Taking advantage of high and low lights in RAW

I'm a filmmaker and not properly a DP. Using a BMPCC for "visual notes" and perhaps doing some kind of personal work. Always shoot in RAW, go to Davinci to make proxies for viewing and editing (if I some time will do some serious output certainly shall color grade again with a professional).
For these proxies I generally only deal with the camera settings and don't play around too much with the real power features of Davinci. But get a little frustrated because can't extract all the information contained in low and high lights of a shot. When lowering the highlights down to -100 and doing a lift of the shadows up to +100, can see, by going up and down with exposure, that there is more information left behind, that is in the original RAW but can't really put it all in one image. Have to make an option between loosing info in high or low lights that are in the RAW but can't output.
Went through the manual but couldn't figure out how to take full advantage of the dynamic range (I'm currently working with the ACES 1.0 color science). My doubt is if this lost information can only be retrieved through a more complex operation of masks and overlays for the high and low lights, or if I'm missing something and it would be possible to retrieve it all in this first process of doing proxy dailies.

You need to understand that all current display technologies can't reproduce what good cameras are capable to record. Consequently, all grading is a creative decision what to show to the audience and what to loose.

This may change with future HDR approaches (see last weeks IBC discussions), but right now your best option might be a mild S-curve. But keep your RAW for future developments or save an archive as described in the manual in EXR with no ODT applied.

I probably can understand that reproduction matter to a certain point.
The frustrating thing is that, for instance, I have some clipped portions of the image in the output, and this image exists on the RAW. I can see it in my monitor and imagine that would be able to lower it on to the levels of reproducing along with the other lower lights. In fact, I think this can be done by selecting an area of the image and correcting it apart, in another layer (am I wrong?), but wouldn't go through this (and learn how to do it) just for my rushes. Wonder if there is a more systematic, or practical way of doing it.
About keeping the originals I always do (even keep a second, safe copy, of important material).
Thanks!

If I understand you correctly, you want to mask out highlight areas and treat them differently. While that's possible (with a simple luma qualifier), it will introduce a transition area somewhere, like around a blown out window, for example. So you'll end up with some kind of strange halo in the neighboring darker areas or negative "halo" in the lighter areas in most scenes.

I'd rather vote for curves.

And if all of this sounds very confusing to you, I'd like to recommend a tutorial to get you going, like the ones from Rippletraining by Alexis van Hurkman.

What are your output settings? Have you set them to full range or are you using video range?

Not sure what you mean, can't find a specific setting for output. On the setting "Video Monitoring" there are options for "video" and "data", I'm monitoring on "video".
Found output options under the Lut tab - I'm using no Lut at all.
In the Camera Raw tab, I'm using DNG at Full Resolution decoding and playback.

I suppose that when you set Resolve to decode the DNG to BMDFilm it outputs a log-like color gamma (with washed up blacks and washed down highlights) displaying all of the information contained in the picture. You can see it on the scopes window by pushing the lift up and checking if there is more information appearing. It generally will not. Then you just grade at your taste to your output requirements. Generally when you add a Rec709 conversion lut (say for instance the standard BMDFilm to Rec709), it will contrast the image without any regards as to retaining information. So you should add a node before de lut pushing that information back (down for gain, up for lift). If this gives you washed color, just recorrect them on a node after the lut, being carreful not to crush anything.
In my experience, I found that fiddling on the highlights and shadows sliders on the RAW tab gives you more or less the same as fiddling in the gain and lift setting on the first node (I have a Blackmagic Cinema Camera, I imagine it is kinda the same as the BMPCC files). Actually, the RAW tab tends to give you halos around subjects, similar to the clarity tab on Adobe Camera Raw, so I prefer using the the color tab. As your footage will be set to BMDFilm, all the info should be there. It is different in the standard way Adobe Camera Raw displays (and magically reveals info when you push the sliders).

Check to see if you are rendering your proxies with BMDFilm profile or Rec709. The former will generally lose information that cannot be retrieved back.

"I suppose that when you set Resolve to decode the DNG to BMDFilm it outputs a log-like color gamma (with washed up blacks and washed down highlights) displaying all of the information contained in the picture."

Rafael, I guess there is a problem in my daVinci. It doesn't display the log-like gamma and it is always set to BMDFilm (can't change that even if I wanted to). When trying to delete a user and make a new setting it gives me a message as attached here. Likely to have corrupted files or user in the app. Guess I'll uninstall it and reinstall - (maybe version 12?).

Obrigado, mermão!

Screen Shot 2015-09-20 at 08.33.14.png (42.27 KiB) Viewed 1198 times

That's because you are using ACES.
And probably your odt is rec709. Your idt is automatically using bmd film and it doesn't give you the option to change it. That's exactly how it is supposed to work. There is plentu6 of room to make your adjustments and recover highlights and blacks. Using curves or wheels. Of course your output will be adjusted to be rec709 , so this is a limitation unless you have a wider range monitor or projector.
If you are not familar wirh ACES i would strongly suggest to switch back to yrgb color science and you will be able to grade and see your bmd film gamma as you like, not being forced anymore to apply a output devise transformation

Hmmmm when working in ACES you have to choose an output conversion like Walter said. If it's set to 709 or sRGB (or anything like that) it may be losing information on the edges but should be available to recover with regular nodes (as the output is natively added after all your grading nodes).

Crazy bugs man, reinstall and even try to delete the database if you can, looks pretty weird (you would lose your existing project). I have been using 12 for a few weeks and I am liking it.

É nóis!

These were very useful.
The ACES seems to be the most powerful way but in fact it might be generating problems I still can't deal with.
Will try to delete the database (no big problem in loosing projects right now) and instal the 12: a clean restart.
Thanks for the help!

André;

You started by mentioning that you are a DP, not a colorist.. thank you for that note....

If you really really want to use ACES, then i would start by turning your contrast, offset, pivot and saturation knobs until you have nothing cliped or crushed, and the data centered in the scopes.. this is sometimes called a "technical" grade or a "log" grade

I agree there's next to nothing covering this workflow in the manual, but it is a standard workflow, just it seems that Resolve's base in the Davinci video gradeing system means that log gradeing seems to be a bit of an afterthought, not impossiable, but nowhere as elegant at Nucoda, Baselight, or Pablo, the folks who write and vet the manual seem also based in video gradeing as the one small mention in the manual is far from how i use the tools, and may go as far as being activly counter productive.

But unless you have a really good reason to use ACES, it would not be my first choice, or even second.

The good reasons to use ACES to me are archiveing, or mutiple deliverables.

And you do have to use 16bit uncompreseed caches in ACES or you will clip and crush your data, so bring lots and lots of fast disks, i use 24 spindles on SAS to get 16bit EXR to play realtime