Things sounds great so far, and it really gives me hope for the Apple Silicon iMac Pro and Mac Pro.
Still hope that plug in makers start speeding up the process of re-writing their software for M1. It disturbs me that even companies like Maxon with Red Giant hasn’t upgraded everything to M1 yet, even though it is a subscription, which means they really should be upgrading their applications quickly, because I am paying for them constantly. At least Adobe has the Beta of After Effects working on M1, but it is going to be limited on plug ins for sure.
This company is amazing, Excalibur has become my favorite tool for Premiere Pro in how it speeds things up. And they just keep coming out with new tools.
I have posted about this before, but here are some more topics that I can’t believe don’t have more upvotes.
The first is with a problem that has been bugging me lately that Essential Graqhics automatically scale when you change the sequence size, and I want them not to, or to have control if they automatically scale as you can do with Motion Effects. I often have to do a 1920×1080 and a 1080×1080 sequence so I cut it in 1920×1080 then do a 1080 version. Now I want the graphics to stay the same, but they don’t.
So I have long hated the AMIRA lut added to Alexa Footage. It has been notorious since it was added, and has been known to cause project bloat. It used to show up as a Master Clip effect (now a source clip effect) but this has been changed (though strangely I can’t find it anywhere in the Premiere Pro help files) to be in the new Interpret Footage Color Management section.
OK AMIRA LUT CAN BE TURNED OFF, SEE BOTTOM OF POST ON HOW TO DO IT, I STILL WANT THE ABILITY TO NOT HAVE IT APPLIED THOUGH, WHY AM I FORCED TO HAVE THE DAMN AMIRA LUT APPLIED? AND WHY DOES IT TAKE MORE STEPS TO TURN IT OFF NOW THAN IT DID BEFORE? Yes Sorry I was yelling.
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Adobe released Premiere Pro 2022 this week, and I was playing with some Alexa footage, and looked at the source in the effects window and there is no AMIRA LUT anymore, but the LUT is still being applied. WHAT IS GOING ON?
Honestly I have been complaining about the damn AMIRA LUT for years, and I just wanted ADOBE to remove the fucking thing. I never want it automatically turned on, I want to work with the RAW footage and I can add an Adobe LUT if want it.
So in 2019 I have Alexa footage, that if I bring into the project it has the AMIRA Lut applied.
Alexa Footage with AMIRA LUT Automatically AppliedAMIRA LUT IN THE MASTER SETTINGSThe Alexa Footage with the AMIRA LUT Turned off
Now lets take a look in 2022, and it looks like in 2021 as well.
Alexa Footage in Premiere Pro 2022This files Effects Panel with no LumetriThe Source (renamed from Master) of the Alexa clip within 2022, no AMIRA LUT, but it is being Applied.
So it looks like Adobe saw that people were complaining about the AMIRA LUT being automatically added to footage and instead, of listening to us and just not adding it, they are now automatically adding it to any ALEXA footage you import into Premiere without the ability to remove it. WTF!!!!!
THIS IS NOT THE DAMN SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM ADOBE!!!!!
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OK HERE IS HOW TO TURN OFF THE AMIRA LUT, given by a very helpful Adobe Engineer in the Adobe Premiere Pro Editors facebook group, though my post was removed for being too emotional, so the solution is no longer available there.
So Right Click on a clip and go to Interpret FootageThe Modify Clip panel go to color Management, and you see embedded AMIRA LUTIn the drop down menu you can select none to remove the AMIRA LUT
OK so you can remove the AMIRA LUT, in a different way than you previously did, but why am I forced to have this LUT Applied. Adobe give me a way to not have the AMIRA LUT applied! And why does it actually take more steps to remove the “Embedded” LUT than it previously did?
Of course I was also told by an Adobe Engineer on UserVoice that the new top navigation bar is far better than the old one, even though it takes more clicks to switch between workspaces, but enough people complained, and now we at least get 3 that can be at the top, so I will continue to complain. And especially when things are made even less efficient!
In Premiere Pro 2019 you could select all the clips, and right click and hit disable Master Clips, and this turned the AMIRA LUT off.
Batch disabling the Masterclip effects in 2019
Now it is right click, sub menu, then another sub menu in another screen. And I have heard said now it is removed, but I am not so sure about that. If it was removed, the AMIRA LUT wouldn’t be re-selectable. The fact that it is called Embedded now I think means it is still there. I wonder if it is still causing project bloat as the AMIRA LUT had previously done?
