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Footage going soft when grade applied
Hail Resolve Heroes!
So I’m newish to Resolve, and am having an issue that I just don’t understand and can’t find the answer to. I have a simple grade applied to my footage, and my footage gets soft. I’ve checked, and don’t have any adjustments accidentally made on the blur tab. I do have a couple of different nodes active, but I’ve checked, and I can disable them all and the footage is soft with only 1 basic grade node applied.
I’m not working with the nicest footage–it’s h.264 recorded on a Panasonic GH4, but I’ve seen that footage put through the ringer before and it’s never turned out like this. Any ideas?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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7 Replies
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Are you turning all nodes off and then turning each one on by itself? Is it just one node (first node) that is causing softening?
Can you also post the sequence settings including pixel aspect, file codec settings including frame size & frame rate and also where does it appear soft? Only on the computer screen or the external monitor?
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What codec is the timeline set to? H.264 is best when converted to ProRes 422 or HQ early in the process.
The timeline codec should also be the best your system can handle.
Rosco
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I would look at your project settings, your clip size, and your image resize setting.
Is there any chance you are working in a smaller raster project, working with higher raster image…having resolve scale the image down to the lower raster size, then outputting it at a higher raster size. In essence scaling the picture down and then back up.
If you were to import an HD shot into a SD size project base, and tell Resolve to export it at HD, it would become soft.
The fact that you are importing and exporting HD is irrelevant because your project is set to SD.Glenn
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Great questions.
It is just the first node causing the softening.
Sequence is 1920×1080, square pixel aspect, h.264 footage non-optimized.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an external monitor (I know, I know), so it’s soft on the computer screen-but it retains softness after export as well. 🙁
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I’m going to show my ignorance here, I thought timelines were codec agnostic. Most of the footage on the timeline is prores hq or has been optimized as prores hq, the footage I’m having the issue with is non-optimized h.264.
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[Nick Ryan] “It is just the first node causing the softening.”
You will have to check everything to see what is the cause. Personally I would rather not have too many adjustments per node so sorting out issues like this is easier. Check an OFX plugin like gaussian blur has not been accidentally applied. The blur settings also have sharpen and mist as options so toggle through them just in case you have applied mist but not blur. Check that you are not resizing in that node as well.
Timelines are not codec based. They are pixel aspect based so you are correct. Only your final exports are codec based.
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A good suggestion in that. Maybe a simple trouble-shooting strategy like this:
On the color page, hit command-Y to create a second version of your grade (and preserve your original). Right-click and reset all notes and grades.
Now, with no node grades at all, do your comparison to make sure that your resolution is back to normal — you may even want to export a snippet for a reliable read of the end result. If it is still soft, then come back and let’s trouble-shoot some pre-grade conditions. (Or otherwise possible issues on the Deliver page.)
If the resolution is back, then recreate your grade, but as suggested, do just one operation on each node (and label each node), such as “log color wheels”; then next node; “saturation”, next node “advanced curves” or whatever. Then you will see easily where in the grading process the clip’s resolution is getting hit….
– b
“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA” –
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