Timeline Color Space confirmations

Hi, I've been trying to get my head around what the timeline color space setting is doing. From watching a bunch of videos and experimenting I think the following is right, but would love someone to confirm this or tell me if this is wrong!

#1 My Davinci YRGB Color Managed workflow...
Input color space is manually set per clip (or via RAW metadata, or via global project setting).
In this scenario I think that the color page is working in the color space set via the 'Timeline color space', so that needs to be set to a large gamut space like DWG/DI.

#2 My Davinci YRGB workflow...
In the color page I have input CST (source->log); color grade nodes; then output CST (log->display).
In this scenario I think that the 'Timeline color space' has no significance because the color grading is happening in the manually defined intermediate log space?

In terms of the Timeline Color Space setting, is the above right?
From my experiments I believe this is right, as in the results I get seem to follow the above, but I might have missed something.

Thanks, Pete.

Timeline Color Space definition in manual management is there for the purpose of color space aware grading tools like the HDR palette. By default it's color space and gamma setting will be set to Use Timeline but if needed can be switched to something else manually.

You also need the definition for making sure node conversions are working as intended. If you have the desire to set a node to linear gamma for example it needs to understand what your incoming image data is.

One side note on node conversions is that white point is not adapted so for color spaces that use a white point different from your working space's, it would be better to make a CST sandwich.

Hi @shebbe, thanks for the reply. I've read Chapter 9 'Data Levels, Color Management, and ACES' of the Resolve reference manual, and been playing around more with this. I've attached two images...

Fig1 - Resolve color pipeline

fig1.jpg (302.54 KiB) Viewed 242 times

In this first image where I'm showing the pipeline from the Reference Manual, are the following points right:
(1) = the image entering into the color page
(2) = the image exiting the color page
(3) = the display output as seen in the viewer
Also when you apply effects to the edit page, how are these color changes managed in the pipeline? Do they happen before the input to the color page, between (1) and the color grade on that figure?

Fig2 - Color managed vs non color managed

fig2.jpg (850.51 KiB) Viewed 242 times

In this second image where I've been comparing results from a project color managed approach (left hand side_, and CST sandwich managed (right hand side)...
- What am I looking at here with the curves? Are they all showing histograms as mapped to the output color space?
- Why are A and C not the same? As far as I can tell all of the color transforms are the same. The images in the viewer do look the same to my eye (I can’t tell any difference when I toggle between the two timelines I've created), but the histograms are not the same.
- With the color managed workflow on the left there is a ‘Use white point adaption’ tickbox, but also there is the same tickbox option in CST nodes. From what you said it sounded like one of these options doesn’t work with color space conversions, but I didn’t understand what you meant exactly.

Sorry for all these questions!

Thanks, Pete.

Haven't fully looked into what you've posted yet but I can say a few quick things.

1. When working in an 'HDR' log intermediate space for grading, your working luminance should not be 100nits SDR but I would suggest 4000 which is the DWG/Intermediate preset based setting, or max it to 10000nits. Otherwise you aren't properly using the log data and further tone mapping down the line causing simple adjustments like using primairies to look undesirable.

2. When using RCM the non scope bases histograms are showing the data in the timeline working space rather than the net result of all image processing which may be the reason you see a difference.

There is also a bigger order of operations diagram btw in the manual somewhere that includes Edit and Fusion. There you can see how the full image processing order works.