Black levels when exporting from Premiere Pro CC

[Angelo Lorenzo]

What settings/format are you exporting to? Exact details or a screenshot of your export settings.

What are you using to compare your in-Premiere video against your rendered video? Are you taking your rendered video back into Premiere? Are there color shifts then? Are you using Quicktime to watch the video? Quicktime, as a player, does a terrible job of rendering colors correctly; this is above and beyond any gamma/color shift bugs.

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Angelo Lorenzo

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[Dan Nastro]

Here are two screens of the export settings I most commonly use, first is a ProRes master of the project and the second is my most common online delivery profile. As you can see in the output preview monitor the blacks are not as deep as in the program monitor on the right.

However, when bringing the file back into premiere as you had suggested the black levels are correct. Still my main concern is final delivery and how it will look in the setting it lives in (usually vimeo, youtube or a player like brightcove).

[Ivan Myles]

Yay, Stubbs BBQ!

[Dan Nastro] “Here are two screens of the export settings I most commonly use”

– In the ProRes export, set Depth to 48-bit. The 24-bit setting you are using is encoding the file at 8-bpc. Also enable the Max Bit Depth parameter in the Sequence Settings.

– In the H.264 export, go to the Multiplexer tab and ensure Stream Compatibility is set to Standard. It defaults to iPod.

– Are you uploading the ProRes or H.264 file to the online sites? The H.264 bitrate (8-Mbps) seems low for 1080p video, especially because the uploaded file will be transcoded. In addition, I typically set Maximum Bitrate to 1.5x Target Bitrate.

[Dan Nastro] “As you can see in the output preview monitor the blacks are not as deep as in the program monitor on the right… However, when bringing the file back into premiere as you had suggested the black levels are correct. Still my main concern is final delivery and how it will look in the setting it lives in (usually vimeo, youtube or a player like brightcove).”

As you have realized, a visual comparison of the export preview to the Project Monitor is not an appropriate evaluation. Render a short test clip, upload to YouTube/Vimeo/etc, download the transcoded files generated by the online sites, import all the files into Premiere, and compare to the original sequence using the Y-Waveform scope.

I have not seen any dramatic shifts in black point for my YouTube and Vimeo uploads. If you see an issue after performing the test, please upload screen captures of the Y-waveform for the same frame from each file and the original sequence.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I agree with Ivan on most counts.

I would suggest bringing in your exported clip back into Premiere and placing it above your original edit. You can then switch it on/off and view the YC waveform. As with any troubleshooting (I have a background in software and hardware QC) you want to check every step of the process. This will ensure that there is or isn’t a color shift from the original export, or from the conversion of a master file to a web deliverable.

From there you could rip Youtube/Vimeo uploads and compare any color shifts. I would say that rarely do I see a shift worth correcting. The other issue may be HTML5 players as each browser is left to its own devices when rendering the output of video. In general, I don’t see much in the way of compensation that far down the delivery pipeline as there is variability introduced by the end user.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

Need to encode ProRes on your Windows PC?
Introducing ProRes Helper, an awesome little app that makes it possible
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
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Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
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[Dan Nastro]

I’ve uploaded a view from the WFM of the exact same frame, first still is the QT pro res file, the second is the project directly in PP. As you can see if you look side by side, there is a SLIGHT shift between the two (look on the lefthand side near the 0 level to see what I mean), All of this is starting to feel like splitting hairs but I’d like to know that what I’m seeing when I grade is what I’m getting in output.

screenshot2013-08-11at5.55.12pm.png

screenshot2013-08-11at5.55.25pm.png

[Ken Mitchell]

If you are using an H264 .mov as your codec this could be a quicktime player problem… This playback problem is very common on the PC but does show up on the mac every once in awhile. This can be corrected. If you are using H264.mov could you post is somewhere and I will let you know if it is the same problem… The fix has nothing to do with changing any of your correction but a change to the playback settings. You must have quicktime pro ver 7 to do this.

[Carlos Faria]

Hey Dan!

Did you find a fix for your issue? I’m having the same problem. I color graded my footage, but when I export it the image is too dark compared to premiere monitor and my waveform.

Thank you!

[Carlos Faria]

Hi Angelo, I’m having the same problem here… Can you help?