Ultimate discussion about gamma shift issue from Resolve 14 into Quicktime / Youtube / Vimeo

[Duke Sweden]

I used to wonder the same thing. How could my Resolve, and previously Premiere Pro, exports look good in VLC, and also when importing the exported video back into PPro/Resolve, yet when uploaded to Youtube they have the same look as in Quicktime. I can understand Quicktime having a gamma issue (and it’s no longer supported by Apple so I doubt there will ever be a fix), but how is it Youtube shows the same exact gamma shift.

As you can guess, I never received a proper answer.

Dell XPS 8920
Intel i7 core 7700 build
GeForce GTX 1050ti
32 Gigs of RAM
3 7200 RPM SATA Drives
Windows 10 64-bit
DaVinci Resolve 14.0.1

[Greg White]

welcome to the matrix, all i can say is get a professional monitor and have it professionally calibrated every 4 to 6 months and trust it.

http://www.pearlstreetpost.com

[Ole Kristiansen]

Hi Duke!

Look at the Davinci Resolve 14 manual page … Just kidding!

Look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpF08UDhm20

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[Tero Ahlfors]

Basically it boils down to this:

When it’s being shown on the interwebs it’s being re-encoded by the service and you have no power over that. The color will also change depending on what browser and OS the viewer is using. Software based changes are in 99 % of the cases player based problems that you also don’t have any say over. Also probably 99 % of the viewers of your stuff are looking at this without a calibrated monitor.

Life’s too short for trying to control things you have no say over so I grade everything to a specification and when it’s out of my hands then that’s that.

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Ole Kristiansen] “Look at the Davinci Resolve 14 manual page … Just kidding!”

Oh you… Page 660-661 in the manual.

[Duke Sweden]

Well in my case, there was a setting in VLC that had to be changed. I forget what it was now but once changed the video looked exactly the same in VLC as in Premiere Pro (which I was using at the time). The puzzling part was why the youtube upload looked exactly like the pre-configured VLC video. Anyway, I now use a 4K 43″ HDTV to color correct/grade, and it looks exactly the same on the 4K tv in my tv room, so I’m satisfied.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m just an amateur who does this for fun so I don’t have to adhere to industry specs or stay within “legal” specs. I just have to please myself.

Dell XPS 8920
Intel i7 core 7700 build
GeForce GTX 1050ti
32 Gigs of RAM
3 7200 RPM SATA Drives
Windows 10 64-bit
DaVinci Resolve 14.0.1

[Kamil Iwanowicz]

This stuff drives me mad :/!

This is where I am:

– Resolve and VLC show the same thing (I don’t understand why)
– Quicktime shows its own thing
– Youtube and Vimeo – Chrome differs from Quicktime quite a lot, Safari is the same image as in Quicktime
– Final Cut X sees things the same way as Quicktime

So in short – FCPX, Quicktime, Youtube and Vimeo (via Safari) show the same picture, while Resolve and VLC Player show something pretty different.

I planned to take Resolve export into FCPX and there apply a grade that would match the original image from Resolve and export the final file from FCPX. But this is a shit way to do things.

Thanks for the tips about manual, it does address the issue a little bit!

The manual suggested to use Mac Color Profile option, but this makes things even worse.

Second tip was to use a custom LUT based on a DPX file. Never done it before, but this is how it went:

– using a color chart created a grade that matches what I see in Resolve vs how it looks in Quicktime after exporting
– applied the grade to the DPX file and created a LUT from that file (manual page 77)
– now when grading, the LUT is applied globally in Resolve
– during the export the LUT is turned off and what comes out of Resolve is pretty close to how it looked in Resolve

Far from perfect, but this is the closest I could get. It’s a crazy workaround and I’m sure there must be some easier and more accurate way to fix the problem.

I’ll ask at the source and see what they say.

Any thoughts ;)?

Thanks for all feedback!

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Kamil Iwanowicz] “Any thoughts ;)?”

Yes. There is no single format that will look the same in every player. If someone came up with a format or technique that did that he/she would be rich and win a bunch of technical awards.

The only thing that one could do is make a version that will look correct on a specific VOD service on a specific OS on a specific browser. Or in an offline case a specific media player with identical settings that you have. This isn’t really feasible if you need to make, let’s say, 2 services x 2 OS x 4 browsers = 16 unique versions of one file for a single web commercial.

I’m not trying to discourage your testing but there’s a reason this is unsolvable as of now. Because it actually is.

[Marc Wielage]

[Tero Ahlfors] “Life’s too short for trying to control things you have no say over so I grade everything to a specification and when it’s out of my hands then that’s that.”
These are very wise words.

[Robert Olding]

The best solution we’ve found is to calibrate your computer’s monitor using DisplayCal and follow the instructions for creating a LUT that Resolve will use for the GUI display. You’ll need a professional calibration device, we use X-Rite’s i1Pro 2.

Using this setup, any app using QuickTime will match what we see in the Resolve GUI monitor.

We’re able to get After Effects to match what we see in the Resolve GUI monitor by exporting a ProRes 4444 file from Resolve, then transcoding the ProRes file to OpenEXR files via Compressor and importing the OpenEXR files into After Effects.

I took awhile to figure this all out but at least we’ve now got a workflow between Resolve, AfterEffects, and FCP X where the colors/gamma now match.

Robert Olding
http://www.8streetstudio.com
Minneapolis, MN