Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja V?

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Kinetropico

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Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja V?

PostMon Mar 13, 2023 10:04 pm

Hello everyone.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has figured out the proper Color Management settings in Resolve to edit and grade Nikon 10-bit N-Log footage from a Nikon z6II, as recorded in ProRes HQ in an Atomos Ninja V. I have been working with this kit for a while now and have obtained decent results by grading each clip on the color page. But shouldn't Resolve's Color Management allow me to set input-output transforms that will make for better viewing of the footage right in the timeline before I get to the color grading stage, and then give me more accuracy once I do start grading?

Two possible delivery scenarios:
1) grading for YouTube and other social media;
2) grading for a long form documentary meant to be projected on cinema screens.

Monitor for my video clean feed is a BenQ with hardware REC-709 space.

I've been toying with different combinations of settings, going back to the Resolve user manual over and over again, looking for info on the web, with little luck so far. Sometimes I change settings and nothing sems to change in my viewer or clean video feed, other times I get very destructive results that are obviously incorrect, or something in between that feels like not much at all. Plus it all feels very random.

I will truly appreciate some pearls of wisdom!

Thanks in advance.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostTue Mar 14, 2023 12:54 am

Set the clip itself in the media pool to be n-log, or try one of the other input log transforms.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostTue Mar 14, 2023 3:12 am

DavidVogt wrote:Set the clip itself in the media pool to be n-log, or try one of the other input log transforms.


Thank you David, I did try setting the N-Log input option by selecting clips in the Media Pool and right-clicking. It's been the better option so far, although it tends to crush the shadows, at least with the footage I'm using. Perhaps I need to overexpose more with this camera? Having set clips to N-Log, raising the shadows and reducing contrast and saturation makes the footage look a bit more to my liking, but this has to be done in the Color Page on a clip by clip basis...
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostTue Mar 14, 2023 5:21 am

I think the problem is the Ninja files don't have the right metadata to tell Resolve it's Nlog. The automatic CST happens with NRaw files or with Nlog files out camera on the Z9.

What ISO are you using for exposure?
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Steve Alexander

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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostTue Mar 14, 2023 3:04 pm

I shoot with the Canon R6 and a Ninja V and one of the things to be aware of in that combo is that the ProRes files are recorded in full rather than video data levels, however, ProRes is assumed to be showing video levels. You need to manually change the clip attribute levels to full so that the darks aren't crushed. I don't know if this is also the case with the Nikon, but it likely is if the Nikon also makes use of full levels when shooting n-Log.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 6:05 am

Nick2021 wrote:I think the problem is the Ninja files don't have the right metadata to tell Resolve it's Nlog. The automatic CST happens with NRaw files or with Nlog files out camera on the Z9.

What ISO are you using for exposure?


Hello, thanks for for your reply, I apologize for the delay in coming back to my own thread.
I get your point about possible metadata issues with files coming from the Ninja.
However, the z6II and Z7II cameras I've been using cannot record 10-bit N-Log internally (unlike the Z9, which can), and the Ninja recognizes the input as being N-Log, so I don't see why it wouldn't include that in the metadata. Is there a way to check in DaVinci if that information is actually embedded in the files?

I'm using the Z6's native ISO for N-Log, which is 800, unless conditions demand I go higher.

On my most recent shoot I actually went higher on exposure, to the point where the image looked seriously overexposed on both the Ninja and the Z6´s own LCD screen while shooting. Those files reacted significantly better when thrown into DaVinci and being assigned N-Log as input color space.
I'm now trying to figure out how to create a decent LUT that will enable the Ninja to display a decent image while recording. I'm shooting again tomorrow, don't have that LUT yet but will continue to expose to the right. I'll report the results here.

Thanks!
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 6:20 am

Steve Alexander wrote:I shoot with the Canon R6 and a Ninja V and one of the things to be aware of in that combo is that the ProRes files are recorded in full rather than video data levels, however, ProRes is assumed to be showing video levels. You need to manually change the clip attribute levels to full so that the darks aren't crushed. I don't know if this is also the case with the Nikon, but it likely is if the Nikon also makes use of full levels when shooting n-Log.


Steve, thanks so much. I just did a quick test and it looks like you hit the nail on its head!
Indeed, clip attributes shows video levels set to "Auto" by default, and it is asuming Video Levels. Switching to Full immediately did away with the crushed shadows, and further reducing contrast a bit in the color page gave me a clip that looks much better for grading than what I'd been dealing with up to this point. Such a small thing, yet a big difference.

I'll look further into this tomorrow and report back, in case it's also useful for anyone else.

