lines of "ah well, it's not so bad, I can live with this", let alone "thanks Adobe, great update"...

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello Seneca_lives,

I still hope that someone will be able to get not just the complaints themselves across to senior management, but the sense of anger and betrayal on the forum.

That's my job, and I have done this. The bug reports that I requested that people on this thread have been rolling in and they have made a difference. Please keep them coming if there are still those out there that have not submitted a bug yet (you only have to submit once, please).

Please, let me know if there's anything more I can do to advocate to on your behalf.

Thank you,

Kevin

[Seneca_lives]

Thanks and much appreciated, Kevin.

[KevinAGI]

I'm glad I could help. Thanks to all who have posted on this subject. Let's keep the pressure on Adobe to fix this issue.

NOW BACK TO EDITING (whip crack sound effect),

Kevin

[heynewt]

Just left a Feature request to make Speedgrade compatible with 2015.3 project files.  We don't even need Direct Link, just compatibility with the 2015.3 file format.  Then later they can announce their end of support for Speedgrade.  That would give us a year to transition to another solution, like Davinci.

Maybe they'll work out an internal CC solution that's as robust as Avid Symphony, where you have both Master Clip and secondary CC.  But I think that's a lot of iterations down the road.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey heynewt,

Just left a Feature request to make Speedgrade compatible with 2015.3 project files.

Thank you so much!
Kevin

[Kevin-Monahan]

Let's keep the pressure on Adobe to fix this issue.

...which means please file a feature request. That doesn't mean, "let's yell at Kevin."

Actually, you guys have been really great. A good number of reports have been coming in from this small but passionate community. Keep 'em coming ladies and gentlemen. You can make a difference.

Regards,
Kevin

[markrpigott]

Had just loaded Speedgrade from CC menu.

Noticed none of the advertised Direct Links work (yes I read that Adobe removed it

as an "upgrade")

Was looking to colour correct a problem colour cast clip in SG,

but alas it looks like I am too late.

What happened to the old axiom

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

[R Neil Haugen]

Mark,

I DO understand your frustration. I've got two comments, first ... in a few other threads here on the SpeedGrade forum, there's comments about fellow user Patrick Zadrobilek's "PrProBCC". That little app is handy, and I still use it to get PrPro 2017 projects into SpeedGrade as if they were still in a "Direct Link" mode.

It's pretty slick, and works for most projects. One known caveat ... it doesn't work for sequences with AE "comps" on them. You would need to fully render the comps out from AE and replace them on the sequence before running the project through Pat's applet. Which does a save-as, and converts one (1) numeral character in the project file so that Sg 2015.1 "sees" that as a PrPro 2015.2 project and works it as expected.

After completing work in Sg, you do a Save in that app, and run the project file back through Pat's app, which up-converts it this time. Open it again in PrPro, and off you go. And it's pretty inexpensive.

The other ... there are a lot of things one can do with Lumetri, in PrPro ... and with stacking Lumetri on layers of video or Adjustment layers, you can do some things that aren't really thought of as something that can be done with it. However, it doesn't have a shot-matching feature. Sg's one-button shot-matching wasn't perfect, but it would typically get me 90% of the way or better, and of course, you've got the 2/3-up monitor setting.

I made a custom workspace in PrPro that creates a second window which I put on my playback monitor (I run two monitors), and on that I have the Reference and Program monitors, and of course the Lumetri scopes showing in the main UI. I set the Reference monitor to the clip/frame I want to match to, and the Program monitor is of course on what I need to work. At least this way I can see them side-by-side at a usable image size, and can click in the Reference monitor to see the way the scopes show, and then the sequence or Program monitors to see how that clip/frame shows in the scopes.

And you are most welcome to drop a bug/feature-request form on this to officially get your opinions listed in their queue of user thoughts ... the bug/feature forms are distributed to all managerial types in some sort of collated listing. So they are seen & noted, even though they never respond to anyone personally about them.

Neil

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

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Kevin AGI,

Although I have already voiced my displeasure in the Feature/Bug Request

Thanks so much. Everyone on this thread needs to add their "vote" as you have. It really does make a difference.

