Blackmagic Forum

I'm not an expert, maybe a very basic mistake. I'm working through a medium sized project, the media is a mix of braw, drone mov and nikon mov clips. The Project settings are HD 1080p 29.77 with Camera RAW settings Blackmagic RAW, Full Res and Project. Otherwise Davinci defaults.
I inserted a BRAW clip into the timeline with a very large dynamic range (sunrise) looking at the sun.
In the COLOR page under camera RAW I've checked Full Res, Clip and checked highlight recovery. The result is amazing highlight recovery and by adding some corrections in the power windows it looks quite good.
BUT as soon as I click on a different Node or change to the Timeline page, the corrections disappear. The Parade Scopes show all the recovered highlights clipped.
If I uncheck then recheck Highlight Recovery, they all come back.
Is this a conflict between Project Settings and local clip corrections?
Any thoughts please.

What version of Resolve?

16.2.8.005
Screenshot with highlights

Screenshot after viewing timeline then going back to color page

Alright.

RCM or ACES?

(And maybe get rid of that Cache. That can tend to confuse things.)

Ok Jim, I thought it was fixed as follows, it worked for a while but then the clipping returned. My Project includes a mix of media, .mov and BRAW. I went to Media pool and changed the Clip Attributes<Data Levels to FULL. Then went to Project Settings and changed Master Settings<Video Monitoring<Data Levels to FULL. I seemed fixed for a whle but then the issue returned. I'm reading Chapter 7 in the Resolve Manual.
I have Davinci YRGB Color Management set for the Project.
Unfortunately I think I lack the basic knowledge to set up projects and import media.
Any suggestions on a good tutorial handling Project Settings and Color Management please? I find it interesting but complex.

Many thanks for your response and followup.
All the best for 2021

I found Chapter 7 sufficiently informative for me to get working.

That said, I continually find that I get better results with less work using ACES over RCM.

It doesn't seem to give the same dynamic range, I get best results with RCM. But with either one, the color page adjustments don't get saved. If I review with play or select the timeline window, the highlights disappear. Interestingly if I just uncheck Highlight Recovery, then there is some clipping (see attached) but as soon as I select some function like play then it clips even more (attachment above). All very frustrating.

Thompsonrh wrote:It doesn't seem to give the same dynamic range, I get best results with RCM.

Curious. I found the opposite to be true.

RCM would clip my highlights at 1000 nits (768 on the bit scale), whereas ACES went all the way to 10,000 (1024). The full dynamic range.

I think I've figured this out. Your right Jim "Chapter – 7 Data Levels, Color Management, and ACES" is a good reference plus another thread on this forum, comment from CaptainHook in
"BMP4K colorspace/gamma interpretation in Resolve". The solution seems to be in "Project settings<Color Space & Transformations" and setting Input, Timeline and Output Color Spaces all to Blackmagic Design Pocket 4K Film Gen 4. Now I think I'm fully working in the broadest colour spaces which accomodates my best clips, ie BMPCC4K BRAW with dynamic range set to FILM. All looks good.
Im still using RCM. Once I'd set the colour spaces as above I set Timeline to Output Tone Mapping to Luminance Mapping and the Max Timeline Luminace to 10000 nits. Timeline to Output Gamut Mapping to Saturation. Attached is the end result, pretty happy with that. What an amazing camera.
Thanks for your feedback.

Glad you got it working.

But as a comparison - all I do is set the ACES ODT. Done. Looks great!

You're right Jim, ACES works really well, a big difference. But I have to check the other Project settings for consistency. I don't see any difference between ACEScc or ACEScct?. For now, I've set ACESInput/Output Device Transforms to BMPCC4K Gen3 & REC709, I'll have to do a major regrading and colour correction exercise now. I'm rereading Chapter 7, there's a lot to digest.
Is this a good approach when you have a mixed media timeline. For BRAW its time saving but doesn't this mean all the other .mov clips using DLOG-M and H. 264/MPEG-4 have to be tweaked much more?