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Viewer changes color dramatically when playing.
I am very new to Da Vinci Resolve, so this is probably over my head, but I got to start understanding color management and profiles and space…
I have been doing color correction for years in FCPX, and in the last few years bought an i1 Display Pro calibrator, a DELL 10-bit monitor (UP series), a Tangent Ripple and invested some money in the room light and wall colors. So far I have been able to accompany the new things I’ve learned to get more accurate colors and predict how they will look once rendered and viewed somewhere else.
But now in Resolve I am lost, because it seems like Resolve has its own way of dealing with color that baffles me. I do not need extremely accurate viewing (I don’t even own an external monitor or output device that generates a dependable signal, need to get one sometime soon). For now I just want to do color in the Resolve viewer and not get strange surprises later, really large color shifts like I am getting.
This is mostly GH5 10-bit footage (some 8 bit form GoPro and Nikon DSLR) edited in FCPX and exported out to ProRes 422 HQ, for Da Vinci do detect cuts and then on with color correcting.
For example, when I am playing the footage, the color shifts and becomes more saturated, looks more like what I intended (and shot). When I pause, it becomes washed out and desaturated.
Sometimes I can get rid of this effect of washed out footage when paused by disabling and re-enabling one fo the nodes I added (always the same one, btw, a shared one at that. ) Then the issue goes away. So it seem very unstable and I distrust what I am seeing.
I know I should get an external device like the Blackmagic Design Ultrastudio Mini Monitor, and perhaps a eGPU to speed up graphics. But for now I am learning Da Vinci and would like to believe I can do mid-range jobs and not have large surprises upon rendering. Am I mistaken? Can Resolve only really work if you have ALL the advised gear in the pipeline? Or is there some configuration I am missing in the Preferences or Project Settings? When I try stuff in there, I get different results which are equally uneven or hard to depend on (for example, playback is washed out and paused image looks correct…)
Also, things look OK if I watch them in VLC and Quicktime … but in FCPX, if I import the Da Vinci render into FCPX, I get the whole clip with unpredicted gamma shift, looks washed out.
Sorry for the rookie questions, just wanting badly to migrate to Da Vinci and having a hard time getting my head wrapped around all the color management issues.
FYI: Timeline mixes 8 and 10-bit footage, is UHD. Mac is a 2018 macmini 3 ghz with 16gb ram, 1.5 GPU memory, DELL UP 25″display using the CAL 1 profile which allows the computer to communicate with the monitor to achieve the calibrated profile.
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5 Replies
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[Alan Langdon] “I know I should get an external device like the Blackmagic Design Ultrastudio Mini Monitor, and perhaps a eGPU to speed up graphics. But for now I am learning Da Vinci and would like to believe I can do mid-range jobs and not have large surprises upon rendering. Am I mistaken?”
Yes… if you want to be able to judge any proper color correction, you need to have a proper workflow in place. I believe your first mistake is to consider that your FCPX workflow will be similar in Resolve. These are two different applications, made by two different manufacturers. Without getting into too much details, Apple has more control over the video signal between FCPX and the mac hardware, than Blackmagic does.
If you’d like to work in Resolve, I would recommend you follow Balakmagic configuration hardware. You can download DaVinci_Resolve_15_Configuration_Guide.pdf from their website. I believe Resolve cannot work accurately with your Mac’s internal GPU. You need an external hardware in order to control your video signal all the way to your external reference monitor.
In summary in order to judge the quality of your video signal, one part of your workflow is to make sure your hardware and software meet the requirements of the manufacturer.
Good luck,
David Baud
Colorist & Finishing Editor
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com -
Thank you for your input, much to learn there.
I had heard already about Apple’s own color science internaly and how it makes FCPX and Quicktime “work” in it’s own way.But please tell me: Da Vinci is free and so many people have been downloading it, but can it be that anyone who wants to do beginer or intermediate color correction HAS to buy all the hardware? So the app essencially is not usable unless you have these external items? I understand that to be professional and trust what you see, yes, they are needed, but can’t one just get an aproximate look on the viewer so they can do OK corrections?
The issue with playback gamma VS paused gamma seems like another thing. Maybe it’s the color space of the footage (GH5 10-bit imported into FCPX, edited there with 8-bit footage and then exported to ProRes HQ for Da Vinci…?
