Blackmagic Forum

Ive been trying for months now without success to get the output in Studio to look as the internal viewer shows.
Im 1 screen editng, no external box.

The screen is calibrated and a DCI-P3. I've made a 3D Lut for Resolve using DisplayCAL to produce a Rec709/2.4 result.
Using Windows 11, DisplayCAL to produce the calibratons (verified) and LUTs.

No matter what i do i cant get the displayed image to match the output OR the scopes.

In the example below im dealing with white snow so easy enough to balance and test. The image on screen shows a very yellow hue. The RGB values however all indicate near enough pure white/grey with no cast.
The output mainly resembles the RGB/Scope.






Ive tried placing the 3D Lut created as the "Video monitor lookup table". It seems to do nothing. Same in the Color view and scopes lookup tables. Nothing happens at all.

If I place it in the output LUT the output does now seem to match the very yellow display but im fairly sure its not meant to be placed here at all. Its also at odds with the WB of the original shot (which was correctly white).

Ive tried "Use windows display colour management" on and off and it makes no difference at all.

Can anyone tell me how i can get the actual DaVinci viewer to accurately follow the scopes and the output to match? At the moment its nigh on impossible - i have to export, adjust, re-export, adjust and repeat until it "looks" ok.
I dont recall ever having these issues with Premier which i was more familiar with.

All i want is a workflow with what LUTs to use, generate and where to produce consistent colours between the internal viewer, the scopes and the out.

What is your color management settings for project / timeline?
What is the original clip shot as. What is your output from resolve?
What program are you using to view the clips after export?

If you like, upload a video on some hosting cloud service for others to test.

KrunoSmithy wrote:What is your color management settings for project / timeline?
What is the original clip shot as. What is your output from resolve?
What program are you using to view the clips after export?

If you like, upload a video on some hosting cloud service for others to test.

Ive tried both YRGB Colour Managed and YRGB (non cm).

Input varies but same issue, drone footage in .709, Clog and Clog3. The screenshot is a clog3/cinema gamut.

The former set for SDR output, the latter va CSTs and editing in Davinci WG. Output for both should be sdr (Rec709/gamma2.4)

Ive tried Media-PlayerHC and VLC to view the output so far. There is a difference between the 2. The viewer is miles off from both. One of my older screens is calibrated for 709/2.4 viewing and same issue.

I can do an upload but ill need to render a small segment and shrink it so will take a while to do, likely not tonight.

To calibrate a monitor properly, you need four things:

1) a monitor that can be calibrated (and not all them can)

2) a probe that can sense the monitor, placed in the right position

3) calibration software

4) the ability to use all the above.

Ideally, you also need 5) a Blackmagic Decklink or UltraStudio to send the monitor a color-managed signal.

Because of #4, we usually "hire a guy" to calibrate the displays for us, because I trust them far more than I do myself.

We completely disregard the GUI display and only trust and believe in the calibrated main color monitor from a color-managed output.

Of course, without knowing exact settings you used its hard to say if you were correct or not. You have described your problem, but its hard to know what could be the issue with the information you provided. I am on windows 10 not 11 so I can't do exact test, but if you upload the video that is causing the issues I can try to replicate the problem on my end and take it from there. Speaking of videos causing a problem. It it just this one video or any video and anything in resolve? New project, does the same problem happen?

Marc Wielage wrote:To calibrate a monitor properly, you need four things:

1) a monitor that can be calibrated (and not all them can)

2) a probe that can sense the monitor, placed in the right position

3) calibration software

4) the ability to use all the above.

Ideally, you also need 5) a Blackmagic Decklink or UltraStudio to send the monitor a color-managed signal.

Because of #4, we usually "hire a guy" to calibrate the displays for us, because I trust them far more than I do myself.

We completely disregard the GUI display and only trust and believe in the calibrated main color monitor from a color-managed output.

1,2,3 and 4 i already have and have done (my normal work is photo so a screen that can/is calibrated s just as essential).
The issue i have is Resolve seems to ignore the OS colour calibration and no matter what workarounds i read and do dont seem to have any useful effect. Its a resolve specific workflow/process i need to know.

(External via decklink isnt feasible given most of the work involves travel and often on-site editing).

If you are on a Windows machine, an I/O device is the only way to fix this.
Get an Apple laptop, and you'll at least be able to get close without one. But grading on a laptop in environments without controlled lighting will still be a nightmare.

Not an option. Apple is in no way practical for my job or workflow at all (not to mention far less powerful video card wise).

So is it the case Resolve colour management is broken to the point of unfixable on windows? Ultimately its the only application i have any sort of issue with, also the only NLE. The others do accept and use the OS config.

Is it the case then this procedure ( https://hub.displaycal.net/wiki/3d-lut- ... r-resolve/ ) doesnt actually work on windows?

Ultimately i do have access to my proper monitors whilst at home but thats typically only a few times a year. Most of the time im not there and carrying monitors and external cards on flights and boats really isnt feasible so for there its laptop only (which has a calibrated and verified P3 display).

The business model of BM is selling their excellent software very cheap and making decent money with I/O devices.
But then, DisplayCal has not been updated in 5 years. With a few tricks I can still calibrate my old Intel Mac, but not any newer machine. Unfortunately, those tricks don't work for Windows (MacOS is UNIX under the hood).
But it seems you got it running on your machine. So, if you are lucky, you may have simply chosen the wrong profile for your display technology. If it's supported by your probe at all, you could try another one. If I use the wrong one for my Intel iMac, it also get's yellow.
if it still doesn't work, try a commercial solution instead. Or grade by the copes only (good luck with that).