I would like to point out to you Adobe's own Whats new Document. Premiere Pro CC 2015 new features summary Not a single mention of the removal of Speed Grade integration.

Sorry, I have no control over the product team's communication over this. I am in support and can only fix existing issues. You've done all you can by filing that request. Again, thanks for doing so.

Don't make this the next Final Cut X

Again, this is more of the kind of criticism you should be including in your feature request to the product team. I don't know if you know this or not, but I am your advocate on this issue. I actually do hope they can reinstate the feature if at all possible.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Kisiel123]

I just don't understand why Adobe is making it harder for us Premiere users with every release.  I have been using premiere/speedgrade for over a year now.  It was the ability to work directly with Pr and coloring application that drew me to the Adobe cloud in first place.  An upgrade should come with improvements, there are hardly any useful ones in the 2015.3 release.  I use many variety of applications form Photoshop and DAWs and I had never had as many problems upgrading as I do with Premiere.  I hope that in future all the tools from speedgrade will be integrated into Pr.  Right now, the Lumerati color grading seems little light and limited.           

[R Neil Haugen]

So here's what I've found in 10.4 Lumetri so far ... hope it may help a bit ...

​First ... using a mouse, the controls for the Basic tab only go to 100 ... but using a control panel like the Ripple, you can go both up & down to 150. And the Ripple is a heck of a lot faster than a mouse.​

​ If any of your signal goes above say 97, click the three little lines to the right of "Lumetri" at the top of the Lumetri tab, and click High Dynamic Range ... then go to the Basic tab's "Specular" slider and pull it all the way to the left. Otherwise you'll get odd "splits" where the top pixels have a gap between them and the rest ... which of course gives you banding in your highlights.

​ The fastest way to neutralize an image is actually using the clunky curves tab in the Lumetri panel, I watch the scopes while grabbing the tops & bottoms as needed to get basically even RGB parade signals.

​ After this, the color wheels or the Basic tab are both useful to get things done.  "Exposure" is more like a gross contrast control with the pivot set at 1, and works the tops far faster than the bottoms unless you get it cranked way up when the built-in rolloff of effect limits the top and the bottoms keep going up. Intriguing.

​Contrast is a finer contrast control than Exposure, seems set with a pivot about 48-50.

​Blacks, shadows, highs, and whites are often more useful for tonal controls than Exposure/contrast.

​ The secondary panel in all is pretty decent, but you've only got the one ... so I have been using Three-way Color after Lumetri to create additional secondaries as needed.

​Shot-matching ... what a pain. Totally nothing there, other than flipping clip to clip on the timeline. Yuck. To be polite.

​ You can "stack" Lumetri effects in the timeline, and so use one for say neutralization/shot-matching, the next one for "look". Or use Look work on an adjustment layer. With the caveat ... the only Lumetri that will be usable through the 'regular' Lumetri panel will be the last instance applied ... earlier ones you'll need to use the Effects Control panel and the twirl-downs.

​ I've found so far that applying Lumetri hasn't slowed my operations down at all, I think they've got better speed into this one. And did a couple exports with Lumetri on multiple Adjustment Layers, and it all worked fine.

​ For anything above 1080 footage though, I'd use the "create proxies" feature and use those while working, with the nifty icon you can add to the program monitor's controls to with one click go forth & back between proxy & original media.

[Seneca_lives]

Good work! Interesting about the ranges...

I think this does show that the question of how usable the Lumetri panel is in the "real world", depends on what your "real world" is.

The fact that there's a rather limited subsection of the panel marked "Creative" says it all, for me... Lumetri in PPro is for correcting, not creating. I've used it for a few basic jobs where some minor corrections were all that was needed, and it was, let's say, "doable" in Lumetri.

But for something more complex, or as a means to create a look or genuinely control the light and color of an image, it's like trying to eat soup with a fork.

Or maybe more like trying to eat soup with a variety of random utensils which, when used together in some ingenious way, may, on a case-by-case basis, enable you to actually ingest some soup.

In fact, the way it requires this kind of "intellectual" rather than an "intuitive" approach is what probably frustrates me the most about Lumetri. It's supposed to be simple, accessible, but from a colorist's point of view, it's anything but.