All I want is for an option to not have AMIRA LUT added at all, if I want a Alexa Rec709 LUT I Can add it. Most other footage doesn’t force a LUT on it in Premiere, except maybe RAW.
And this means it is time for the awesome deep dive review with Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica. This is always the way to learn the ins and outs of the new system, and I always look forward to the article, and have been reading them for every OS release for so many years.
I would love to upgrade, but I always have to wait. Before you upgrade you should always check out what apps might have issues and to find out I always check out the forum at MacRumors, which has a post with a sticky at the top with Apps that are working and not working. Now it doesn’t do version numbers, so it will almost never answer my most pressing issue, which is what versions of Premiere Pro will work on the new OS (yes the new version works). Now it does seem better than most OS upgrades, but some apps are still having issues or sure.
I have companies that work completely on 2019 (which you can’t even install and should not be using anymore), and I don’t know how you run a newish MacPro on that old of an OS, but I digress.
So yesterday I had a post how Adobe’s new color correction feature in Premiere Pro 2022 didn’t do anything to fix the gamma shift issue on Mac on exports, and I posted a link to my post in a facebook group on Premiere Pro for Pro users.
Responses included finishing everything in DaVinci, which does nothing about Premiere’s handling of the issue, and people saying just work on a PC which will fix the issue, though it won’t if you have people viewing on Mac, because the gamma shift will happen then.
And then there were the responses about putting the Gamma 2.4 tag in DaVinci in fact tagging the clip wrongly to display correctly on Mac, and I decided to do a little test with Parallels to see how the clips show up in Windows. And I know that putting the Gamma 2.4 tag on your footage is ignored by YouTube, which ignores a 121 tag on footage and in fact forces 111 which will then have the gamma shift.
So to start this is short film I am working on, and the first part are the clip set with the DaVinci Gamma tag set to Gamma 2.4 on export.
This is the Gamma Tag I am talking about.
So I exported the show with this tag.
So the left is the 111 tag and the right side is the 121 tag on mac in quicktime. The 121 is much closer to what I am seeing on my external monitor
So this is the 111 on left and 121 tag on right, these look the same, and actually look better than the 121 tag in Quicktime,
So the left is the clip with 121 tag in quicktime and the same clip in VLC on the right, VLC looks like the correct look, so VLC is still the best solution.
Now I wanted to see about the tags and how they would look in Windows, so I have Windows 11 installed in Parallels, and I used both just Windows viewer and VLC in Windows, now I just used whatever size they opened at so I will scale down the other images to match framing. And the frame might be slightly different as I couldn’t figure out how to go frame by frame in Windows player. This is all on my iMac Pro, though screen shotting form mac, find it interesting that the 121 Gamma 2.4 tag matches on Windows to Mac, but VLC on Mac and WIndows doesn’t and VLC on Mac looks closest to what is on my external monitor.
So the 111 on the left and the 121 on the right tag look the same in windows.
So this is the 111 tag on the left and the 121 tag on the right in VLC in windows.
And this is the 111 tag on the left and the 121 tag on the right and to me the color correct looks the same.
On the left is the 111 tagged clip in Quicktime on Mac and on the left the 121 tag in VLC in windows to see the gamma shift.
And this one I don’t get at all, but here it is, VLC on the Mac vs VLC on windows, the mac version seems correct, and closest to what I am getting on my external monitor. If anyone can explain it, please contact me about what is going on here. Windows 11 is on the same display as the mac, though I am taking the screenshots from the Mac into the parallels Window.
On the left we have the 111 clip on Mac in VLC, and on the right the
I am very confused about this last one, I think the VLC on the mac looks most like what the image looks like on my external monitor, but on the mac at least the clips exported from DaVinci with the 121 Gamma 2.4 tag look closer to the image than ones exported with the 111 tag which completely show the weird gamma shift.
So for exporting from Premiere Pro, I guess if you can get people to use VLC is the best option, but if you can’t I would love if Premiere was able to add the 121 Gamma 2.4 tag to exported movies because it will look better on client machines.
I have also read the YouTube ignores the 121 tag and plays video at 111, so they will look blown out on YouTube. Does Vimeo do the same? I might have to do some tests and see what the results are when I have a chance.
If anyone has any thoughts please let me know.
EDIT:
So since there is such a difference in VLC, I decided to try another app that doesn’t do ColorSync on Mac and that is Firefox in Windows 11 and Mac.