Again, thanks for your insight, it's sincerely appreciated!
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 9:32 am

What do the Resolve scopes look like for exposure? From what I remember with the Z6 the zebras you'd risk overexposing not underexposing. If in Resolve the scopes look too low you know it was underexposed.

No idea how to check for metadata but it's obvious Resolve isn't reading it.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 12:15 pm

I don't believe you are actually crushing the shadows unless you have done that when recording the video. In other words you are not actually losing any data that was present in the original capture. The danger is that you can lose data if you over or under-expose when shooting. The Resolve 18 manual is pretty clear on this in the section on Data Levels Settings and Conversions (P201-203). It is also clear that there is no so-called proper range for output levels - it depends on the media format and application you are delivering to.

As far as I am aware from experience with the same kit as you and from previous informed discussion here, you must use Video Levels when exporting ProRes if you want the exported video to match ( in terms of contrast and brightnes) what you see in the Resolve viewer or Clean Feed (assuming calibrated monitor and assuming you have the Use Mac Color Profiles set in the Prefs) when viewed in the Quicktime Player or Final Cut Pro. If you export ProRes at Full Levels then you will not be getting what you see in the viewer or Clean Feed monitor. So it makes sense to me if working with ProRes in and/or out that I use Video (or Auto) levels throughout a project for consistency.

The waveform (or parade) scopes on the Ninja are the best exposure aids in my opinion. You don't need a LUT in the Ninja for exposure purposes. Just adjust the brightness so it conforms more or less with the waveform monitor. The most important thing is that you don't clip the highlights and I find the Ninja scopes are very accurate in this regard. If you expose to the right but don't overexpose (make sure you don't clip the highlights on the waveform monitor) then you should not lose anything in the shadows unless the scene is extremely contrasty. You will minimise shadow noise that way but don't clip the highlights as there is no hope of detail recovery if you do.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 12:31 pm

mickspixels wrote:As far as I am aware from experience with the same kit as you and from previous informed discussion here, you must use Video Levels when exporting ProRes if you want the exported video to match ( in terms of contrast and brightnes) what you see in the Resolve viewer or Clean Feed (assuming calibrated monitor and assuming you have the Use Mac Color Profiles set in the Prefs) when viewed in the Quicktime Player or Final Cut Pro. If you export ProRes at Full Levels then you will not be getting what you see in the viewer or Clean Feed monitor. So it makes sense to me if working with ProRes in and/or out that I use Video (or Auto) levels throughout a project for consistency.


You're not distinguishing here between how the footage was recorded and how you choose to export it. AFAIK, nlog records with full data levels. If recorded internally, this might show up in metadata when imported into Resolve,. But Resolve, seeing Prores files, is not going to tag them as full range because that metadata is not being recorded on the Atomos. The result is that the footage is incorrectly interpreted in Resolve -- unless manually set to full range ("data levels").
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 12:52 pm

John Paines wrote:
mickspixels wrote:As far as I am aware from experience with the same kit as you and from previous informed discussion here, you must use Video Levels when exporting ProRes if you want the exported video to match ( in terms of contrast and brightnes) what you see in the Resolve viewer or Clean Feed (assuming calibrated monitor and assuming you have the Use Mac Color Profiles set in the Prefs) when viewed in the Quicktime Player or Final Cut Pro. If you export ProRes at Full Levels then you will not be getting what you see in the viewer or Clean Feed monitor. So it makes sense to me if working with ProRes in and/or out that I use Video (or Auto) levels throughout a project for consistency.


You're not distinguishing here between how the footage was recorded and how you choose to export it. AFAIK, nlog records with full data levels. If recorded internally, this might show up in metadata when imported into Resolve,. But Resolve, seeing Prores files, is not going to tag them as full range because that metadata is not being recorded on the Atomos. The result is that the footage is incorrectly interpreted in Resolve -- unless manually set to full range ("data levels").


I am just suggesting a practical workflow for the OP that works for me with the same kit as he has and is consistent across color managed Mac apps. I am not in a position to argue about the theory. As far as I can see from working with ProRes in Resolve and Final Cut Pro (also ProRes Raw), how the metadata related to levels is interpreted by Resolve is irrelevant as long as one is consistent. Converting between Full and Data (and vice versa) is lossless in my experience and if my interpretation of the Resolve manual is correct. ProRes is always interpreted at Video Levels by Resolve and other color managed Mac apps so it makes sense to me to work at Video Levels throughout a ProRes project.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 1:10 pm

It's not a question of theory. If the Prores footage is full range but Resolve is interpreting it as video, for the reasons explained above, the result will be incorrect. If you can still grade the footage to your own satisfaction, great. But that wouldn't be a recommended workflow.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 1:41 pm

John Paines wrote:It's not a question of theory. If the Prores footage is full range but Resolve is interpreting it as video, for the reasons explained above, the result will be incorrect. If you can still grade the footage to your own satisfaction, great. But that wouldn't be a recommended workflow.