I just would like to believe I can learn Resolve on real jobs for less picky clients. Seems like so many people use Da Vinci and I can’t believe they all have the ideal setup, there’s gotta be something to configure in Project Settings so I don’t get extremelly surprised when I export the corrected footage and watch it in Quicktime or VLC (although VLC seems to show somehting much closer to what I saw in Resolve… Quicktime and FCPX, if I reimporta round trip back, make the resulting render from Resolve look washed out, very much.Many thanks and please shine some more light if you have some regarding my prosumer approach ☺
Obrigado! (“Thanks” in Portuguese)
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[Alan Langdon] “But please tell me: Da Vinci is free and so many people have been downloading it, but can it be that anyone who wants to do beginer or intermediate color correction HAS to buy all the hardware? “
Beginner or training: no. If you want to know what exactly you’re doing or you’re actually selling grading as a service: yes.
[Alan Langdon] ” I understand that to be professional and trust what you see, yes, they are needed, but can’t one just get an aproximate look on the viewer so they can do OK corrections?”
There’s really no “OK” in color pipelines. Either it’s correct or it isn’t.
[Alan Langdon] “I just would like to believe I can learn Resolve on real jobs for less picky clients.”
If you can’t be sure what you’re seeing do you really want to sell that to a client?
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Apart from the advice on getting a separate grading monitor and ultrastudio if you want a valid reference (which is spot on), I wanted to address this issue: “but in FCPX, if I import the Da Vinci render into FCPX, I get the whole clip with unpredicted gamma shift, looks washed out.”
Resolve has a lot more settings for your input color space, timeline color space, and render color space than FCPX does, and your choice of gamma in the rendered file can make a large difference in contrast and saturation. For viewing on a computer screen, you’d want gamma 2.2 (which is higher contrast, since it’s assumed to be viewed in a lit room like an office); for viewing on an HDTV you’d want gamma 2.4, which is lower contrast since it’s going to be viewed in a darker room. For cinema I think it’s gamma 2.6, which is even lower contrast since that’s being viewed in a completely dark room in a controlled viewing environment.
As an experiment, what happens if you import some of your source footage directly into Resolve without cutting it in FCPX first, and use optimized media (Prores HQ) for all of it?
The weird behavior you’re seeing in playback vs. pause is most likely due to the limitations of your Mac Mini’s integrated Intel graphics; an eGPU will help but based on all the reports I’ve seen the 2018 Mac Mini is not a very capable machine for working with Resolve even with an eGPU.
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[Alan Langdon] “The issue with playback gamma VS paused gamma seems like another thing. Maybe it’s the color space of the footage (GH5 10-bit imported into FCPX, edited there with 8-bit footage and then exported to ProRes HQ for Da Vinci…?”
Not knowing what your settings are, it could be an issue with your caching depending upon your choice of file format & codec
[Alan Langdon] “Many thanks and please shine some more light if you have some regarding my prosumer approach ☺”
I think you may want to spend some time learning the idea about “reference” and standards. They are many different parameters that will impact the way your movie will look like playing on your computer. The monitor obviously but also the applications you are using.
On a Mac, at the OS level, you have the International Color Consortium management (ICC) which will manage color profiles for your display.
At another level, each application will manage colors in a proprietary way, based on the selected ICC profiles of your system. Not all applications are transparent about how they do that.
Then you have the way your movie was encoded and the file format selected (wrapper and codec, i.e Quicktime, ProRes 422). Ideally your movie will be flagged with the right color space, gamma & standard (i.e Rec. 709, gamma 2.4). If not your player will guess what it is.
As you can see, unless you understand your workflow and how things are managed, a lot of things can go wrong.
[Alan Langdon] “but can’t one just get an aproximate look on the viewer so they can do OK corrections?”
You certainly could, but understand the limit of this approach. Don’t expect it to work other than your system. If your work is intended to be seen only on your computer system, it might work just fine. If you intend to broadcast to the world, you will run into many issues.
Last thing, to troubleshoot your playback issues, I would run some simple test. Try to do a roundtrip test in Resolve and see if you get the same problems. For example, color correct, export, re-import in Resolve. Apply a difference matte between the original and the re-imported movie, does it look the same?
Good luck,
David Baud
Colorist & Finishing Editor
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com
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