Premiere Pro and Canon Cinema RAW Light format

There are a bunch of cool new features in the latest release of Premiere Pro but if you use Canon’s EOS C200 cinema camera, the one you might be most excited about is support for Canon’s Cinema RAW Light format.  Cinema RAW Light format provides professional shooters with the widest dynamic range and highest color fidelity for post-production work.

The short story is that there’s not much you need to know about using Cinema RAW Light files: just import them and work with them as you would with any other format supported by Premiere Pro. However, there are a few workflow tips that you might find useful.  

Color space & gamma

Premiere Pro doesn’t just support Cinema RAW Light (CRM) files: it provides the ability to choose what color space and gamma are used when converting - debayering - the raw files. Using the Cinema Gamut color space and Canon Log 2 gamma provides 15 stops of dynamic range. Using Cinema Gamut and Canon Log 3 provides slightly less range - 13.5 stops - but the footage will be slightly easier to grade.  

By default, Premiere Pro debayers CRM files to use Cinema Gamut and Canon Log 2. If you’d like to choose another option, open the file in the Source window, click Effect Controls > Master, then make your choice from the Color Space and Gamma menus.

image

There are other color space and gamma choices beyond Cinema Gamut and the Canon Log options; see the Resources section below for more information.  

Color Temperature and Tint

As with the Color Space and Gamma options, Color Temperature and Tint are settings of Cinema RAW Light files that can be altered in Premiere Pro.  

When a CRM file is imported, Premiere Pro will use the Color Temperature and Tint setting from the file, set at the time of recording by the camera operator. Color Temperature and Tint usually stay at the same setting for the entire duration of a clip.

If the camera was set to use Auto White Balance, these settings might change within a single clip. In this scenario, Premiere Pro would show the effect of the changes in the clip: the image would change appearance on screen during playback. However, the Color Temperature and Tint would not change, instead showing the settings from the first frame of the clip for the entire clip. In this scenario, splitting the clip into multiple parts is the best option if the Color Temperature or Tint need to be adjusted.  

Modifying multiple files

Premiere Pro has the ability to apply a saved preset to multiple clips simultaneously. This is useful for working with Cinema RAW Light files, where it is common to want to change a raw setting on all of the clips from a shoot. (Gamma is perhaps the best example: Premiere Pro defaults to using Canon Log 2 for all CRM files but Canon Log 3 is sometimes a better option.)

It is easy to create a preset for Cinema RAW Light files. After adjusting the settings in the Effect Controls panel, right click on “Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings” and choose Save Preset. This will create a preset in the Effects panel which can then be applied to CRM files in the Project panel. Selecting multiple CRM files and dragging the preset onto any of the files will apply the preset to all the files.  

Easier access to LUTS

If you’re shooting in raw with a C200, you’re probably using one of Canon’s log gammas, and if you’re using log, you probably use look-up tables or LUTs. 

The new release of Premiere Pro makes managing LUTs easier. There’s now a central location for LUTs. Put a LUT in that location and it will be available to any Adobe application with Lumetri support.  

If you’re on Macintosh, create this folder:
~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/LUTs/Technical


If you’re using Windows, create this directory:
~\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common\LUTs\Technical

LUTs that go into the Technical folder are input LUTs, which is what’s used for transforming log footage. There’s a different location for creative LUTs, such as day-for-night transformation or film stock emulations. There’s also a different, system-wide location for LUTs that need to be available regardless of who is logged into the computer. For more information, see the new features summary of the Premiere Pro documentation. 

The shared LUT location in the new version of Premiere Pro is the best way to manage LUTs. Putting LUTs directly into the application package has been common hack in the past but doing so can have serious side effects, including the LUT not being rendered at export or an entirely different LUT getting rendered without warning.  Make sure you’re following the new process and not putting LUTs directly into the application package.

Resources

Canon has a variety of material about using Cinema RAW Light and Canon log formats.

Side-by-Side 4K Comparisons of Canon Log, Canon Log 2 and Canon Log 3

Canon Log Explained - Canon presentation, NAB 2017

Understanding Canon’s Log Curves

Cinema RAW Light & Post Production

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