Different black levels between Premiere and Resolve

Dear Resolve community,

I am pretty new to using Resolve and I am not that prolificent in color theory (yet!) so I hope my question is not too basic. I have also looked here in the forum but haven't found an answer, please apologize if I oversaw it.

So, I actually have 2 questions:

I am doing my editing in Adobe Premiere CC 2015 and grading in Resolve 12 under Windows 10 using the xml for final cut 7 roundtrip. I haven't changed any settings really and went with the defaults.
So, I do my grading in Resolve and everything works and looks fine, I render the files as dnxhd (since I am under windows, I would use prores on a mac) but when I reimported them into premiere (again, via xml), I noticed that the blacks looked more washed out than in Resolve. I looked up the parade of Lumetri Color in Premiere and indeed, the blacks don't go down to 0 anymore. Here are the parades of the same frame of the same shot, once from Resolve and once from Premiere:

Resolve:

Premiere:

Why does this happpen? Otherwise the shots look good, only the black level is wrong. If I compare the shots between the two applications via alt-tab, they indeed look different, so it is not just a different scale. If I reimport the shots into Resolve it looks fine again. It's probably an easy fix in the settings, but I cannot seem to find it.

And my second question is about handles. I am using the xml roundtrip mainly to be able to use handles, meaning that I grade more than I need for the edit to compensate any changes that might come up. I have set the default handle length in Resolve's settings to 100 frames, but in Premiere the shots do not have any additional meat. How come?

I hope I was making myself clear enough and would appreciate any help.

Thank you very much and have a nice day!

What kind of footage?

Looks like the blacks are elevated to around 7 IRE, which makes me wonder if this is a video "setup" issue. Do you have "setup" enabled somewhere in your pipeline?

Setup? I am not entirely sure what you mean. I have made no special video settings anywhere in my system, at least not that I know of. My graphics card is a Nvidia Geforce GTX970 using the latest standard drivers.

The shots are standard indoor shot with a Sony FS7 and a Sony FS700.

It looks a video vs full range issue to me too...

Mike, this link explains video "setup":

http://www.glennchan.info/articles/tech ... setup.html

Also, Resolve has an option for Video vs Data levels which you can experiment with.

I'm not sure about DNx, but ProRes certainly defaults to video levels. Resolve (as well as quicktime and everything else) will read it correctly, with the black set at 16 (64 at 10 bits).

Premiere probably reads this as data. I don't use Premiere, but there's bound to be some setting to have it interpret the files as video level.

Alternatively, you can set data levels in Resolve's deliver tab. Other players might then clip the blacks, but it's possible that Premiere will read them fine. If it's only for the roundtrip, the method could work.

Mike, this link explains video "setup":

Setup is as dead as the last dinosaur, because we don't do anything analog anymore, and it was an NTSC perversion to start out with.

What you are looking at is a straight and simple RGB / Y'CbCr "full range" vs. "Linear Video" 0-1023 / 64-940 error.

The statement that

ProRes certainly defaults to video levels.

is not quite accurate. ProRes 422 does, but ProRes 4444 does not. It can contain either, but has no provision for identifying which is the proper decoding range. This contributes to the same problem reported in the "strange/ugly dpx export" thread in this forum. Scopes tell the story.

jPo

Thank you very much for the suggestions!
I am currently quite busy with other things and will try them out as soon as possible.
I will let you know if I can solve the problem!

Also, any clues regarding my handles question?
What am I doing wrong there?

Thanks again,
Mike

The statement that

ProRes certainly defaults to video levels.

is not quite accurate. ProRes 422 does, but ProRes 4444 does not. It can contain either, but has no provision for identifying which is the proper decoding range. This contributes to the same problem reported in the "strange/ugly dpx export" thread in this forum. Scopes tell the story.
jPo

Yes, that's exactly so. I remember reading conflicting information from Apple and Adobe (I think) about which range it's meant to work at. I think QT player will show it as if it's video range, but that was a while back, so I'm not sure it's still the case. In software where the interpretation can be forced (like Resolve), using data levels is of course possible. I don't know, however, how Premiere will take it, which is the OP's original problem.

...

Also, any clues regarding my handles question?
What am I doing wrong there?

So, when you go to make a trim, do you get a "no more media", or is the additional media ungraded?

After reimporting the footage via xml to premiere, there is no additional footage outside of my graded clips at all. Meaning I cannot trim the clips, because they just 'end there'.

After reimporting the footage via xml to premiere, there is no additional footage outside of my graded clips at all. Meaning I cannot trim the clips, because they just 'end there'.

You'll need to add handles in the more options twirl down-menu in the deliver page.