Media Encoder Stange output!

[Matt Harris]

I did what you said. The ProRess 422 export from FCP looks cleaner, and has slightly more contrast. The PP 422 export has less contrast and blocking. This isn’t something that film grain smooths out either.

[Ivan Myles]

Thanks for the follow-up. How do the FCP and Premiere ProRes exports compare to the source file when viewed with the Vect/YC Wave/RGB Parade scopes? If the Premiere version has lower contrast, you should see the YC and RGB curves compress slightly (brights shift down, darks shift up) compared to the source file. Or is the Premiere version closer to the original, and the FCP file has an expanded color profile where brights shift up and darks shift down?

Here are samples based on your png screen captures. First, the Premiere version:

And here’s the FCP version:

When looking at the RGB profiles, the dark bands are more prominent in the Premiere file (most noticeably in the red channel). It looks like a slight gamma shift and loss of color fidelity. Does this coincide with the scopes you see when comparing the three files in Premiere?

The only comment I could find from Adobe came in this post comparing macroblocking in H.264 exports from Premiere and FCP. An Adobe product manager stated the following:

… our philosophy is to preserve every bit of color, light and detail we can – so we apply no filtering… However we found that if you introduce grain at the front end of the decode chain you end up with a more appealing image in these cases, however, any noise introduced reduces picture quality…

So – there you have it – we give you the pixels in the purest representation as captured – what you do with them from there is up to you. QuickTime? Well you’d have to ask Apple, but it seems that there is some form of image alteration being applied, but we can only judge by the results.

He seems to suggest that the only way to resolve the issue is to introduce grain and/or adjust luma/color. I am not sure this explains why you are seeing a difference when using the same codec in Premiere and FCP.

Based on the settings you already tried, at this point the only other thing might be to select a different option for Gamma Correction under “Codec Settings” in the export dialog box. Also, be sure that “Use Previews” is unchecked. Otherwise, you might just go with ProRes 444 or an alternate codec. It doesn’t explain the observed differences between Premiere and FCP, but at least you can get the desired results.

[Matt Harris]

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to respond!

This was my first project where I denoised each clip with neatvideo in premiere and then sent to resolve.. I’ve added grain after roundtripping back from resolve. I wonder I’f I should have added some before the premiere export? Anyway thanks for all the help.

[Ivan Myles]

Hopefully the discussion was helpful. We didn’t seem to resolve the root cause, though.

It will be easier to avoid macroblocking if grain is added before the first ProRes export. However, this might impact your colorization. Try a few test samples and decide which workflow produces the best overall result with your footage.

Good luck with the project.