I don't know what you mean by incorrect. How do you work with ProRes recorded from a Ninja V in Resolve on a Mac? What do you suggest the OP does? My method gives color and tonal accuracy in other Mac apps consistent with what I see in Resolve which is my primary goal initially. Maybe you can explain that statement in the context of pages 201-205 of the Resolve manual given that it clearly states that there is no data lost in the conversions and that how you work depends on the intended usage as well as there not being a "proper" levels setting. I interpret this to mean that if there is no data lost in conversion, it is not important which setting you choose as long as you remain consistent.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 1:43 pm

If it makes the world feel more consistent, Atomos is at fault here. Atomos breaks the rules by creating a ProRes HQ file at data levels - actually - it just uses the levels 'as-is' from the camera. The Canon (and apparently the Nikon) records data levels in its log profile and the Ninja V simply takes those same levels via the HDMI connection and records to the ProRes HQ file. No transformation to video levels is done by the default settings (although, just to make things confusing, there is an option to bake-in a transformation via the Ninja, including a LUT, but this is not recommended if you intend to work with log footage in Resolve).

Atomos documents this curiosity and users of the Ninja V will note that Resolve is one of the few NLEs that let you force the interpretation of ProRes footage to data levels.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Mar 29, 2023 1:49 pm

I took the trouble to look and what the manual actually says is this:

DaVinci Resolve generally does a good job of figuring out the appropriate Levels setting of each clip
on its own. However, in certain circumstances, such as when you’re working with media that was
originated in one format but transcoded into another, you may find that you need to manually choose
the appropriate settings so that the levels of each clip are interpreted correctly. This can be done
using each clip’s Levels setting in the Clip Attributes window, available from the Media Pool contextual
menu in either the Media or Edit pages.


Which describes the present instance. What I suggest is, try it: bring in these clips again, but set full levels before you start grading. What were once intractable grading impediments may suddenly disappear.

As for Atmos, the unit just records what it's fed, and that, AFAIK, is full range in this case.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostThu Mar 30, 2023 7:16 pm

Hello everyone. I want to thank you all for engaging in this discussion.

I can't go into it with any level of detail just yet, but as soon as I can work a little with the most recent footage I shot I will consider again all points made here and report on my experience.

As for now, it seems to me valid points have been made as follows:

a) If exposing to the right, make sure not to go beyond the point where highlights will be clipped.
b) Use waveform monitors in the Ninja to gauge exposure.
c) DaVinci is definitely assuming "Video" instead of "Full" levels upon import of Nikon 6II footage. I can vouche for this, going into clip attributes and setting levels to Full as previously suggested, then setting input color space to Nikon N-Log, makes a huge difference for the better. I really only wish I'd known this much earlier! :-)
d) Video Levels must be chosen if exporting to REC709 for consistent results in that color space.

Back with more ASAP. Again, thank you all! :D
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostThu Mar 30, 2023 8:25 pm

Kinetropico wrote:
As for now, it seems to me valid points have been made as follows:

a) If exposing to the right, make sure not to go beyond the point where highlights will be clipped.
b) Use waveform monitors in the Ninja to gauge exposure.
c) DaVinci is definitely assuming "Video" instead of "Full" levels upon import of Nikon 6II footage. I can vouche for this, going into clip attributes and setting levels to Full as previously suggested, then setting input color space to Nikon N-Log, makes a huge difference for the better. I really only wish I'd known this much earlier! :-)
d) Video Levels must be chosen if exporting to REC709 for consistent results in that color space.

Back with more ASAP. Again, thank you all! :D


Great that you found some of my input useful. I decided to do some detailed experiments last night with various settings so " I could put my money where my mouth is" so to speak and it has been a very useful learning experience for me. I won't go into the detail of my experiments right now but, as in Point d, you must export with video levels for ProRes in order to match what you are seeing in the Resolve viewer with Quicktime or FCP etc. If you export with full levels the results are more contrasty with potentially crushed shadows and blown highlights depending on the tonal range of the original.

In relation to Point c, I find that it doesn't matter whether you grade with full levels or video levels as long as you change the scopes settings to the appropriate setting - data for full and video for video. I do not notice any loss of data grading in video levels as against full levels. The important thing is consistency.

The same applies to HDR as well as SDR - export must be at video levels for ProRes.

