NewbieQ:Matching preview for Color and Export

I'm quite new to this so please bear with me for a minute.

I'm not unfamiliar with color management, I do post-production on stills, but I cant seem to grasp behind the concept or shortcoming of Resolve matching viewer and export.
I do know this Color Management thing is quite new to Resolve (and so am I) but I've read and tweaked and still cant find what I'm doing wrong.

I only started using Resolve to edit and grade my action camera footage (mostly because its free and also because I rather do it all in the same aplication) so my footage istn that great to begin with (Xiaomi Yi 4k), still I get in viewr weird highlights that I cant understand If I'm tweaking settings (color,luminosity,etc..)behind reasonable extend that footage cant handle, but once exported ( to YT: H264 ,1080p, auto levels) they look ok, so how can I trust the Color Page Preview?

I disabled Cache,optimized media,Proxy Off, tried all the options for Color Sience but no change.
Using color management, with input,timeline and output to Rec 709 Gamma 2.2

Apart color diference (that need to adress as well) what I mean is the top left corner on this SSs:

Resolve Color Viewer:


VLC (exported with YT 1080p presets):


What am I missing?
Ty in advance.

do you have the "highlight" function on?

Thanks for the reply.

I'm fairly certain that its not, but I only have access to that computer during weekdays so will check on Monday, but I've read the topic for "export issues" a little further down, wich is very informative, and realized my monitor is using custom ICC that Resolve doesnt seem to support and that can mess things up.

Will do a bit more reading and testing but its weird that this happens on a MacPro latest model+Eizo monitors but Color page preview will display "nicely" (without those highlights artifacts/posterization) on my crappy windows laptop. Could be the extended range of Eizo monitor is also contributing to it, will have to test.

Anyway,tks for trying to help.
MC

I prefer YT look

Resolve preview is pushed to hard and source fails badly.

Ok, so did a bit of searching and reading and its not Highlight, although I've read the manual and still confused about how highlight works, and to be honest I'm a little mesmerized why on Earth it affects the output/delivery page, if you have it selected on any option in Color page preview will match what you are seing in Delivery Preview...doesn't make any sense to me.

But, I'm not a video colorist, I'm coming from Photoshop/photography so maybe I'm trying to do things differently and I think it could a Resolve or hardware limitation (using TB displays with internal MacPro ATI cards).

I'm used to do a Levels adjustment layer (on luminosity or normal) to put a photo in ballpark then fine tune it with Curves or whatever suits that particular image, and in Resolve the closest thing I found was to move white and black points on Curve and it seems for some reason I can't do that or Color preview for some reason doesn't show what's really happening.



Is there a setting/configuration I could check to adress this?
Or maybe could someone point to me to resources I could read to clarify what are best practises to setup properly a workable preview for someone using TB displays with regular ATI cards?
I don't need extra accurate colours as everything is for YT but do need to have a decent Preview of limitations for corrections I'm doing as posterization from extreme corrections and things like that.

Ty in advance.

Probably 2 stupid questions:
1 / Is your GUI screen calibrated?
2 / Is your control screen connected to an I / O card BMD correctly calibrated? (if exists)
Probably 2 stupid questions

Not studid at all I've tried all "stupid" settings in Resolve myself, but just after writing the above post reminded to try a few other things and turns out I only need to slide a notch (bare minimal) on Soft Clip-High Soft to get preview back to "normal".

SS reflects the HighSoft setting



I dont have BM cards, just the built in dual AMD FirePro D300 from MacPro, and screens connected trough display ports (TB), one calibrated to sRGB (with Spyder) and the main one to REC709 trough ColorNavigator from Eizo with the built-in calibrator (Eizo CG277).

EDIT: Just for clarification,minimal moving the "SoftClip-HighSoft" turns left SS to right SS:



Detailed Preview Screen:


Is this a Bug?

Not studid at all I've tried all "stupid" settings in Resolve myself, but just after writing the above post reminded to try a few other things and turns out I only need to slide a notch (bare minimal) on Soft Clip-High Soft to get preview back to "normal".

SS reflects the HighSoft setting



I dont have BM cards, just the built in dual AMD FirePro D300 from MacPro, and screens connected trough display ports (TB), one calibrated to sRGB (with Spyder) and the main one to REC709 trough ColorNavigator from Eizo with the built-in calibrator (Eizo CG277).

EDIT: Just for clarification,minimal moving the "SoftClip-HighSoft" turns left SS to right SS:




Detailed Preview Screen:


Is this a Bug?

In settings, color management, try unchecking "use mac display color profile" This might fix the issue. Since you're using the Eizo, with the profile saved in the display, this should work well. Let us know if it helps.

In settings, color management, try unchecking "use mac display color profile" This might fix the issue. Since you're using the Eizo, with the profile saved in the display, this should work well. Let us know if it helps.

No chance..whatever settings I choose (RCM or not) or "use mac display color profile" on/off will always get posterization on highlights If I move high point of curves,but just to be clear:only in Preview, not in export, that is until I apply minimal SoftClip-HighSoft then Preview gets back to normal. I was hoping someone could try to replicate it so see if it's "normal" Resolve behaviour (at least on Mac).

EDIT2:

I traced it, turns out my "a La Photoshop" way of doing things doesn't suit Resolve:
I was grouping some shots to give a Orange toning using parallel nodes via LayerMixer and using overlay with Color Generator and "Global Blend" as opacity for Color did this.

I can reproduce this effect in a shot with similar highlights just by turning down the highlight control too far. So have a look at that setting as well.

So, I fiddle around, made some tests and got it pretty much dialled up except for a small detail.

I guessed since I'm only doing (personal) stuff for YouTube, best bet was to keep things simple: disabled RCM and set timeline color for sRGB, and turned off "Use Mac Display Color Profile" as I figured it would cast a slight green image when enabled.

Also did some export tests and at least color wise ProRes422 and H264 look fairly identical to me.

Only bit that annoys me is that for some reason the highlights are tone down a bit in Color Viewer (or maybe export levels are toned a bit higher?)

(Don't mind the far right image, its the original, was just to control what would happen in ACR with input profile)

http://i.imgur.com/7TuSDWG.jpg


"Mac Display" turned on:

http://i.imgur.com/mbuTNjR.jpg


There's slightly more contrast (that also seems as over-sharpened) in export versions (auto levels) is there any setting I can enable/disable to get a more accurate preview for contrast?

Ty in advance.

EDIT:3 Deleted some content I previous wrote, I might have messed up previous tests, will retry and repost findings.