Normal / Full Range

[Ola Haldor voll]

I don’t see any problem here, really. You work in normal range, you render in normal range, and you the scope is telling you exactly what you are feeding it. Normal range. 40-960 I guess.

I’d say it’s the others who have made something wrong, if they are working in normal range.

If you want it to have deeper blacks and full range like you say the other commercials are, you should be working and rendering full range too, right?

Sounds to me either you have your settings right and the other guys wrong, or vice versa, depending on what you have to deliver.

[Stig Olsen]

Sure,

But it confuses me that all of the other commercials Im referring to graded at other post production companies from both Oslo and Stockholm deliver their films in full range, when everyone at this forum say the always work with the normal range button checked.

Anyone here working full range, and deliver full range for TV? I dont really see why some colorists need to work with that normal range button checked.

[Ola Haldor voll]

I didn’t for one TV-series, I guess their technician made whatever adjustments was needed before it went on air. On another TV-series, the technician was super strict about me making sure it was broadcast safe.

I think you’ll get a better answer if you talk to the guys you’re delivering to. If they are OK with full range, fine, play in full range and deliver.

[Stig Olsen]

This is exactly why I dont understand why we should use this normal range button.
If you work unscaled you will have the entire range to work with, without any limitations. It doesnt matter if the TV channel want it broadcast safe, because you can simply scale (not clip) the full range image to a normal range image if that is what they absolutely need.

When I talked to the technician today that do masters for commercials everyday – he told me he everyday deliver everything in full range.

Anyone else have some opinions on this?

[Kevin Cannon]

[stig olsen] “This is exactly why I dont understand why we should use this normal range button.”

Hi Stig,

That button (under config>monitoring, right?) only affects the monitoring output, and not the renders. So if your displays are set up to accept only broadcast legal levels, you would select that regardless of what you are delivering. A lot of displays can be set up to accept either full or legal. In my case, my external scopes function properly at legal levels, so I work internally in Resolve in full-range, and then monitor in legal with the displays set up for legal. But I still can choose to render full or scaled when I go to output…

If your displays and scopes are expecting full range and the folks trafficking the commercial work with full range… then I don’t think you would need to use that button.

KC

Prehistoric Digital

[Stig Olsen]

Hi Kevin,

We use OLED and the Panasonic BT300.
The OLED is set to ITU-709.

It is a significant change in depth (black levels) when switching from normal to unscaled monitoring in Resolve. Is this what you mean with “set up to accept only broadcast legal levels”?

The way you are working (internally full but output legal), do you mean that you do something special to work this way – or is it the normal way Resolve reads, lets say, RED-filesø?

When you render full range (and viewing normal range) I guess you miss control some place? Like when you transfer the material to online.

I cant really see the logic in this.

Stig

[Kevin Cannon]

Hi Stig,

Here’s my understanding: resolve always works in full-range internally. In order to accommodate workflows that use monitoring, scopes, and tape decks that expect broadcast-legal levels, they put the button in the config > monitoring section (also one in config > deck playback) that allows you to scale just the monitoring/deck output from Resolve’s internal full-range and output broadcast levels via the Decklink card. So what I’m doing is nothing special – I’m just turning the monitoring switch to “normally scaled.”

This won’t affect renders – renders will be scaled if you add an output LUT that scales them, or change the data level in the render window. Often Resolve scales the levels based on the codec you are going to. There are other threads on those specifics.

When I say that your display would be set up to accept legal or full range, I mean in the actual settings and calibration of the display, which could read something like “range:64-940” “0-1023” “16-235” etc. I’m not familiar with the menus of the OLED or BT300 – and it’s possible that setting the OLED to “Rec. 709” already sets this range and there is no separate option.

You should see the same image on-screen with the monitor set to 64-940 and resolve set to legally scaled as you would with the monitor set to 0-1023 and resolve set to unscaled.

KC

Prehistoric Digital

[Charlie Ellis]

why is it that this issue always comes up from time to time?
because its a huge fundamental issue.
Why do we have monitoring range and render range?
Why isn’t what you see is what you get (i hate that phrase), but
why isn’t it?

If I’m grading and displaying for P3 DCI then it should be unscaled
and so should the renders (which they are) unless you render a 422
codec. Therefore in this instance does the 422 render look like what
Im grading. No!

So why, because the 422 codec doesn’t handle the headroom of the P3
colorspace.

Why doesn’t Resolve take care of this correctly.

If you grade a TVC for broadcast (rec709) and monitor on a normal CRT or LCD that cant handle the headroom, then why should I be able to render a result that doesn’t reflect what I’m viewing.
For example, if I render the above grade TVC out to poorer 422 and bring that file back in, it looks the same. But render that out to prorez444 RGB and we’re talking a different color.

I was recently doing a dailies job, viewing on a projector and monitor config was unscaled, looked great, but rendering for offline, the images looked a little under contrast, blacks up, whites down..
NOT what you see is what I got..

This thread has gone on long enough, what do we have two options to change this setting, monitor and render (auto, unscaled or scaled)

It really is time for this to be sorted technically,
so if I’m grading for P3 display, resolve should auto correct the out put when rendering a 422 codec…or in turn have it correct when rendering a 444 or RGB codec.

Davinci Resolve Control Surface
MacPro
Cubix desktop 4
2 Red Rockets
GTX470+GTX470+GTX285
24GB RAM
HP Dreamcolor

[Stig Olsen]

Hi Kevin. I do also monitor normal, but I guess this is wrong because it naturally will not let me work with real black. And I cant work with the monitor set to normal range and export full range, because then I get a resultat that is different than I have seen on the monitor when grading. This is some silly mess that is not logical to me.

[Stig Olsen]

The only thing I can understand is that I should work full range and render render full range. DPX or something that dont scale. Please give me one good reason why I should monitor normal. I know people here say they do, but I cant understand why. It gives limits that should not be there.