Premiere Pro CC color / gamma shift on export - is a Premiere not Quicktime problem

[markusw90010395]

I know this is a topic of major frustration for many of us - washed out colors and a very visible gamma shift when exporting out of Premiere Pro. From what I have seen on this forum, people post all kinds of solutions / explanations as to what could cause this problem. Many people think it' a Quicktime problem, some say it has to do with video card drives, or with checking "render as linear color space" or not.

I just did a round of major testing on my iMac running OS 10.12.5 and the latest version of Premiere Pro CC 2017 - and I have to say - nothing I do fixes it or makes any difference. Whatever I export - and that's the key here - Quicktime movies, TIFF sequences, stills - EVERYTHING has a washed-out gamma shift and desaturated colors.

When I take a screenshot of my media within Premiere Pro - colors and gamma of the resulting PNG are exactly as I see them in Premiere. If go through the EXPORT function and export a still image - the colors are faded and the gamma is washed out. And it doesn't matter what is clicked in the export window - maximum depth, linear color space... nothing makes a difference.

Here is another interesting thing I found - when I reimport these washed-out exports (stills or quicktime movies, doesn't matter), inside the Premiere Pro world they look perfectly normal. When I import the same washed-out exports into Final Cut Pro X, the washed out colors and gamma stay. So there must be something in these exports (hidden tags?) that Premiere adds and that it then uses to display the media correctly. Unfortunately every other app in my Mac universe doesn't do the same and is off dramatically.

The problem is - I can't just stay inside Premiere Pro. I have to send tmy cuts out and share them with clients. I need them to see what I see inside Premiere Pro.

Does anyone on the Adobe side have any insight into this? This issue has been going on for years on this forum. I cannot believe that we are still nowhere close to a solution.

Thanks in advance for any hint.

Markus

[makb13981805]

Neil. No need to repost video from another topic. I saw it a lot. You just making your politic game. Stop it. Problem exist. And it nees to be solved by Adobe. The point is - Mac users at this moment should not use Adobe to keep themself safe from adobe issues.

[makb13981805]

It will be better to know if it will be done soon on maybe next year. Or Adobe will lost a lot of old users like us you know. We edit and grade in Adobe for years. But 2019 may be a final cut in Abobe story

[R Neil Haugen]

Your OS maker did what they have consistently done ... create a "unique ecosystem" that doesn't follow any professional standards and rig it so the in-house apps have an advantage.

And you expect every other company to find ways around Apple's clearly intentional (and also clearly non-published) internal wiring and coding.

And blame everyone but Apple. Amazing.

As noted, not even a ton of pro colorists who know one heck of a lot more than you or I can sort this out. With any app, as they don't use Adobe apps much at all.

The Filmlight people are trying to show how to use a BBC-created and rather esoteric application to get around the Apple ecosystem limitations.

As their high-end grading app can't get around Apple's coding either, without the use of that BBC app to mode Apple's ColorSync settings.

Yet you still insist this is only an Adobe fault.

Huh.

Neil

[makb13981805]

The question is not about fault.

If you cannot make your app working well (Adobe I mean) - tell all users about the issue in sys. req. or on main page. No need to disappoint all the mac users this way. That is the question.

I pay money for good working app. Not for lost days on forums.

For me as a consumer it doesn't matter why. Blablabla Apple blablabla Color sync.

I'm not your teacher and you are not a schoolboy. It seems like making excuses.

It's awful situation. We need no temporary solutions. If Adobe take my money they can pay Apple buy Apple whatever. I don't care.

But all Mac user need to know about this shit before they get this pain for their own money

Am I right, Neil?

[R Neil Haugen]

Did Apple tell you about their choice to build a system that didn't work smoothly with the professional standards you needed to use before you bought it?

Did you *check* that it could meet your professional needs?

I agree, it's a mess for a lot of Apple users. And it's frustrating as Hades. So actually you have my sympathy.

At NAB and forums, the colorists I hang with spend hours discussing how to get their clients viewing the work on a correctly interpreting system. Which means NOT on a Mac P3-Display screen.

And understand, most of them work on massive Macs. But no colorist I've ever been around, listened to, or read, checks color accuracy on a P3-Display screen. Nor wants their work verified on one.

Yea, it sucks. Big time. I wish I had a working bandaid.

Neil

[makb13981805]

Oops... It looks like I'm talking to a bot.

[R Neil Haugen]

I try to help.  I get the best information I can from anywhere I can get solid, factual and useful information.

I take a lot of crap from *%*÷/ users for trying to help them get work out the door no matter what the organization's we all use do in their Great Wisdom. (I hope you see the sarcasm there.)

Adobe is a group of humans making tools. Some of them have major issues at times. Some work pretty decently much of the time.

