Color Management for DJI Inspire 2 X7 CinemaDNG Files

I'm struggling to figure out what the best color settings are for DJI X7 CinemaDNG clips in Resolve 18. If I open a single file in Adobe camera raw and make some minor adjustments, they look amazing. In Resolve 18, they look terrible, in particular the highlights are blown out and have no roll-off whatsoever.

Would someone be kind enough to share their colour management settings for DJI X7 CinemaDNG files?

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If you're not using global project color management you will have to manually dial in your desired settings per clip or globally through the raw settings in the project settings. What I assume that is happening here mostly is that the files are converted via the raw settings to Rec.709. Doing this will only convert and not give tone mapping. You have to put them into a scene referred state and then use a CST to convert from that space to Rec.709/2.4 with DaVinci Tone Mapping enabled.

It will never look the same as Adobe Camera Raw because they have their own way of processing this but it will be similar. The rest would be up to grading which I recommend doing before the final conversion.

If you are importing CinemaDNG, then the magic happens in the RAW converter. Here are my settings for an example clip:

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Note that RAW conversion does not happen in any node, it is done before the video is "available" for editing grading. It's a bit like using (a very limited) Adobe Raw converter before editing in PS (PS here being equivalent to the Resolve node tree, for color etc).

The question is what colorspace/gamma settings are available in the raw tab, with that DJI footage. Is there a d-log option, or anything other than rec. 709 or extended video? AFAIK color management in Resolve doesn't have D-log log support.

And in your example, did you try to "unclip" the highlights either with raw tab controls or LGG?

Thank you very much for the replies, interestingly I'm not getting the color space and gamma options in the drop down lists. The file is CinemaDNG raw, is there another setting that needs to be changed to enable these options?

Even with the highlight recovery checked and highlights pulled back to -100% it's no where near useable and a country mile away from what Adobe raw conversion does.

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It's giving you color space/gamma settings (rec. 709/srgb), but no choice in the matter, which is a problem. So the question is, how best to handle this footage in Resolve (or handle it at all)? Can you upload a .dng frame to a file sharing service and provide a link?

A colorist here *must* have encountered drone dji raw footage in the course of feature work by now, but until the oracle speaks...

I can't upload the whole clip sequence but I have uploaded a frame which you can download here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ng5pajv7r3440 ... 6.dng?dl=0

This is odd. On my system, I get the options rec.709, P3 and (unaccountably) Blackmagic Film (BMD log format). BM Film produces something like this:

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The other two options are no good.

This is odd. On my system, I get the options rec.709, P3 and (unaccountably) Blackmagic Film (BMD log format). BM Film produces something like this:

dji.jpg

The other two options are no good.

Thank you John, what version of Resolve are you using?

As it happens, the system I tried it on was Resolve v16. But meanwhile I remembered a trick. I got this result replicating your settings, rec709/sRGB and with a bit of CC and a power window for the landscape:

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What you need to do is reduce the exposure in the raw tab, until the clipping disappears, and bring up the dark portions in the nodes. At least until there's a better approach. It's a bit darker than your example, but by choice. They could made identical, if that's the goal. And damn me, I should have feathered the edge beneath the sky, you can see the band.

Thank you again John. I never had these issues on 16, with 18 those setting are not available.

I'm now in a bit of a bind as half the project has already been edited on 18. It's too much work to power window all the clips with highlights.

Are there no legacy settings to re-enable the raw encoding for DJI X7 CinemaDNG files for version 18?

No legacy settings, that I'm aware of. Because it's in a format not supported in color management, you may be out of luck. Maybe the staff will have something to say. I also had to normalize the Blackmagic Film version -- it was a log conversion. How accurate the log transform is would be another unknown.

Hey Mark,

I'm on 18.1 build 16 and it's not greyed out. Are you using project wide color management? If so then for raw files the software handles the conversion to timeline color space and then to output color space. If I enable it I run into the same issue as you that the output is clipped without the option to recover so it looks like the conversion isn't handled properly.
Overriding it with the following settings does allow it to 'unclip' making data recoverable when gaining down, but the conversion is faulty so don't use this at all!

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The solution is to set your color management to DaVinci YRGB and then you should be able to access the settings in the camera raw tab on the clip. However it may be more practical to handle it via the project settings so it applies to all your clips. Just use the settings I'm showing above.

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Then as your last color grading node use a CST with these settings. If you're only grading your footage it may be ideal to put the CST node on your timeline node tree so it applies to everything. If you also have titles and other elements then perhaps on the group level after the clip. Otherwise you have to apply it per clip on the grading. Hope that makes sense!

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Thank you soooo much Shebanjah! That's got it sorted! What a relief...

Maybe I spoke to soon, I also have Red IPP2 footage that's now not color managed with the above settings. Is there a way to get both raw camera files to be color managed in the same timeline?

Right. If you want to apply the same color management to all your footage you'll have to bring them all into a single timeline color space and then at the end convert them to display with the same output settings. If you're new to it maybe it's a bit complicated and I don't know of any good tutorial that explains it plus practical tips when it comes to setting it up by hand. But this is what I'd do.

Put all clips in groups per camera, so one for DJI, one for RED. Via the same Camera Raw settings in the project settings go to RED and set that to decode using project too. Then pick IPP2 science and choose RedWideGamut RGB / RED Log3G10. Make sure the metadata boxes in the bottom are checked so it still takes the ISO/WB etc from the clips instead of globally.

Now on the group pre-clip node tree of your DJI put a CST to go from what was mentioned before to your timeline grading space. I recommend choosing DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate as that is now a commonly known grading space for Resolve. Disable tone mapping as we don't need that for this step.

Do the same for your RED footage, on the group pre-clip a CST from RWG/Log3G10 to DWG/Intermediate.

On your clip node tree you now do the grading which is in DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate

Then on your groups' post-clip node tree you convert with a CST from DWG/Intermediate to Rec.709/Gamma 2.4 this time with DaVinci Tone Mapping and forward OOTF enabled.

Again you could also do just a single CST if you were able to put it on the timeline node tree instead but if you have other clips that you need to mix in like graphics etc that doesn't really work.

This is roughly how project wide color management works. Both approaches have benefits and downsides but in your case you don't really have an option....

I personally prefer this method because it is the most transparent and flexible.
Hope all was clear.

Woops forgot to mention. To make your color space aware grading tools behave correctly you also need to set your timeline color space to DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate so Resolve can understand that that is the data you are feeding it when grading. Your output color space should be Rec.709. This matters for your scopes and your filetags on export.

Apologies for the late reply, thank you so much Shebanjah. That's the way to work with 2 different raw formats. Thank you for the detailed reply.