finally have what we always wanted: HEVC support in Adobe Premiere!

zipcode wrote:

Ok, took a file (all files on nx500 are 0-255 and you can't change that), straight to premiere pro, and export. Indeed h265 file is output as 0-255 and to h264 it outputs as 16-235 but without any conversion, so it's just clipped, or at least it's played back as clipped (with any decoder/renderer), because if I do a pc>tv conversion in avisynth it appears correct again (I'm quite confused here, there's something I don't understand about how this range flagging works).

Are you running avisynth on the problematic H.264 file? If so, let me get this straight.

NX1/NX500 H.265 0-255 -> Premiere Pro -> H.264 (this renders clipped as we know)

Now you run avisynth on PP's H.264 output and it renders correct again? That means the file itself retains the info on 0-15 and 236-255 range and the player(s) just ignore them due to some flag perhaps. Interesting.

MikeDPR, not sure what you mean by washed out look playing 16-235 on 0-255. That's pretty much the case of every video file until now (like dvd and bluray played back on pc) and they are not washed.

Hmm...other than DVD and BD, are most video files (avi, mp4) played back on PC also in 16-235? What I see is that MPC-HC renders it washed out (grey blacks and whites) which is what you would see if you overlay 16-235 levels directly to 0-255 display without scaling of 16->0 and 235->255. But then if I try it on VLC, it seems to show correct blacks so I'm confused. VLC chokes badly on H.265 files so I get to see only a stalled snapshot or two.

You're lucky I think that the 0-255 hevc files show correctly for you. What decoder/renderer combination are you using? As I said, on my nvidia card the only option I found that works is using madvr as renderer or using software YUV>RGB conversion option in VLC (which is very slow).

HEVC 0-255 files from NX1 renders stunningly on my W10 PC (i7-2600) with MPC-HC as player. All other players I've tried choke badly.

I think all this 0-255 business is kinda 'new' for consumer video that's why the decoders and renderers simply don't expect it and handle it as 16-235. I'm sure that this will be fixed now that we found out there is a problem here, LAV, VLC and premiere are still actively developed.

The way I'll handle my files for now before importing to premiere is: avisynth file>ffms2>ColorYUV(levels="PC->TV")>save as utvideo 4:2:0 in virtualdubmod. This is about twice as fast and only a bit bigger than using rockymountains and exporting to prores 444 hq, and it's lossless too, and seeking is faster... But using rockymountains or straight ffmpeg will result in correct 16-235 file, same pc>tv conversion seems to be applied.

Shoot, I forgot about your suggestion couple weeks ago to try avisynth to forego transcoding. I will try it next time.