Depressing. Footage in Premiere/VLC looks VERY different in Quicktime/Vimeo/Youtube

[Chris Wright]

premiere’s lumetri can load luts. some mac users with p3 monitors say it helps.

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Jim Elliott] “My current thinking is that I will replace my LG ultrafine monitor (P3) with an sRGB monitor. That way, hopefully I won’t get massively over-saturated videos as there won’t be such a need for colour management”

If you really want to see how it looks you’ll need a reference monitor that can be calibrated to a standard (rec709/srgb in this case) and an I/O device that will output a clean uncompressed signal from Premiere to that monitor. The Blackmagic Design Mini Monitor would be the minimum requirement. Anything other than that and it’s a crapshoot and like Shane said when it leaves your color chain it’s out of your hands.

https://www.lightillusion.com/why_calibrate.html

[Brian Mac]

I, too, am now suddenly witnessing these problems. In nearly all of my exports (H.264 and ProRes – the codec doesn’t matter), Quicktime and YouTube have a disgustingly different, less-saturated and more “washed out” look than what is displayed in Premiere and VLC. I am working on an iMac 5K monitor. I’ve read this thread and I’m still confused as of what to do to solve this issue. VLC is identical (if not, pretty darn close) to what my Premiere timeline and export preview shows. As soon as I upload my export to YouTube or view it in Quicktime, however, I get that desaturated washed out look during playback. This washed out look on YouTube and in Quicktime is the same on YouTube on my MacBook, iPhone, and iMac. This leads me to believe that my Premiere timeline and export preview is not true to what the export actually looks like. What trips me up, however, is how VLC looks the same as my Premiere timeline. Is there a setting within Premiere to fix this so my timeline is true to what the export will look like? Using a .LUT to compensate for lost saturation/contrast cannot be the only solution. Thank you in advance!

[Brian Mac]

EDIT/UPDATE: After looking into this for the past three hours, this is almost certainly an issue with a wide gamut display and Premiere Pro. It is my understanding that Premiere Pro does not have any color management options and, as such, operates in the sRGB color space. As is a common issue when displaying the sRGB color space on a P3/wide gamut display like my iMac has, colors will be oversaturated. Within Premiere, color grading looks great but the video export is actually undersaturated because we are compensating for that oversaturation (as a result of the sRGB/P3 discrepancy). It seems as though the only fix right now is to color grade on a sRGB monitor or keep yelling at Adobe to enable color management options within Premiere Pro so that Premiere Pro can actually operate in the P3 color space and not completely skew what the export videos will actually look like.

[Jim Elliott]

You are spot on, unfortunately. Final Cut has now got ‘wide gamut support’ meaning you can choose wide gamut or standard footage (will almost always be standard). I selected standard and the footage looks fine.

The problem IS premiere/Vlc on a wide gamut display

It’s incredible more people haven’t noticed and are aware of this issue as there is such a huge difference. I downloaded a trial of fcpx and there is becoming more and more reasons to fully migrate.

Any suggestions on how to shout at Adobe, surely they realise people are more likely to switch to final cut than buy an older mac (all macs post-2015 are wide gamut and impossible to grade in premiere)

[Alex Simpson]

Hi Brian,

Just wondering what you finally decided on doing with this dilemma, i’ve just treated myself to a new 5k late-2015 imac and BOOM, bad exports. So depressing like you say!!

Is buying an sRGB monitor the answer? Will this work for us?

And yes, we need to email Adobe about this!

Many thanks,
Alex

[Stu Lockley]

I too have the same problem on my 5K imac. However I think I have resolved the issue, although the solution is not the best with out a using another NLE.

IF you open premiere, your export in QT and VLC, even youtube, make all 4 windows visible. Then open your colour profile window in system prefs and start flicking through the different profiles (apple rgb, rec 709 etc). You will see QT and youtube change their look inline with the profiles. however Premiere and VLC do not change a bit, they flash the profile and then revert back some kind of default.

Now do the same process with davinci resolve, as you flick through the profiles, resolve will change in line with qt & youtube. (note, i had to click on the resolve app before the profile updated).

This shows that now matter how you have calibrated your 5k imac monitor, premiere ignores it. So you are never grading to any colour standard. Do the same in resolve and the results match.

This is very bad for my projects as I can’t colour grade in davinci due to the level the projects are at with AE worked linked between the apps.
https://vimeo.com/221050047

[Stu Lockley]

Was sent this answer

premiere isn’t color managed. it will ignore any display calibration unless its the native rec. 709 0-255 and that’s because your “calibration” will match premiere’s internal color engine interpretation similar to AE’s pass-through if view-simulate turned off.
premiere won’t understand P3 but there is a workaround. you can use LUT transforms to match your monitor’s P3 color profile then load them into lumetri technical.

P3 to Rec. 709 x64 iridas cube
CreativeCOW

or you can make your own transform lut with
https://sellfy.com/p/aQ1y/
or with
DisplayCAL (formerly known as dispcalGUI)—Open Source Display Calibration and Characterization powered by ArgyllCMS

fixmyyoutube
64 cube iridas lut for burning in darker 16-235 from 0-255 for youtube upload. it darkens image, then youtube re-lightens again.
fixmyyoutube – Creative COW

[Andy Patterson]

[Tero Ahlfors] “You need to listen to this: https://soundcloud.com/mixinglight/mail-bag-ep1-part2“

I like the part about grandma’s TV. I like using and Intensity Shuttle and having an old SD CRT monitor for references as shown in the video below. Not that that help with the differences between YouTube, Quicktime, Media Player etc.

[Shane Ross] “I recently onlined and graded a show for a network…2 hour doc. When it aired, the executive producer called me and the producer in a panic. “WHY IS THE SHOW SQUISHED AND CUT OFF!?!?!” The producer was watching it on DirecTV, and I ran to turn it on Time Warner. It looked fine. We asked him what he was talking about. He sent a screen shot. Sure enough, the 16:9 output we delivered was SQUEEZED to be letterboxed for no apparent reason on his TV. We couldn’t figure this out. Now, it wasn’t the CHANNEL that did what he saw, it was his cable providor….because we saw it fine. THE PROVIDOR DID THIS. No clue as to why.”

Was it the provider or was it the zoom and aspect ration of the clients TV setup wrong? I know a lot of people cannot setup their HD TV’s to play old SD TV shows without stretching and squeezing the image but it can be done. The video below might be worth watching at about 10 minutes in. Blu-ray players have all the same options. I see so many people miss match the settings.

https://youtu.be/1M91M_AKMRg

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[Crescent Diamond]

I’m having this problem as well on my iMac Retina 5K display with Premiere Pro 17.1.2 and latest After Effects. I’m wondering if anyone has any updates from Adobe on this? Our end product is usually on YouTube, Facebook or screening at an event. VLC looks like Premiere but QuickTime looks desaturated in a major way. I guess the work around is a LUT – maybe one for YouTube and one for QuickTime (playback at an event)?

How can this be so complicated?

Thanks, Crescent D.