Like any similar group of humans they at times screw the pooch. And I have a ton of posts between here and other forums with detailed complaints of issues running back several years. When they screw up, I'm as honest and direct about that as at any other time.

And yea, that has included a couple releases I couldn't use for months because of bugs that directly affected my work. And I posted detailed reports here for other users on the bugs involved and how to revert and get back to work.

BlackMagic just released a new version of Resolve that has ... I kid you not! ... a timeline  "tool" they call "the Boring detector". You should look at the posts on LGG about that. There's a ton of issues the colorist's have with poorly working features, quite a number of the controls on that $30,000 Advanced Panel don't actually do anything, and BlackMagic spends the time to come out with The Boring Detector.

There's a lot of incredulous (and some incensed!) Resolve users right now. I'm one of them because yea I work in Resolve also.

Adobe has at times released major messes. And at times excellent work.

And Apple wants to confine their users to their House apps. While giving them a beautiful if non-standard screen.

You wanna be a bot, go right ahead. Be an Apple-bot.

I use tools from a number of makers, none perfect, and I take responsibility for figuring out how to compile a system between hardware and software that gets my work out. Be it Resolve, Premiere, or anything else. I check everything out before I buy. How does it work within the standards I need to work to?

It isn't rocket science it just takes a bit of thinking through things. Independently. As I recommend all working folks do.

And I don't blame others when I make assumptions I should have known about instead. Yea, I've done that and it can be an expensive lesson. So I do check everything out a lot more thoroughly than when I was younger.

I can't fix Apple, Adobe, or BlackMagic. I can only set things up so I know they will work.

Neil

[xylacat]

I have the same problem. 😞

[R Neil Haugen]

Xylacat,

You didn't provide much detail so I'm having to make major assumptions which is not my preference.

Apparently you are using a newer Mac with a "Retina" monitor. Those monitors are beautiful to look at but neither the monitor, the OS, nor Apple's ColorSync color management utility perform within any standard used anywhere.

Yea, this causes problems.

The monitor is designed to use a completely new and unique Apple-only display space, Apple calls "Display-P3".

It mashes up the P3 color primaries (asymmetrically larger than video sRGB), the sRGB White point of D65, and a gamma listed only as "sRGB".

But they only use the camera-referred transform function and NOT the required display-referred second part of the Rec.709 video standards.

No place in the world uses the Apple Display-P3 space as a professional video standard. No colorists (even those on Macs) grades on a Retina screen.

The BBC has a convoluted in-house app to attempt to mod ColorSync so Rec.709 media is displaying properly but even many colorists look at that applet in puzzlement.

Premiere is hardwired for sRGB/Rec.709 gamma 2.4 100 nits pro broadcast standards. It presumes the user is working on a properly setup and calibrated pro monitor.

To work with a Retina, check the "Enable Display Color Management option in the preferences. It may well be able to read the ICC profile and mod the signal to the internal monitors so that you see a decent Rec.709 image.

But outside of Premiere on such a rig, no other app will display Rec709 material correctly. Sad to say.

Neil

[marcoso59846131]

Maybe that video would help you! 

It actually worked. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noFlexiSJxo

[johnd18932749]

Hello I am a colorist who just ran across this issue. I use Resolve for color grading. My client sent me a Quicktime from Premiere Pro (ProRes HQ). I graded the file and exported with the same codec. He loaded it back into Premiere and added some white type. Exported the file again as ProRes HQ. He opened both files, mine and his in Qucktime player. They looked different, the one from Premiere looked milky blacks and less color than the original from Resolve. He then took my original file and exported it out of Premiere without touching it at all. It still looked different when played back in Quicktime player. So just for fun I tooke the titled file from Premiere and dropped it into Resolve and exported a ProRes HQ without touching it. When I looked at the Premier file from Resolve and my original export from Resolve in Quicktime player, the levels looked identical. My coclusion is the Premiere exports are not compatible with Qucktime player. This has nothing to do with the display monitor. It is strictly a difference of how Quicktime player displays video from Premier. A source for Resolve through Resolve and exported untouched looks the same in Quicktime player. Test is to take a Qucktime file and run it through Premier and export it without touching it and see if there is a difference between the source and the Premier export and there will be. Sounds like an Adobe issue to me! I can post screen grabs if you would like to see exactly what I mean. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Johnd*****,

Are you on PC or Mac? I can't replicate this on my PC, Resolve in Resolve color manage mode and Premiere both send an apparently identical file as seen by Qt player on my machine. I have heard of others where the Qt views are different between files created by R and P. They've mostly been on Macs.

