Premiere Pro export very undersaturated, low contrast when exporting with Media Encoder vs Premiere

[Colin Ruggiero]

Hi Alex,

No, so far, I’ve left it where I described in my last post. It’s not just iMac Pros however, it’s any wide gamut monitor. And no, there’s no way to see accurate color inside of Premiere on a wide gamut monitor without using a third party i/o device to a broadcast monitor or at least a calibrated computer. The only other potential fix is to create a LUT as per Chris’s suggestion and apply it to your entire timeline.
Ridiculous, I know. Good luck!

[Sean Jahnig]

Wow guys,

I am not technical enough to understand any of this. I too bought an iMac Pro and i’ve having a really hard time with the colours showing inconsistently. I can’t believe there just isn’t a solution.

🙁

[Colin Ruggiero]

Yeah, hard to believe – but true.

If you’re working in Premiere, your options for seeing some sort of remotely accurate reference for your image are basically the following:

1. work on a display that is hardware calibrated to rec.709, or output the image, via Mercury Transmit, to a display that is hardware calibrated to rec.709. Mercury Transmit is not supposed to be color managed but I’ve noticed that it does indeed respond to OS level ICC profiles so a software calibrated display may work when using Mercury Transmit also.

2. Use a hardware i/o device to get the signal to a broadcast monitor. A computer monitor won’t work well because the i/o device will bypass your OS level ICC profiles so there isn’t a good way to calibrate the external monitor unless you can load ICC profiles directly into the display’s hardware. If you’re using Resolve you can also calibrate using a messy but serviceable system of exporting patches to use for calibration.

3. You can try to create LUTs using various services that you would then apply to your sequences in Premiere to try to match Premiere’s default display to Premiere’s exports when viewed in color managed software.

4. And… that’s it. Somebody jump in if I’m missing another way.

[Alex Bond]

Yep, that’s right. When using Premiere you cannot use the iMac pro as an all in one machine (are you listening Apple?) my solution was to tether my OLD iMac to the iMac pro and use the old one as a monitor (so the new 5k monitor is pointless) – this way I can export what I’m seeing on the old iMac and that pretty much resembles what I’m seeing within premiere.

Premiere does not allow you to change the colour space of its Program Window (whatever you set your iMac’s colour to, premiere will ignore in that window – clever? Not really).

So hopefully you have another monitor kicking around or another iMac and the space to set it up next to your new iMac pro.

Ta-dah!…

[Sean Jahnig]

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the reply.

I have a pretty basic setup and i mostly shoot corporate and event videos of 5D mark 4. The videos i shoot and create using Premiere and AE are always for youtube and social media. I’ve been doing it for about 8 years and i’ve always noticed the colours were a bit off but on my old iMac it was never so apparent. Now on the iMac pro it is very clear and it’s really bothering me that the colours on the iMac Pro are great, but what i am delivering to the client is not as impressive.

Is this problem specific to Mac? If i use a windows PC with a different display (ie. not the iMac Pro 5k display) and the Adobe suite – would it be different? Or maybe different software on the iMac Pro? Resolve, FCP? I would hate to change my workflow or my setup but i really need the output window in Premiere to match the end product that the client is seeing – otherwise i have no control over the product i am delivering.

[Colin Ruggiero]

Hey Sean,
No it’s not specific to Mac. Any wide gamut monitor with Premiere Pro will pose similar issues. You need one of the monitoring solutions I listed above or to export your project and color correct in a properly color managed program.