Sat Jan 16, 2021 1:44 pm
The difference between "DaVinci Resolve YRGB" and "DaVinci YRGB color managed" is that the former doesn't do anything to color manage your footage, and leaves the work to you. When you're new to Resolve, and especially if you're only using one camera, the default settings are a great place to start learning.
For broadcast and web delivery, the default scene rec.709 setting is fine, it's how most users will be viewing your content, and there's a good chance that it's the best quality at which *you* can view your content, unless you've invested in a wide gamut/HDR display, and a pcie or thunderbolt monitoring interface such as the ultrastudio series from BMD.
For film, you actually need to be in a grading studio with projected light. The standards for those setups have different color primaries than your computer monitor, so using them at home will make the color look strange and incorrect.
Where the allure of color managed workflows comes in is whenever you're dealing with multiple types of professional cameras. Cameras like ones from BMD, ARRI, RED, are manufactured, calibrated, and documented to known specifications. Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and others might have both pro and pro-sumer cameras. If all of your footage comes from cameras that shoot known specs (theoretically,) you should be able to import them all into a color-managed project and have them look and behave as if they're the same kind of camera, right from the start. In practice, the physical limitations and differences between cameras (not to mention lenses, filters, recording codecs, lighting conditions, color sciences, etc) often make this trickier than it sounds. Resolve 17 has gotten way better at it, though, and its new colorspace aware tools make color managed workflows even more attractive.
A good deal of a professional colorist's job description is understanding all of the technicalities of color management. The best place to start *learning* about it is with Resolve's default settings. That way, it's not changing anything without your awareness. You might also want to start out recording ProRes before moving on to BRAW, because that'll give you solid footing, so to speak, where a pixel is a pixel, and all of the color values are hard-coded. Start by understanding LOG gammas, and LUTs, try matching shots between different camera settings (maybe within your own camera, like BMD film color profile vs extended video profile), then try to match different cameras, then shoot RAW, scale up, go for HDR, P3, etc, etc. Another big part of a colorist's job is test, test, test.
READ THE MANUAL. I can't stress that enough. It's a tome, but it's very informative.
Oh, and a small note, I don't think BMD has updated the firmware of the Pocket 4 or 6 K to 5th gen color science yet. The URSAs support it, but I don't think the Pockets do yet. At least, I haven't seen mention of it in the release notes, and I watch those like a hawk. Until somebody tells me differently, I'm sticking to Gen 4.
-MacBook Pro (14,3) i7 2.9 GHz 16 GB, Intel 630, AMD 560 x1
-[DR 17.0 Beta9]
