Adobe vs DaVinci RAW Converter

I apologize for my English.
Alexander, maybe you did not understand it to the settings. Here's the same frame. The first picture taken in ACR off with noise reduction, the second in DaVinci. I think the difference in quality debayering minimal.




The picture was fitted "by eye"

[Peter Chamberlain]

That looks correct Sergey. How does the original skateboard shot now compare?
Peter

I apologize for my English.
Alexander, maybe you did not understand it to the settings.

Thanks, Sergey!
You are right - i missed it. I take Luminance Noise Reduction to 0, but forgot about Color Noise Reduction.
But try compare Davinci with ACR on a skateboard shot. Difference is huge. ACR retain brown texture on a Zion Whole Sale signboard, and Davinci make it horrible yellow solid color without any texture.

DaVinci -


Adobe (take Noise Reduction to 0, Luminance and Color) -



And one more thing I want pay attention to (mostly its for Peter and other peoples from Blackmagic team) - raw conversion is one of most important part in modern postproduction. Your camera as good, as your raw processing app can make it. Just compare r3d with different version of color science.
Blackmagic give us Resolve lic with camera and its great peace of software (I use it since first batch of Resolve for Mac became available in Ukraine). But raw conversion of CinemaDNG in resolve pretty basic, and more important that result are not stellar. In my opinion it`s more important to get a better results, than realtime when we make transition from raw to DI format like prores or dnxhd. As of today I force not to use Resolve, but to go with ACR route, and thats huge bottleneck in postprocessing pipeline. In my opinion Blackmagic just should not give up to make Resolve comparable with ACR, or even better! Or write separate app to make raw conversion not in realtime, but with max quality possible.

Yes, the frame with skateboarder shows the complete failure of BMD.
Made in ACR


Unfortunately, DaVinci can not be so. I hope that in the next generation Davintsi BM redo work with hilight.

Perfect example Sergey, this scene is exactly why I'm interested in the BMCC and the raw-process. Having a lot of experience with photos and AdobeRaw/Lightroom this is exactly what I was hoping to achieve with the BMCC. Tough when I see that davinci resolve fails totally at this task I'm a little bit worried

Can you post your ACR settings for this result? And did you try cineformRaw? Maybe that works better ?

[Peter Chamberlain]

Thanks for the feedback. We continue to strive for improvement and if you could share a link to the source dng to our support email davincihelp (at) blackmagicdesign (dot) com then our algorithm guys we can explore this further.
Peter

Peter,
This is not my footage, i haven't camera
This is Ty Evans -
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=427
exposure test:
http://wtrns.fr/81e28Aw61yL33-6
Frame001250.dng
I sent this frame to e-mail.

I too found the raw conversion to be very "basic" compared to Adobe Camera Raw, not to mention I ended up with banding in the final ProRes 422 HQ output. Yet in Final Cut Pro X with ProRes film log footage, it held up and looked wonderful. No banding at all. Maybe I missed some vital setting, but I shouldn't have to.

To be honest, given the all-encompassing nature of the process of raw conversion in ACR, I would have expected much better tools in Resolve than what we currently have (or at least what Resolve 9 Lite has). I understand that there are all the normal correction tools already, but in ACR, you convert your raw file to a final perfected image ready for any post work (compositing, keying etc etc), not something to then colour correct.

Well thats interesting because i would think the Prores log files would have been debayered using similar if not the same algorithms as Resolve (in the interview with Grant Petty he said as much). And i would guess the GM release of 9 has an updated (better?) version than the one in the camera at the time that John shot the prores footage. I think this is a case of so many people new to resolve not knowing how to get the best out of it. I certainly didn't find my prores grading of John's footage better than raw (are you saying you found the prores better to grade? i can't tell..) but it was different and i compared them here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=374&start=10#p2144

Adobe has a long history of debayering raw, indeed giving it an edge for some tasks shown in this thread. But i think Capture One is even better at producing pleasing images from raw than adobe. Which is more important to me than the extreme image recovery attempts in this thread. 5 stop recovery? I'm generally doing 1 stop overall adjustments at most in Capture One for raw stills. Anything more than 2 i would consider a screw up. I know for Johns footage dropping down around 2 stops was standard for some shots in Resolve (in capture one the default actually showed the raws being slightly dark needing a boost!!) but it's because he exposed for the highlights to get maximum dynamic range in raw from the BMC. His exposure's were not accidental or mistakes.

Also, i get what you're saying in the 2nd paragraph but all the "normal correction tools" are still manipulating the raw data as far as i understand it.. (Peter?) So the point of resolve in that case IS to convert the raw into a final perfected image colour wise just as it is with adobe. And i don't think it's toolset for colour is lacking compared to ACR. I would argue the opposite except for the cases of image recovery. One would hope 'recovery' is the exception we deal with though, not the rule.