Finally and just to clarify, this is all about control of what you see when you are grading in order to match what you see when you export ProRes on a Mac. I used RCM, N-Log as Input Color Space, Rec709-A for SDR and Rec2100 ST2084 for HDR as Output Color Space. This is about tonal and color precision on a single Mac, not about color accuracy.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostThu Mar 30, 2023 9:32 pm

I don't think anybody here has advocated for full-level video exports, unless of course the party taking the hand-off expects full-level, which is not inconceivable.

As for your experiments, if you're happy, great. But if in fact the footage is full range and Resolve is interpreting it wrongly as video levels, the usual advice, confirmed above by the manual, is to grade with the clip levels set correctly. I don't think there's any controversy about that one, even if you can grade to acceptable video levels with the wrong setting. Grading for consistency on a single Mac probably isn't what most users have in mind.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostFri Mar 31, 2023 12:10 am

Also consider that if the levels are set incorrectly and you are using log footage, the Color Space Transform from log to timeline color space / gamma won't make the transformation correctly. This is the reason one must start with the correctly interpreted levels. I'm not sure how much this will affect the transform, but it will some.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Apr 26, 2023 10:41 pm

Hello friends. After quite a bit of work on my current projects, I'm back to report on the color settings that have been working well for me with footage from my Nikon Z6II / Ninja V combo. As a result of this discussion I finally arrived at a configuration that's allowed me to get much better color grades with fewer nodes and much less pain. So thank you all for your tips and advice!

In hindsight it now seems pretty simple, but here it goes anyway in case it's helpful to others. This is all applicable to video recorded by outputting Nikon N-Log 10-bit footage via HDMI from the Z6II to a Ninja V set to record in ProRes HQ.

1- In Project Settings / Color Management:
Color Science: DaVinci YRGB Color Managed
Color Processing Mode: SDR
Output Color Space: SDR Rec.709
Everything else, leave as default.

2- In Media Tab: select all clips, Right-click and choose Clip Attributes. On the Video Tab choose Data Levels: Full.

3- Again in Media Tab: select all clips, Right-click and choose Input Color Space: Nikon N-Log.

(Steps 2 and 3 can also be done on a clip by clip basis if needed).

4- In Render Settings, in the Advanced Settings tab, I'm choosing:
Data Levels: Video
Color Space Tag: Rec.709
Gamma Tag: Gamma 2.4

After achieving a grade that looks better to my eye than anything I'd done so far, I went back to a previous project, duplicated that timeline and started color grading it again from scratch using the settings above. Results were much improved!. Doing that also gave me a useful comparison between this current workflow and whatever I was doing previously. I'm now achieving better looking images with fewer nodes, often using just a Levels Node, a White Balance Node, and sometimes a Saturation Node (plus a Noise Reduction node added to the beginning of the tree as needed). Tools like the Color Warper are now only coming into play for very specific "problem" cases. I often had the feeling before of being in a fight with the material, adding nodes to pull color and luminance in different ways, one correction sometimes messing up the image somewhere else, weird casts often creeping into the image, weird node trees growing as a sign of my bewilderment... Now the process feels much more natural, simple and precise.

None of this is to say that I'm anywhere near being knowledgeable in DaVinci color science. But man, I'm so very happy to have finally arrived at Color Management settings that work well for me with the gear I have. :D

So again, thanks to everyone for chipping in, happy grading to you all!
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Apr 26, 2023 10:47 pm

Sounds good. That's close to the approach I use for grading Canon Clog3/Rec2020 footage. I don't use the standard SDR Color Managed settings, though, I switch to a custom version using the DWG intermediate as my timeline color space. If you are interested in this approach, seek out Cullen Kelly on YouTube for an advanced treatment of this topic. Cheers - glad you got it sorted.
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Re: Color Management settings for Nikon Z6II + Atomos Ninja

PostWed Apr 26, 2023 11:42 pm

Steve Alexander wrote:Sounds good. That's close to the approach I use for grading Canon Clog3/Rec2020 footage. I don't use the standard SDR Color Managed settings, though, I switch to a custom version using the DWG intermediate as my timeline color space. If you are interested in this approach, seek out Cullen Kelly on YouTube for an advanced treatment of this topic. Cheers - glad you got it sorted.


Thank you Steve! You know, I did try to use the DWG intermediate color space but I couldn't sort it out, it seemed to introduce a greenish cast... Does that make any sense? What advantage do you find in using that color space? Wider gamut?

For now I'll keep working as explained above, but I'll be keen to look at Cullen's tutorial when I have some time, I think he's great.

Cheers!

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