The left is 111 on Firefox Mac and the right is 111 on Firefox Windows. The Windows one looks better to me, but the mac is better than quicktime
So strangely Firefox looks different on Mac and Windows. Better on Windows, but not as bad as Mac Quicktime for sure.
OK so I have posted about this at Adobe Uservoice to ask Adobe to add the ability to change the gamma of a clip on export. I know you don’t want to do this for final export, but for clients viewing copies, it would be nice to guarantee that those on Mac and those on Windows see something approximating what I see on my external monitor.
So Adobe new update of Premiere Pro says it includes Color Management for H.264 and HEVC as a new features. The feature describes itself as the following:
With new color management for H.264 and HEVC formats, Premiere Pro interprets the correct color space when importing these formats, including 10-bit and HDR files. For exports, Premiere Pro includes the correct color space metadata with your output files, ensuring that your colors will display correctly on the destination platform. When creating new sequences, you can choose to Match Source or apply the color space you want to use, depending on your working media.
I was hoping this would add the ability to add tags to exported H.254 videos so that they would display correctly anyplace, but especially on Macs. Macs of course have the weird gamma shift issue because of how they handle color, so Apple’s apps work correctly, but everything else has the wrong tags, so you have to watch your video in an un-color managed app to see what the clips will actually look like.
Now DaVinci Resolve has the ability to change the gamma tag in an exported H.264 clip.
Here is I change the Gamma tag to Gamma 2.4, which is what I am working in to get correct Rec.709 video
If I set the Gamma tag to Gamma 2.4, the exported H.264 video plays back correctly both in Quicktime as well as in VLC. I was hoping this is what Premiere was doing.
Unfortunately I immediately opened my current Premiere Pro 2021 project in Premiere Pro 2022 and did an H.264 export matching the export i did yesterday, and as far as I can tell it is exactly the same as the clip I exported yesterday with the gamma shift and all in Premiere Pro.
I checked out the video info in Quicktime on the clips, and the clip from 2021 and 2022 match exactly like this:
Interestingly a video exported from DaVinci with the Gamma 2.4 tag does show up with different info in Quicktime. It looks like this.
Unless I am completely missing something in Premiere Pro, I am not sure what they actually changed here.
It’s new features tie into the new features of After Effects and Premiere Pro, most excitingly with COLOR MANAGEMENT FOR H.264 and HEVC on Import and Export! WOOHOO FInally working around Apple’s fucked up color on the mac, and like DaVinci before it, letting you export compressed video with proper metadata tags so that it will display correctly whoever is looking at it! I literally have problems with this every single day, so I can’t wait to give it a try. This is game-changing if it works!
Also included is Color Management for Sony XAVC-L-HDR and Faster Rendering for After Effects with multi-frame rendering, should be 3x as fast! Woohoo!
Adobe has updated Premiere Pro as they go into the onine Adobe Max this morning. I have to say I much enjoy being able to see all of the classes online.
*We get unified version numbers across the video suite, so all compatible versions will now be version 22 (should’t they have just gone back to 1?)
*Speach to Text Improvements with improved accuracy for pop culture terminology and better formatting of dates and numbers
*Simplify Sequences has moved from Beta, I still think this could have been a great spot to add in unmerge, since merging audio clips is totally broken.
*Color management for H.264 and HEVC H.265, WHICH IS HUGE! You can now include correct color space metadata on exports, like DaVinci has allowed you to do for a while. So people on Macs should actually see what your show will look like correctly.
*Improved 10 bit HEVC playback and improved M1 support (lets hope it includes M1 Pro and Max support)
•Color management for Sony XAVC-L-HDR
•A new colorized vectorscope
•Improved Histogram
•Lumetri curve refinements
•Restore trim selection in the timeline
•Improved Media relinking for Team Projects
•Improved Bars and Tone for both HDR and SDR.
•New GPU Acceleration for effects, Alpha Glow, Mirror, Reduce Interlace Flicker and strobe are GPU accelerated.
AND IN BETA
•REMIX powered by Adobe Sensei, to intelligently re-arrange songs so that music matches your video, instead of cuts and crossfades let it do it itself. I can’t wait to try this out.
•Auto Tone, better auto color in Lumetri, a good start point.
*Speech to Text on-device without the internet for faster results.
*Improvements for new Import Mode, which is good because it needs a whole lot of work.
