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Big Colour shift when Exporting to qt/mp4 H264 in Premier Pro CS6
get a big Color Shift between exported H264 mp4 on Vimeo/Youtube and Quicktime X and Program Monitor in Premier Pro CS6
There are quite a few posts on Quicktime gamma issues, but there seem to be no solutions and the other editors I know don’t seem to have this problem.
I know there will be a bit of a shift but this is MASSIVE. At the moment I add a whole extra adjustment layer to all my clips to get it approximately right, but ofcourse this does not solve the issue nor does it give proper results.
Please do not reply with the “You need a real reference monitor via SDI etc etc …”
By my logic on the same screen the program monitor should resemble what is going to be the final result in a relevant player like Quicktime X which all normal apple consumers use to watch their films. I know VLC and Mpeg streamclip gives different results, but mostly when playing Quicktime/h264 files Quicktime will play it thus average users ( the people I’d like to downwload/buy my films )will watch it in Quicktime.
Furthermore, Quicktime X’s gamma/color looks very similar to the image I get on Youtube or Vimeo – which is where all my current work is going. I’m not outputting to boradcast or DVD etc.
Strangely enough the MPEG 2 stuff I’ve done for DVD matches the Youtube output with the Program monitor.
What am I doing wrong?
I have a Dell 2711 wide Gamut Display which is calibrated with an SPyder 3 Elite using its full colour gamut ( close to 90% of Adobe RGB – thus bigger than sRGB or Rec709) Could Premiere be ignoring the calibration in the Program monitor and making the image values 16-235 and then Quicktime uses all values 0-255? If so, how can I fix this?
Any help will be much appreciated!
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7 Replies
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There are two main definitions of the Quicktime gamma bug:
The first is a display difference between Quicktime and most other video players including from within Premiere and Final Cut. This can be remedied by screwing around with Quicktime specific metadata. Not really codec specific… Quicktime just isn’t the greatest video viewer.
The second is a specific bug with h.264 encoding with Quicktime that burns in (permanently adjusts) a gamma/contrast shift (caused by 8×8 DCT when encoding in the Main level profile, IIRC). https://vitrolite.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/quicktime_gamma_bug/ points out that you can install x264 as a Quicktime codec to avoid the problem with some optimized settings. https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/20/862173 for a little further reading
Alternately, you can stick with the same encoder but you can preemptively add an adjustment before exporting. I have a LUT for that adjustment. Go to my website, look for my contact info, and send me an email. If you have Speedgrade, it should have also installed with a Quicktime LUT you can apply in Premiere CS6.
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Redacted – not as pertinent as I thought originally.
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Hi Angelo, thank you for being so generous with your time to reply to me. It is much appreciated.
I think I’ve tried the x264 solution and it did not seem to work( think I found is on a thread around here)
But I’ll try again, I might have done something wrong.
I also wanted to ask you what your calibration setup is?
I dont have the Blackmagic/AJA cards to go to a proper Broadcast monitor but my Dell has a 10bit LUT and 90%+ AdobeRGB color space so it should be able to give me good results.
Do you have settings when calibrated that I should know of.
My screen has presets for HIgh Bright/Video/Srgb/Adobe RGB and FULL ( which is the complete range)
I use a Spyder 3 Elite pro. Is there a Black/Whiter luminance especially used for video?
I’m a photographer so I calibrate at 6500K and 120 lumens …I also have a NEC PA241W which is a more “correct”monitor for calibration which I use for my photography.
Any thoughts?
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O yes, I Edit on a mac …. (HAckintosh) Does that make a difference?
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Your monitor profile is only used by applications which are color-managed, like After Effects and Photoshop. It won’t be used by unmanaged applications like Premiere or QuickTime Player.
Having a calibrated SDI monitor would show you how your colors really look, too, but that still won’t help you with QuickTime. Angelo’s LUT solution sounds very promising to me.
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I actually just found this link and am having the exact same issue. I was hoping you guys could offer some advice. Previously we had some luck exporting pro res finals from FCP and in quicktime 7 adjusting the video settings. Now we are on Premiere CC. I’m curious about the LUT solution. Can anyone shine some light on that? I know this is an old thread but feel free to email me any advice. Thanks.
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The LUTs did not work. What finally got it very close is by simply ding a gamma effect ( from the video effects) of 12 ( thus adding 2 gamma. It starts at 10.
This seem to solve it for me.
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