It’s (Mostly!) in the Setup
This is the accurate and “engineer approved” information on Adobe Premiere Pro’s color management processes, settings, and monitor settings. Yes, it’s different from most mythology “out there”. But … it’s accurate!
Premiere is in reality a very tightly color managed app. This shocks many users. How can it be tightly color managed when there aren’t any settings? Because … it works very differently than most users expect,
Think of the options in say Photoshop, which has an entire dialog box of settings for all sorts of things. Resolve has a long dialog with tons of settings. Premiere doesn’t. And they don’t have any real definite documentation on color management either. So h0w can it be a fully color-managed application?
It’s all in the design of the program. Engineering hardwiring! The engineering code is all set for a full-on broadcast standard operation. And for users that just “know” to setup their entire system including monitors for those broadcast standards. They just don’t really talk about it anywhere. Which … is a problem, isn’t it?
Get the full details on MixingLight.com!
I made a presentation on Premiere’s color management in the scheduled talks in the Flanders/MixingLight booth at NAB. I had a ton of help to prep for that presentation. And also for the full video tutorial we made for MixingLight.com’s subscription service, Senior Product Manager Patrick Palmer assigned color engineer Francis Crossman to answer any questions I had, and he’s been a wonderful resource.
[Editing note: Francis Crossman has been promoted to Co-Product Manager for Premiere!]
But Francis had to go into their engineering notes to find the specific answer for many of my detailed questions. Neither the Adobe program staff nor I thought that ideal. They provided all the information I wanted and needed. I am very grateful for the help.
I have been in the studio filming and re-filming that tutorial. It seems almost constantly since NAB in April. But additional questions kept popping up. Francis thought of a few things to add or clarify. Pat Inhofer and Robbie Carman of MixingLight had further questions, And they wanted very tight clarity on even how some things are stated because there is so much confusion and mythology “out there”.
So it’s been shoot a section. Upload for review. Then reshoot. One single video tutorial became two, as there is so much to cover for basic setup and operation that the different setup required for HDR operation became its own program.
And this needed to be tightly specced technically and both complete and clear in prose. Because this has so much material that has never published before, and certainly never all in one place … this first part of the two-parter on basic setup and SDR (standard dynamic range) color management will be outside their paywall for the entire industry to use.
Simplicity Can Be Spendy!
The color management system that is used within Premiere is in some ways simplicity itself. It is built entirely to be used on a system with monitors set to video sRGB, profiled to Rec.709 at gamma-2,4, and with a max brightness of 100 nits. The internal monitors and the “Transmit Out” feature are all hardwired for use on systems and monitors set to those specs. Period.
So the user must set their system up for any “confidence” monitor to be set according to those full-on broadcast standards. It all works very nicely. On my calibrated and profiled system, what I see within Premiere and for the same clip within Resolve in RCM mode (Resolve Color Management) is identical.
This is a problem of course for the newer Macs with Apple’s new and intriguing color space, “P3-Display”. If you have a Mac with a P3 monitor, and you’ve not set that to the predecessor P3 video spaces, P3 Theater and P3 Cinema, try the user preference to “enable display color management”. That option tries to display a proper video-sRGB/Rec.709/gamma-2.4 image within Premiere’s monitors on a P3-Display screen. It can’t fix then trying to view that in most players on that screen, but … the material may be more accurate when seen on other broadcast set screens.
And for HDR … there are only two devices that can get the image signal correctly out of Premiere and into a properly setup, calibrated and profiled HDR monitor. One external box for Macs, and one internal PCIe card for PCs. They are both … a chunk of change.
But at this time, any decent HDR monitor is a chunk of change also!
Come On Over!
Head over to Mixinglight.com to get the full tutorial and details. It will be worth your time! And … yea, there’s a lot more covered in the full pair of tutorials.
Neil
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