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There seems to be a lot of room for discussion about this stuff, and Neil is correct in my opinion, re: broadcast standards. He is also a very accomplished Still photographer who has more than 40 years experience shooting very high quality photographs with cameras that are high end ( 35mm, 6x7, 4x5, 8x10, etc.) Both black and white and color ! He is very very into color and learning everything about film in general.
Thank you Neil !
With regard to what clipping occurs when shooting with a professional digital film camera ( which most of us cannot afford with a full assortment of prime cine lenses, which means most people ( including the producers of AVENGERS THE LAST STAND ) have to rent them for the photography portion of the production . Otherwise you would have to be a moron to buy all that stuff for one movie production.
Now, the question is, are we dealing with projection ( digital film ) or broadcast standard ( based on old CRT TV standards ).
That's an interesting question when dealing with new technology of VIEWING via HD, UHD, XUHD, WCG, 4K, 8K and 8 bit 10 bit, and all the rest of the stuff going on. As described re: "the wild west ".
It's not REALLY the wild west, and beyond making something linear vs. log for the purpose of editing, the spaces involved are quite adjustable BEYOND broadcast ( dinosaur ) standards.
Adobe has NO clue what that is and will probably never be able to re-write ( from the bottom up ) the whole structure of dealing with color.
Although I admire the desire to sell adobe despite the stupid rec 709 clipping that is inherent in that program, I would love to sit down and actually SHOOT something with a modern professional DIGITAL FILM CAMERA and compare notes about the accuracy and handling of that material … even though the camera may be 'screwy'.
hehe... What was it Jim said the other day ?? He likes to work with ACES in resolve as a rule ? Even though his exports are rec709 mostly ??
Actually, I've spent hours with an Adobe color engineer over the last couple months dealing with Pr and color management/handling. More than an hour on one phone call, another hour over a BlueJeans connection between our computers, many emails/texts, and hours in person at NAB. Then more emails/texts since. I gave a presentation on this in the Flanders/MixingLight booth at NAB, and I have a tutorial coming out in the next few days over at mixinglight.com on this, all the details of color management/handling from SDR/Rec.709 through HDR.
Premiere uses a Rec.709 "pipeline" but works easily enough with nearly all pro formats out there. Up through HDR, if you have the gear to work HDR needed by Premiere. It works with HDR media as "over-range Rec.709" clear to 10,000 nits. Not that anything currently can display that, but ... it is The Standard for the top right now. All HDR is run as Rec.2020 within Pr.
The RED, Arri, Sony, BlackMagic and other cameras, when using some proprietary RAW or Log formats, all have settings in-cam that can be adjusted in post-processing. For that media, Premiere uses the Master Clip options to allow the maker's controls to be accessed with Premiere.
This is a RED demo media clip, for example. You have the full range of controls for 'normalizing' that media into Pr's Rec.709 working space. I see this exactly the same on my fully calibrated and profiled! monitor as I do when I open the clip in Resolve 15 Studio's Color tab in RCM color managed mode.
Premiere takes any imported file, at whatever bit-dept it is at, converts to Rec.709 32-bit float for all internal processing. Then at the far end, converts from 32-bit float into the range and bit-depth of whatever media format/codec you've chosen for your export, at that format/codec's standards for range/bit-depth and all.
And if you look at the right-side scales of the scopes in that image .... the RGB Parade is showing 0-255, while the Waveform YC is showing 16-235. The two "YC" forms of the Waveform scope show limited-range media with the correct mapping to numbers for 8 bit media, so you need to realize that if the clip is 10-bit the 16 is really 64 and the 235 is really 940, though the numbers of the scale don't change.
The RGB Parade is showing essentially a "monitor mapping" of the media signal to the monitor space. Which in Pr's internal monitors is assumed to be video sRGB/Rec.709/gamma-2.4/100 nits. 16-235 "limited range" is always shown full 0-255 in any properly managed player. And all colorists I know scoff at the concept of handling Rec.709 media in "full data range" as something only the great unwashed would think of doing. Which is why so many look at the RGB Parade scale and conclude Premiere is not handling the media correctly. Which, in reality, it is. They just use screwy numbers on some of the scope scales.
The left-side scope scales show the nits/IRE numbers, btw.
If you've got a monitor profile in the OS set to something else, you can always try the "Enable Display Color Management" option. However ... that is an attempt to attain a perceptual match between the Rec.709/etc. of Pr's internal pipeline to the monitor as set in the ICC profile the OS shows for the monitor. Depending on a number of things ... including how tightly you have your monitored calibrated and checked by profiling! ... it may or may not show a fairly accurate view of your media in another color space.
You need to test that thoroughly to see if you get results that are what you'd expect.
Neil
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