-
Color Shift on Resolve Exports and h264 Compressions
Here’s a screecap of what i’m talking about: 7371_screenshot20140415at11.36.27am.png.zip . Clockwise from the top left, the images are my resolve monitor, the ProRes 422 HQ export at normal range, a 10000kb/s h264 compression in Quicktime 7, and the final image is what vimeo compression does.
So I’ve imported a commerical shot on a C300 into Resolve from FCP7 by XML, graded as normal. When i export I export a ProRes422 HQ File at normal scaled range, forced highest debayering and it comes out flatter than what resolve monitors, when i compress it to h264 for upload it loses further contrast, and then by the time vimeo’s compression on it is done it has similar contrast to what i exported, but the color has a magenta shift.
Anybody willing to advise me on what I’m doing wrong, or a better workflow to get a more accurate colored version up on vimeo?
-
5 Replies
-
What do you mean by “resolve monitor”? Surely not the preview pane in the UI?
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
-
Sorry, yes this is what I mean
-
This would be one of the dangers, then, as the UI is not showing you Rec709 calibration if the rendered and roundtripped media mismatches outside of the Resolve interface. Between my SDI Flanders grade reference and the preview — almost never the same, especially since I abandoned the notion of ever getting anything meaningful on the Apple Cinema Display that I use for the main UI. Even “calibrated” with the advanced setup routine under the OS – not even close. Just a totally different beast, horses for courses.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
-
I was just using it as a frame of reference for how much each compression was affecting it – not as a grading monitor. I do the actual grade on a broadcast monitor, but you can’t take a screenshot of it.
Anyway I found out the problem. Turns out, Chrome just displays HTML5 video with a slight magenta hue (which explains a lot of previous clients telling me everything looks magenta when I post).
I’ve got another quick question, though. To be extra careful my export is in the right color space for the web, I exported the sequence full range as a ProRes 422 HQ, added the graphics in FCP7, re-exported as a ProRes422 HQ and brought it back into resolve. Then added the following LUTs as nodes in this sequence: Canonlog -> Rec709, Rec709->Linear, Linear->sRGB. Was this unecessary?
I then took that ProRes file that had been through the LUTs and compressed to an h264 in Handbrake.
The final post to vimeo looks pretty close, with the typical h264 added saturation.
-
Rec. 709 is pretty close to sRGB color space. If you are monitoring using a calibrated Rec. 709 monitor you should be in good shape. When you say you create a H.264 movie, is that inside of a Quicktime wrap? Unless you are using x264 codec, Quicktime is well known for introducing some color/gamma shift in your final output. Myself I prefer to encode to H.264 in MP4 format and then upload to Vimeo/Youtube. This workflow gives me the best result for a compressed format.
HTH,
David Baud
Post & VFX
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up