Blackmagic Forum

I am using RCM to manage raw footage from a RED Helium. My project settings are as follows:





As I'm grading I find that everything acts as expected. I have full dynamic range in my clips, highlights roll off the way I've indicated, etc. At some point though, without me changing any values anywhere, something flips and my clips' highlights are completely flattened, and the grade is drastically changed.

Here's a before an after of the change:



Oddly, when I hover over a still the highlights go back to normal, but once I move my cursor off the still the highlights flatten again. It happens with any still even if there is nothing about the grade that should be affecting the highlights.

The change happens intermittently, and I can't determine what's wrong. I have a feeling it's a problem with how the footage is being decoded in RCM.

austinjberenyi wrote:Oddly, when I hover over a still the highlights go back to normal, but once I move my cursor off the still the highlights flatten again. It happens with any still even if there is nothing about the grade that should be affecting the highlights.

This sounds to me like you might be seeing a cached image and not the original image. Turn the Cache off and see what happens. Or choose an HDR Cache format capable of doing HDR.

Do you need to color-correct in 500-nit HDR?

Impossible to know for sure, but you may have inadvertently hit the "highlight" button on the Color page. That can have very different results, depending on the active node, but something worth looking into, anyway.