Six Approaches For Primary Corrections

The footage was RED set to RedLogFilm. But I’ll cycle through these different approaches no matter the footage, Log, Raw or Rec709.

I don’t think any one is inherently better. I tend to have my personal preference – but even that changes over time. Often I’ll get bored with one approach and change it up just to keep things interesting. Other times, one project clearly favors one of approach over another and dictates to me which to use.

RE: Offset Contrast – That approach isn’t a y-only move, so the image tends to saturate as you add contrast.

This might be a silly question but, in the beginning you talk about where you are going to bring the highlights to a certain percentage and the numbers really don’t match with what the DaVinci Scope is saying. Are you going by a 0-100 scale and not by the DaVinci scope scale? I know it is silly and most people already got it but my brain is missing a step for some reason.

Correct. The DaVinci scopes are based on a 10-bit scale. I translate them to percentages from 0% black to 100% white. I’m speaking in rough percentages. It’s just how I think – having spent 24 years reading scopes as IRE and not as digital bits. Ideally, the Resolve scopes would allow us to choose our scale – but they don’t.

Awesome! Glad my brain is thinking the same. I learned to do 0% to 100% from apple color and for me it just seems to be easier. Thanks for the quick reply

🙂 You betch’a.

It seems BMD’s engineers have missed something int those scopes…
A Signal 0 in a IRE scale, in fact, means 64 in a 10bit RGB scale.
And 100 IRE is related to 940.

The scopes in Resolve relate to Resolve’s internal 10-bit processing. True black is 0 bits and full white is 1023 bits. On rendering, depending on the codec you’re rendering to Resolve will either follow the SMPTE spec for black at 64 and white at 940 or full range for an RGB codec.

Everyone gets this confused at some point – but Resolve’s scopes are showing what they should.

I don’t know if I agree with that…
Besides, I’ve already read about it in some forum out there…

And if you switch between Colorspace from Video to Data nothing changes on the internal Scopes, if that was the case.

If you have an external Scope over the SDI you can figure that the Pixel at 1023 is actually at 100IRE. When you switch the Colorspace to Data (delivering the entire 10bit signal) you can see the signal over the 100IRE.
Actually, Ultrascope shows the correct specification as we see in the picture.
That’s another reason I insist about using an external scope.

Resolve has its own internal processing. That’s what the scopes show. When you change between Video and Data in Project Settings you’re changing where those internal numbers get set when outputting to a display. Here it is directly from Page 77 of the Resolve manual:

“Colorspace: This setting only affects the data levels being output via the video interface
that connects the Resolve workstation to your external display. It has no effect on the data
that’s processed internally by Resolve, or on the files written when you render in the Deliver
page. It is imperative that the option you choose in Resolve matches the data range to
which your external display is set. Otherwise, the video signal will appear to be incorrect,
even though the internal data is being processed accurately by DaVinci Resolve. There are
two options…”

Page 267 has some additional info on changing between Video and Data Levels:

“When you change this setting, the image being output to your external display should change, but
the image you see in your Viewer will not. That’s because this setting only affects the data levels
being output via the video interface connecting the Resolve workstation to your external display.
It has no effect on the data that’s processed internally by Resolve, or on the files written when you
render in the Deliver page.”

Later in that section the manual explains how the Output Data Level Settings effect the render (not external viewing) and recommends leaving that an Auto.

The manual doesn’t answer the question ‘why Auto?’

The answer: The codec you’re rendering to has written into its specification if it’s a full range or video range codec and Resolve knows, based on your rendering choices, which is the appropriate Output Data Level. The kink in this is if you’re rendering to ProRes4444, which has an RGB variant in the specification which is Unscaled Full Range. Resolve will assume ProRes4444 is Normally Scaled Legal Video and if you’re in an RGB pipeline you’ll need to manually override Resolve’s default behavior.

I hope this clears up what you’re seeing and why you’re seeing it.

Hey there, this looks like a duplicate of the previous video, “Commercial Workflow: Labeling and Ingest.” Would love to see this one, though.

I agree with Seth. Really looking forward to seeing this one!

Same here. The wrong video is playing.

Wrong video.

I everyone – Thanks for continuing to let us know about the problem with this Insight! We’ve fixed it and the proper video should now be streaming and downloading!