Working with color managed iPhone media

What’s the right way to color manage iPhone Media?

Supported iPhones provide the option to record HDR video in the Camera Settings. HDR media enables you to create and export HDR videos with spectacular color and highlights on HDR-capable televisions, phones, or displays. 

Premiere Pro supports the export of HDR. However, you can also automatically convert your HDR source media to SDR to create videos that look correct on any display. 

HDR videos don’t look correct on SDR displays. The brilliant highlights of HDR appear clipped and unpleasant in SDR. You should check whether you’re shooting HDR iPhone media, and if you are, make sure you choose the right color management settings for the sequence you’re editing whenever you start creating a new video.

What’s the best way to get the right color output when using iPhone clips?

If you automatically created a new sequence via a selection of new iPhone clips (on import, via selection, or by drag and drop into an empty timeline), the default color management setting is set to Direct HLG (HDR) with the Output Color Space set to Rec. 2100 HLG. This sets you up to monitor and export HDR video in the original iPhone format, which will only look correct on HDR displays capable of HLG (like your phone).

If that’s what you want, you’re good to go (although you need to ensure that the Export Mode Preset you’re using supports HLG).

However, most users prefer to export SDR Rec. 709 media, which is most widely compatible with conventional displays. Alternately, many prefer to export HDR video as Rec. 2100 PQ, a more typical HDR standard. You can use either workflow by choosing the appropriate color setup or Output Color Space for your editing sequence.

Choosing the best color management setup for editing and exporting iPhone clips

If you’re just getting started with a new sequence that has iPhone clips in it, and you haven’t made any color adjustments yet, you can make things easier by choosing Sequence, selecting Sequence Settings, opening the Color Management tab, and choosing either Direct Rec. 709 (SDR) or Wide Gamut (Tone Mapped) from the Color Setup drop-down menu. Both color setups make it easier to adjust your clips, and both default to Rec. 709 for high-quality SDR monitoring and export.

My sequence looks right in the Program Monitor, why does my export look wrong?

There are two main ways you could be getting the wrong color when exporting:

output looks clipped

Suppose you intend to export your sequence as SDR Rec.709 for playback on various conventional displays, but your rendered output looks clipped even though it looks great on your computer monitor. In that case, you may have accidentally chosen an HDR format as your Output Color Space, and your computer’s display can display that HDR image. At the same time, the exported media is clamped to SDR levels. If you intend to export SDR Rec.709, you must set the Output Color Space of your sequence to Rec.709 to correctly see what will be exported.

output looks like SDR

If, instead, your exported output ends up being SDR Rec.709 even though your Output Color Space is intentionally set to an HDR standard for HDR export, it’s possible that either the export mode Preset you’ve chosen doesn’t support HDR, the Format you’ve chosen (filtered based on the current preset) doesn’t support HDR, or the Render at Maximum Depth checkbox has been disabled (it must be turned on). Down-converted Rec.709 will be rendered in these cases even if your Output Color Space is set to HLG or PQ. The easiest solution is to choose a compatible preset by clicking the three-dot menu to the right of the Preset drop-down and choosing More Presets to open the Preset Manager to find a preset capable of HDR output. Type “HLG” or “PQ” into the search field to find all presets capable of rendering to one or the other HDR format, as you require, then choose the preset you want to use and select OK.

More like this

• Configure a sequence’s output color space
• Color Management options
• Premiere Pro and After Effects Color Management compatibility

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