Cinema DNG in Premiere

[APost]

Hey Thrill Seekers,
My Cinema DNG files from my X5s look hugely dark when viewed in Premiere and are almost impossible to grade. I can open them in Davinci Reslove and they look fine and start at a "need some tweeks" point as opposed to the "Needs Rescue" place that I see in Premiere.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

 

[Mindframecinema]

I don't think you're doing anything wrong @APost I have the same issue. It's definitely an issue with Premiere not ingesting DNG files properly. I take the h264 file and cut it in Premiere and when I'm ready to color the project I'll export to DaVince and re-connect the media using the DNG files.

 

[APost]

I did a short test with SlimRaw The trial version limits you to three files, which in DNG is only three frames. BUT...they were much more along the lines of what I'd expect to see based on the histogram of what I'd shot. I'll do a more extensive test and AB compare slimraw into premiere vs original file into resolve. I can only imagine there is some degradation in the conversion.

 

[APost]

Thanks for letting me now it's not just me by the way. It seems it's an overall problem with DNG's and premiere, not just the Inspire files.

 

[Mindframecinema]

BlackMagic if I'm not mistaken came out with Cinema DNG for their cameras so Davinci Resolve will be the best application for grading the files. The program is free and super powerful so I would just use that personally. And if you export from Premiere as an XML file you can re import into Resolve flawlessly!!!

 

[APost]

Thought about that. the files are so dark in premiere I can barely see well enough to edit. I'll have to see if I can use proxy files in resolve and edit there.

 

[Mindframecinema]

Yes, use the H264 files to edit which are saved on your SD card. Then color the DNG files in Davinci.

 

[erasmus]

BlackMagic if I'm not mistaken came out with Cinema DNG for their cameras so Davinci Resolve will be the best application for grading the files. The program is free and super powerful so I would just use that personally. And if you export from Premiere as an XML file you can re import into Resolve flawlessly!!!

Funnily, it was Adobe who developed DNG and CinemaDNG, but Premiere's implementation appears to be subpar. Different than Photoshop/Camera Raw for sure. For clients who want to do post in Premiere we pass the footage through Slimraw, which fixes the levels. We usually also do this for clients on Resolve, but in this case we use one of the lossy compression modes in Slimraw to get even smaller files.