P.S. I just noticed that you mention a LUT you generated. That will only work if loaded into the monitor or used with an I/O device. You need to try and generate an ICC profile and load it into Windows with the appropriate tool from Microsoft. It's described in the manual for DisplayCal.
Hope that helps.

Read these two articles by Light Illusion's Steve Shaw:

Why Calibrate?
http://www.lightillusion.com/why_calibrate.html

Why Master on a Calibrated Display?
https://www.lightillusion.com/grading_displays.html

The point is that whatever flaws are built into your computer display will affect your work: if it's too blue, you'll go in the opposite direction and make it too warm; if it's too dark, you'll overcompensate and make it too bright.

Read page 2870 of the Resolve 19.1 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed.

Uli Plank wrote:But then, DisplayCal has not been updated in 5 years. With a few tricks I can still calibrate my old Intel Mac, but not any newer machine. Unfortunately, those tricks don't work for Windows (MacOS is UNIX under the hood).
But it seems you got it running on your machine. So, if you are lucky, you may have simply chosen the wrong profile for your display technology. If it's supported by your probe at all, you could try another one. If I use the wrong one for my Intel iMac, it also get's yellow.

That isnt the problem. DisplayCAL is just a GUI for Argyll under the hood. It works perfectly. The display corrections and settings are correct, the screens all calibrate fine with good verification and perfectly acceptable deltas and the generated ICC profiles work perfectly in all colour managed apps (which is appears Resolve isnt although there is a new option in the DR19 menu under windows but its not mentioned in the manual at all).

The issue is purely related to Studio not doing anything with the 3D LUT applied. No correction is observed.

P.S. I just noticed that you mention a LUT you generated. That will only work if loaded into the monitor or used with an I/O device.

Again that isnt what the Studio manual suggests, nor in fact the DisplayCAL forum and sites. You can generate 3D LUTs which are then loaded into Resolve itself for use.

Page 144 of the DR 19 reference manual states:

Color Viewer Lookup Table: Two drop-down menus let you add 1D and/or 3D LUTs that process
the image shown in the Viewer on your computer display, independently of the Display LUT that’s
used to output to your broadcast display. By default, this follows the Video Monitor LUT setting, but
you can also use this option to apply a specific calibration transform for your computer monitor.
Alternately, you could use it to desaturate the GUI Viewer to be able to specifically evaluate image
contrast, or if you don’t want to have to argue with your client over which display looks correct.

The procedure for creating that LUT in Resolve via DisplayCAL is here: https://hub.displaycal.net/wiki/3d-lut- ... lor-viewer

The issue ive had is the created LUT seems to do nothing at all once loaded there. Theres no chance in the colour viewer at all.

Marc Wielage wrote:Read page 2870 of the Resolve 19.1 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed.

That section also says:

Alternately, you can apply a dedicated Color Viewer LUT for calibration, using the 1D/3D
Color Viewer Lookup Table drop-down menu that’s found in the Color Management panel
of the Project Settings.

Thats exactly what im trying to do and cant get to work.
The screens (3 of them currently, 1 is laptop, 2 arent) are correctly calibrated and verified with ICC profiles and good deltas and work fine on all colour managed applications so the calibration or accuracy isnt the problem. Its good enough for what i need. The issue i have is (i) DR isnt a colour managed application via the OS backend (ii) the workaround above for this doesnt seem to actually do anything.

Crowbar wrote:Ive been trying for months now without success to get the output in Studio to look as the internal viewer shows

I don't believe that's a worthwhile goal. I think you should drop it and get a better goal.

"How does it look on a properly calibrated (non-computer) display?"

That is a good goal.

Towards that...

Umm… sounds like the OP is knowledgeable about this stuff and has his goal. Is there a good reason you have for why he’s mistaken? Beyond “watch this video meant for people who know way less than you and it’ll tell you why what you’re doing is a bad idea.”

What you are describing sounds like a problem between Resolves internal viewer and the software used for playback. Everything related to outboard gear and display calibration is completely out of the equation if you see the problem on the same display.

Please show us a screenshot of your project setting (color management + LUTs). Also please show a screenshot of your render settings.

Btw if you want to make sure the snow is actually white, please desaturate the entire image and export. Which one is gray? Resolve or the video player?

I don’t know if this is still an issue or applies to your case but Windows had/has a separate color management for desktop and video overlay (the function that sends video playback processing to the GPU). This is why NVidia’s control panel has separate sliders for video.
You may want to investigate this.

mpetech wrote:I don’t know if this is still an issue or applies to your case but Windows had/has a separate color management for desktop and video overlay (the function that sends video playback processing to the GPU). This is why NVidia’s control panel has separate sliders for video.
You may want to investigate this.

Yup ive played with this (along with clamping to internal display only), its not that. I get consistent output between internal display and iGPU and my 2 external displays (where NVIDIA drives it). The only place i dont seem to get a correction is in Resolve.
Quite basically, i apply the LUT which *should* change the colour viewer colours and nothing at all happens.

Crowbar wrote:

mpetech wrote:I don’t know if this is still an issue or applies to your case but Windows had/has a separate color management for desktop and video overlay (the function that sends video playback processing to the GPU). This is why NVidia’s control panel has separate sliders for video.
You may want to investigate this.

Yup ive played with this (along with clamping to internal display only), its not that. I get consistent output between internal display and iGPU and my 2 external displays (where NVIDIA drives it). The only place i dont seem to get a correction is in Resolve.
Quite basically, i apply the LUT which *should* change the colour viewer colours and nothing at all happens.

Did you try a different LUT as well? I've recently seen in a live stream by Cullen Kelly that he had a similar problem. On my end any LUT works, so that makes me think it's either a problem with the LUT or with some drivers etc.