I know the ColorSync utility on Mac has interesting practices ... the BBC even has it's own in-house utility they created to hack into ColorSync and push some internal buttons so it handles color in a more standard fashion. I've seen the app demo'd on web, and some colorists I know have apparently played with it a bit. And they ... guys used to mega-complex color management and calibration ... found that app rather esoteric and just left it alone.

I do wish this whole color management 'thing' was a lot more transparent. And with clear options that if set via OS or by app were the same across apps. I know ... dream on ...

Neil

[johnd18932749]

Hello Neil,

I am on a Mac with a Flanders Scientific monitor. the monitor is not the issue. I get clients who use Premiere for editing nd adding titles. They send me either files or in this case a ProRes HQ Quicktime. I send them back a graded Pro Res HQ Quicktime. When the export the final with titles it looks lighter. So they sent me back the exported Quicktime and I brought back into Resolve along with my exported Quicktime. They look the same in Resolve, but if I go to project settings and go to color management, then in color science turn on managed, it looks different than what I dent them. Further investigation shows that the file from Premiere is a Rec 709 scene file whereas the file sent over was a rec 709 gamma 2.4 file. I did a test out of Resolve seeing on a gray sacele what the difference is between exporting a Rec 709 2.4 gaamma file and a Rec 709 scene file looks like. sure enought the Rec 709 scene looks lighter. Not as much as a gamma 2.2 but lighter. Why is Premiere changing the file gamma from its original inport? In Resolve I can see what the file is and decide if I want to deviate off the broadcast standard 2.4 gamma or not. Is the file out Premiere a 2.35 gamma file.  can send you gray scale outputs to see the difference if you like.

Thank you.

[R Neil Haugen]

John,

Oh, a Flanders ... I'd love one of those. I presented in the Flanders/MixingLight booth last year at NAB, with the signal from my laptop going into one of their larger HDR capable monitors. Ah ... one can dream. I'd take one of the SDR rigs also ... so many of the folks I communicate with regularly are pro colorists, and they're mostly running either a Flanders or Eizo, with some other things thrown in. All full grade-1 ref monitors like that Flanders of yours.

What are you feeding the Flanders with? And how calibrating/profiling it? (Just out of curiosity.)

And as it happens, my NAB presentation was on Premiere's color management ... compiled after hours in screen-share/Bluejeans and phone calls with Francis Crossman (then color engineer, now co-product manager) and tons of emails between Francis, myself, Lars Borg, and the founders of MixingLight, two major teaching colorists.

Premiere is hard-coded to run on a system set to broadcast Rec.709 standards: sRGB color primaries, Rec.709 profile (including both the scene referred and display referred transform functions), gamma 2.4, white point 100 nits for semi-dark room work.

The 'native' Mac OS ColorSync utility applies the Rec.709 scene referred transform but not the display referred transform function in testing in most facilities I've seen. Plus as noted in a response to your query on this on LGG, ColorSync defaults to a gamma described as either 1.95 or 1.96.

Depending on the tags in the file header, Qt player may also apply either gamma 2.2 or 2.4. There is an issue where ColorSync expects to see one 'tag' on mov files (including ProRes) that Premiere doesn't apparently add in the way ColorSync expects. Chief Color Scientist for Adobe, Lars Borg ... says that the Apple use or expectation of what that tag means is "wrong". I've suggested that, as Resolve went ahead and set their file header export tags to work with QuickTime player in the Mac OS, and I can't see that it would hurt anywhere else, that maybe Premiere should also. His response was still that the application in ColorSync is wrong. Engineers being engineers, of course.

That said ... I'm quite surprised you're getting a non-2.4 gamma file that has been exported from Premiere. It's built to basically only export in Rec.709/gamma-2.4.

When I take any file I've exported from Premiere and import into Resolve, it always comes in appropriately. As a PC user, I used to normally export Cineform or a DNx file, but with ProRes in Premiere in Windows now, I use that a lot. I normally just set Resolve to the RCM mode, which runs a Rec.709 file from import through timeline through display through export at the same standards. Full Rec.709 profile, gamma 2.4, appropriate black/white/tonal curves on a 100nit brightness monitor in a controlled semi-dark room with MediaLight backlit strips measured reflectance on the neutral gray wall.

I also 'hang' on LGG, and saw your post there and comments with Marc Weilage and Keidrich Wasley. I had a chance to talk with Marc in person and in-depth about this last year at NAB. Between his comments and Keidrich's on your LGG post, I agree with them. Keidrich really nails the processing chain, and where it goes awry.

And as Evan Anthony notes, the same experience I've heard elsewhere, that mov file whether ProRes or others seem to have tagging issues between Premiere, Resolve, and Avid which is why he stays with DNx HQX or 444, as with that format/codec, he never has the tagging issues.

I wish there were simpler, elegant solutions to color across apps/OS/devices.

Neil