Washed out export.

Hi all, Using Resolve 17
M1 Mac Mini
Dell UP2716D Screen

I have searched the net and this forum for an answer but it is driving me insane.

On export of my project, in quicktime and when uploading to youtube, the colour and contrast is washed out.

When viewing the file in VLC player, it's the same as my grade, its fine.

I am hoping this is just some setting in resolve to fix this issue however I have seen a few videos on youtube that suggest changes to settings which I have tried and nothing works.

I have watched the file on a windows laptop and also looks all wrong on there.

It's obviously something I don't understand when it comes to colour management, hoping someone may be able to help or at least identify the limitations I have so I can fix it.

Original video files are straight up sony 1080/60 in cine2 profile (if that helps)

thanks in advance, really appreciated Alex

The problem is your viewing environment. Before you can judge the image quality, you have to make sure you're seeing the image accurately, without alteration.

As media players, graphics drivers and even the operating system can (and often do) alter the image, you have to get those variables out of the signal path.

In other words, you have to get the image off the computer and onto a calibrated display.

I/O cards such as the Decklink accomplish that.

The problem is your viewing environment. Before you can judge the image quality, you have to make sure you're seeing the image accurately, without alteration.

As media players, graphics drivers and even the operating system can (and often do) alter the image, you have to get those variables out of the signal path.

In other words, you have to get the image off the computer and onto a calibrated display.

I/O cards such as the Decklink accomplish that.

The problem is copy and pasting the same cargo cult and FUD ridden canned responses over and over in this forum instead of actually understanding how things work.

A simple thing to test would be to drag the exported video into your browser and see if that matches Resolve or YT rendering. In the first case it's something YT does in the later color management of your browser or resolve and VLC.

The hardware to buy is a measurement probe and learn how color management works in the applications relevant to you and verify it's correct.

I can't help with Mac, but on Windows there certainly is no color management whatsoever by the GPU, driver or OS by default. Despite Jim wants you to make believe otherwise.

Been through the color management stuff in massive detail via colorists and engineers and the people making the colorists monitors and calibration software. It's a mess.

Windows has very basic CM, but at least doesn't screw it up. Doesn't necessarily help a lot either.

Mac's ColorSync intentionally messes with the Rec.709 standards and screws things up. It applies only the scene referred transform but NOT the also required display transform, plus applies a gamma between 1.95 and 1.96.

So Mac "color managed" apps will apply the ColorSync standards (which aren't normal Rec.709) while some non-color managed apps actually are closer to a Rec.709 image.

Resolve has the Rec.709-A export option, yes A is for Apple. It adds a different NLC tag, which on Mac's gets the ColorSync utility to apply normal Rec.709 standards and shows the file correctly. Outside of Macs the Rec.709-A exported image is off, typically too dark and over-saturated.

So yeah, Jim is pretty much correct. As most colorists would agree. The only way to be certain you know what you're seeing is accurate is to find a way to take control of the image out of the OS and players.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

So yeah, Jim is pretty much correct. As most colorists would agree. The only way to be certain you know what you're seeing is accurate is to find a way to take control of the image out of the OS and players.

The only way to be certain is to measure and verify. The process is the same. Whether you are using a dedicated GPU or not. All that dedicated hardware saves you is time and skill to configure your OS and apps. Whatever your chain is, if it measures correctly, it is correct.

So no, Jim is not correct. He just has a preference to stick with what works for him and that's OK. Claiming this to be the only way or ultimate truth is non sense.

Also it makes really no difference what pretty much any colorist in the world's thinks or uses.

That's the beauty of sience. It doesn't care about opinions, cargo cult and FUD. You can just verify things by using a measurement probe.

So no, Jim is not correct. He just has a preference to stick with what works for him and that's OK. Claiming this to be the only way or ultimate truth is non sense.

Actually, I think @Jim Simon is 100% correct. The moment you start viewing an image in an uncalibrated environment, you have no idea what you're looking at.

Read these:

"Grading for Mixed Delivery: Cinema, Home, and Every Screen in Between" by Cullen Kelly
https://blog.frame.io/2019/10/14/gradin ... -delivery/

"How to Deal with Levels: Full vs. Video" by Dan Swierenga
https://www.thepostprocess.com/2019/09/ ... l-vs-video

and
"A Deeper Look at Consistent Color with QuickTime Tags From Resolve To YouTube & Vimeo on Wide Gamut Apple Monitors" by Dan Swierenga
https://www.thepostprocess.com/2020/07/ ... ktime-tags

and I think they cover the issues and the solutions very well. Understanding color management is also helpful:

"Color Management for Video Editors"
https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video ... o-editors/

My simple method: always export a second or two of SMPTE color bars at the very head of the project, and then check them on scopes in whatever player you're using to see how it looks. If there's a shift (video level or hue or chroma), you'll see it very quickly in bars.

Read page 2515 of the Resolve 17 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction.The same problem exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed.

Don't try to make judgements on uncalibrated GUI displays. That will lead down a perilous road of pain and suffering. And if you do look at anything in the GUI display, don't compare it to what you see in Resolve.

So... is there a "holy grail" of matching Resolve on a MacOS monitor, decklink output, and playback in QT/VLC AND vimeo/youtube?

For what it's worth, I was having trouble with the "washed out" colors and contrast when exporting to YouTube. No amount of fiddling with color-space and other options seemed to work but this does.

I grade my footage so that it looks perfect on my display monitors (with true-blacks at 0 and true whites right up at 1023... then I ad an extra timeline-node to lift the blacks and drop the whites slightly. On my delivery settings I choose "full" video levels.

When I do this, YouTube doesn't seem to mess with anything and what I see online exactly matches what I saw on my monitors.

Without choosing "full" levels and manually setting the blacks and whites with a time-line node, YT *always* washes things out so they look pale and low-contrast. Perhaps it's not honouring the metadata in respect to the color-space and video levels but whatever the reason, my solution works (for me). Watching the playback of a clip uploaded to YT and the same clip directly same screen they now look identical with no color or gama shift at all.

Go figure.

Just to put the cat amongst the pigeons, I render at video level and upload that to YT. I've never had a problem with any video looking washed out in either the colour or contrast.
Pic shows a frame grab from Resolve, and the same frame from YouTube replay.

The solution to ending washed-out YT videos. Sorry, I haven't updated to Resolve 17 workflow, but it should be simple enough to figure out.
https://daejeonchronicles.com/2020/06/24/7313/

I don't know if you've figured it out already but it's most likely that you are using your display in a wide colorspace or it's native gamut.

The reason VLC looks "correct" is probably because it doesn't colormanage the video stream.

If you are creating content for web you need to set your display to sRGB mode instead of Standard, Native or any other.
I have used that same monitor and it's in native out of the box but has a profile for sRGB limiting the displays gamut.

The out of the box calibration is fairly good but I'd advise to calibrate it using the special Dell version of the xrite software and an i1Display Pro to perform and store your own sRGB calibration for even better accuracy.

The reason it becomes washed out otherwise is because your system is just communicating a number meaning 255,0,0 in 8Bit rgb is equal to maximum red on your display regardless of what your output colorspace intent is. Your grading decisions are based on that native gamut resulting in a much duller final result because you weren't referencing to the smaller sRGB colorspace on your monitor.

For anyone trying to color manage the Resolve viewer on Mac, be aware that in v17.2.2 the “use Mac display profile” preference option is broken. You’ll have to roll back to v17.2 or earlier to get a correctly color managed viewer.
I’m not sure if BMD is even yet aware that they’ve broken this in v17.2.2.
I hope they fix it in the next update.