Why do you have overexposed iPhone video in Premiere Pro when you filmed it just fine? Learn why HDR footage can appear blown out and how to fix it.
Newer iPhones can record video in Dolby Vision HDR, which captures a much wider range of brightness and colour than standard SDR video. When Premiere Pro doesn’t interpret or convert that HDR footage correctly for the colour space you’re editing in, the highlights can suddenly look ridiculously bright.
Luckily, you don’t necessarily need to start fixing every clip manually with Lumetri Color. There is a much quicker way to deal with it.
How to Fix Overexposed iPhone Footage in Premiere Pro
This is the method that fixed the problem with my iPhone footage. Go to your Project panel and select all of the affected iPhone clips. You can select multiple clips at once, which means you don’t need to fix every video individually.
Then:
- Highlight all of the affected clips.
- Right-click the selected footage.
- Go to Modify.
- Select Color.
- Find the option to override the existing colour profile.
- Select Rec. 2020.
- Click OK.
Premiere Pro should reinterpret the footage and the ridiculously overexposed appearance should disappear. And because you selected all of the clips first, you can apply the change across the footage at once instead of fixing every shot individually.
Edit Faster in Premiere Pro
If you want more quick fixes and hidden Premiere Pro tricks like this, check out my Premiere Pro PDF guide which is now included in my Youtube membership.
Why Changing the Colour Profile Works
You’re not really reducing the exposure of the video. You’re changing the information Premiere Pro is using to interpret the colour space of the footage. That distinction is important. If you simply drag the Exposure slider down in Lumetri Color, you are colour correcting an image that Premiere Pro may already be displaying incorrectly.
Changing the colour interpretation addresses the problem earlier in the workflow. Once the footage looks normal, you can use Lumetri Color afterwards for the actual creative colour correction and grading.
How to Stop Your iPhone Recording overexposed iPhone Video in HDR
If you don’t actually need HDR footage and would rather avoid dealing with it in your editing workflow, you can also disable HDR recording on your iPhone.
Go to:
Settings → Camera → Record Video → HDR Video and turn HDR Video off.
The exact options available depend on your iPhone model. This can make your workflow simpler if most of the content you create is ultimately going to be delivered as standard SDR video anyway.
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