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Going from full range to 709?
Hi everyone,
I’m very new to davinci resolve. I work as a dop but I want to get my grading skills up so I can take test shots and test and fiddle myself so please excuse me if this seems pretty basic ( I’m pretty sure it is but I dont have any awesome colourist friends to ask for advice)
I took a short film that was shot on 16mm and telecined to 1920×1080 prores 422 and did a basic grade in davinci resolve 8.2.2 with an avid artist. Now when I was happy with the grade (more or less) I exported back to pro res and noticed my blacks were very crushed. Long story short I remembered learning about the rec709 and broadcast levels at 64 and 960. The film has a lot of low key lighting so it sits in the low end blacks a lot.
I ended up exporting a tiff sequence so I could take it back to premiere and export it out for online viewings (temporarily). So my question is do I have to regrade the short film with a broadcast safe level LUT or is there a way I can bring the levels all up and make some individual tweaks to shots where needed?
Side question as well, would you normally grade for rec709 levels if you were only going to put the video on BD/DVD and online or would you do two grades?
Thanks.
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4 Replies
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I dont remember the chapter but the new Resolve user manual has a good description of the use of data vs video levels. Be sure to use a reference grading display to show both outputs, not the application UI viewer.
Peter -
Chapter 2 pp 122- 127
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Hi Peter and Joseph,
Thanks for the reply. Ok looks like that cleared up data and video levels for me. I had a hunch that was the case.
Anyway in regards to that chapter it mentions exporting either as a scaled or full range. Thats where I had the problems. Even if I exported full range pro res material it would crush. From what I understand now it would have taken the 422 material and boosted it up to full range even though its not 444 explaining why I might have issues exporting back to prores 422 (not hq or 444)
Basically the only way I could get a usable export was with a full range TIFF sequence.
So basically the scaled export is trying its best to scale the media into legal range but most likely its just too low to scale up effectively?
Does that mean I need to regrade with 709 in mind from the start?
Thanks again,
Steve
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Ok so after a bit of nightmare upgrading to resolve 9 I ended up going back to 8. After losing my databases. Long irrelevant story.
I imported the uncompressed tiff sequences that I was pretty happy with and tried a new export. This time it came out quite flat. But in earlier tests I saw the full range tiff sequence crush when exported to BD so I figured this flat look was fine and burnt to BD and whaddya know it came out perfect!
So I was heading in the right direction but thrown by some red herings.
Now my only thoughts is why some exports to pro res is coming out crushed and not flat? or will the crushed looking pro res files look fine once burnt to BD?
Thanks for the help again
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