[Jim Elliott]

Glad you found a solution. I still use Premiere with the layer of contrast/saturation on top. But might eventually switch over fully to fcpx

[Jim Elliott]

Yes those 2 looks very similar. Although incidentally I think it’s affects cool colours less and skin tones more. Also I found I had to go through a hell of a journey trying to get images to look like they looked to me on screen as that’s another layer of colour profile management (photoshop etc)

[Jim Elliott]

HI THERE, ORIGINAL POSTER HERE… I get notifications every now and then on this thread and am surprised at the pompous uninformed comments. Let me tell you with 100% certainty that this has NOTHING to do with h264 exports (or any export settings), NOTHING to do with Vimeo or YouTube washing things out etc etc. NOTHING to do with calibrating a monitor – it *can* be helped having a proper sRGB monitor, but seeing as 1) I have an sRGB monitor and it doesn’t help much and 2) this issue does not exist in FCP- THIS IS A PROBLEM WITH PREMIERE. The problem is people are too stubborn or just not observant enough to notice and kick up a fuss so they fix it,

This has everything to do with with the complete absence of colour space/colour profile (ie sRGB) management in Premiere (and VLC). It’s a long story, but essentially video is generally rec709 colour space, this is the same as sRGB. Now the problem is Premiere isn’t colour space compatible (mental, as photoshop, after effects, fcp all are) – this means if you have a wide gamut monitor (to be fair even most sRGB monitors are slightly different to proper sRGB) then Premiere will essentially take the colour values and distort them, making them MORE saturated to the eye. Eg let’s say a pixel is r245, b0, g0 (think of it as 95% red) in original rec709/sRGB world – if you have a wide gamut monitor that red colour will be mapped as r245 in a WIDER GAMUT (so 95% of a larger gamut) effectively stretching the colours to something more saturated (could be equivalent of r255 or ‘100/101% red’ in sRGB). So this means what you are seeing in your Premiere program monitor on your screen is fundamentally INACCURATE by quite a long way sometimes, and it’s the same for most people (especially with an expensive wide gamut Apple monitor) and it’s absolutely insane this isn’t a wider known fact. When you export to QuickTime/h264/prores etc etc and watch in Vimeo/iPhone/youtube/quicktime (anything that has proper colour space management) it will seem drained – truth is you were just watching it in Premiere at an over saturated level!

To test this, try 1) watching any video you’ve already made on Vimeo/QuickTime/iPhone – then pop it into Premiere or VLC – the colours will bump up and the video will look OVERsaturated 2) Load the same video into fcpx (if you have it) and it will be fine, no saturation bump / contrast drain at all (I think it even asks you colour space at start of project – like after affects, but premiere doesn’t). 3) Load the video in Premiere and also, QuickTime/vimeo then change the display profile on your computer (I use a Mac) – the QuickTime/vimeo one will change with the rest of the screen, Premiere will stay the same regardless – hence proving it bypasses all display profile (and therefore sRGB) interpretation – its just taking the pixel values that were in original made in rec709/sRGB and reading them from a wide gamut (lets say P3) perspective. The solution (apart from Premiere being less shit) – I use a layer or Colorista with very slight and specific adjustments to contrast and saturation just before export. When I pop that later in it looks over saturated BUT exported video looks fine in anything other than VLC (or if you dropped it back into Premiere). A LUT could also work. What would really work is moving to fcpx or premiere fixing the issue (im sure resolve doesn’t have this issue, but never tried). Again it’s a crazy issue, that I’ve made adobe aware of but they don’t care (a few updates and no changes) as it seems all these video geniuses don’t even notice their footage looking massively different on export or they blame it on something irrelevant (like on this thread) so the issue isn’t raised to Adobe

Hope this clears things up.

[Jim Elliott]

Sometimes the files are on the computer itself (1500mbps flash drive) or a Samsung T5 (I think one of the fastest external flash drives around)

For me the answer isn’t buy a new computer as I’ve just bought one, and that computer is £2500 ($3500). I think transcoding/proxy files/different codec is a better option

[Jim Elliott]

Really? So playback is fine in Premiere with non-4K, and 4K is fine in FCPX, but the problem is my 2016 £2500 high-end MacBook Pro?

[Jim Elliott]

when you say transcode – does that mean proxy (still at 4k or …. downsized to hd)? or actually convert the original footage into something else?

[Jim Elliott]

As a workaround, when I come to export my video I put a layer of colorista over the top, with saturation at 7.50 and a tiny bit more crushed blacks. At this point it looks a little too saturated/crushed in the program monitor – but the result is the file that is exported and then played on Vimeo, YouTube, iPhone, QuickTime, preview, PowerPoint presentations, Dropbox, safari, chrome is pretty much exactly what I was viewing in Premiere when I was editing. Only problem is now when you play the exported video in a non-colour managed program (vlc/Premiere…I think maybe Firefox) it looks a little oversaturated. If vlc was the only medium the final video was played, I wouldn’t put the colorista layer on.

It IS a problem, one that FCPX have addressed recently by asking at the start of a project if you are working with a wide-gamut monitor, and one that Adobe saidi they were looking at when I raised it to them recently. What doesn’t help is people saying it isn’t a problem because they don’t realise what is happening

for anyone who wants to edit what you want in Premiere only for it to look drained in QuickTime/YouTube/Vimeo/iPhone etc then good luck ????????????????

[Jim Elliott]

For the record, it’s definitely a problem with premiere. Video is essentially in sRGB (rec709), and a wide gamut monitor (in program like premiere that has no colour management) will stretch the colours and make them appear more saturated than what you are exporting. FCPX, lightroom, photoshop etc don’t have this problem because you can say to the program ‘this is an sRGB/rec709 file’ so it renders the colours appropriately. In Premiere there is no colour management… you could even change the display profile and recalibrate your screen and it wouldn’t change the image in the program monitor – try it – load up a project and switch to a massively different display profile….the image doesn’t even change

[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)

[Jim Elliott]

Thanks! What exactly does this do again? And how to apply?