Color and Contrast shift when exporting

Hello!

I'm a college film student who has been using Resolve since only the beginning of this school year (August 2018) and have had a wild, rewarding, and frustrating time learning this program. I am far from what I would call proficient but am doing my best and have loved using the forums as a learning resource. However, I am drawing a blank here and would love some help fixing my issue(s) or to be pointed in the right direction to learn the correct solution(s).

The problem: As my eye for color grading has developed I have started to notice major differences between my exports that I view in QuickTime and the grade I see inside the viewer of resolve.

Details: I am a broke college student so I am running resolve on my 2016 15-inch MacBook pro. I know that the viewer inside resolve isn't color accurate (and Lord knows my Radeon Pro 455 2048 MB
Intel HD Graphics 530 1536 MB Display isn't) so this is where the issue most likely comes from, and QT is far from an accurate video-player. When I re-import the footage back into the same timeline in Resolve and compare it to the same shot there is no difference, so I know this isn't an issue with my export. I also uploaded the export to youtube and compared it with what I was seeing in resolve as well as what I was seeing in QT and noticed an even more drastic shift of color and contrast (See pictures attached).

My Questions:
1. I used final cut pro X to export a grade of the exact same footage and the export in QT was almost identical what I was seeing in the FCPX viewer. I also uploaded the export to youtube and, once again, very little difference (See pictures attached). Why is the export from FCPX more consistent across multiple places than the one from Resolve?? What am I doing wrong?? FCPX can't be better for this sort of stuff right??

2. I do really enjoy color grading and want to break free from my "noob" ways - where is the best place to learn/where did some of you pros learn from? At this point I feel like I don't even know what I don't know.

3. I am, once again, a broke college student but am looking to make the dive into color accurate monitors. My MacBook Pro only has USB type C ports and, as far as I know, Blackmagic doesn't make anything compatible with it. Am I straight up out of luck or is trying to fashion a dongle monstrosity really the best rout?

Thank you for reading this long post, any help or insight is appreciated!!

It's all about color spaces, gamma and such. There have been many discussions on this with no real resolution.

The problem seems to be that Resolve's defauts are designed to deliver safe video levels for broadcast standards -- and YouTube doesn't work that way.

Generally speaking, YouTube seems to stuff around with the gamma (making stuff seem lighter and less saturated) than it appears in Resolve.

Now I've probably done this *all* wrong and will get hammered by the "professionals" but I've changed my colorspace (in project settings) to "sRGB" and have set my video levels (delivery page - advanced settings) to "full".

Now my videos seem to have the same gamma and saturation once processed by YouTube as they do inside Resolve.

Have a play and see what you get.

Sorry all you movie-professional guys... I've not learned all the color science, gambuts and mapping stuff -- I just do what works for me :-/

I am on Windows, so can't help with Apple specific issues, but had some thoughts for consideration:

1) Have you tried comparisons using a generated SMPTE Color Bar. What happens to the PLUGE?

2) YouTube can be watched on a TV too. How does your output fair then? There is so little uniformity amongst browsers and desktop media players that it is hard to know which one is correct. Maybe each is actually a little bit wrong (unlike a Broadcast monitor) so the results are misleading.

3) FWIW, I work & monitor (decklink) in REC 709 (gamma 2.4, video levels) from camera to output and find little perceived difference between TV & PC monitor in various desktop players.

4) If Game Of Thrones DP can struggle with "overly dark" content delivery, then clearly this is a challenge for everybody

Try playing a file on QuickTime player and VLC Player simultaneously side by side on the same monitor..

There can be perceptible differences there too. My studio partner and I tried it one day and became depressed lol

It's all about color spaces, gamma and such. There have been many discussions on this with no real resolution.

The problem seems to be that Resolve's defauts are designed to deliver safe video levels for broadcast standards -- and YouTube doesn't work that way.

Generally speaking, YouTube seems to stuff around with the gamma (making stuff seem lighter and less saturated) than it appears in Resolve.

Now I've probably done this *all* wrong and will get hammered by the "professionals" but I've changed my colorspace (in project settings) to "sRGB" and have set my video levels (delivery page - advanced settings) to "full".

Now my videos seem to have the same gamma and saturation once processed by YouTube as they do inside Resolve.

Have a play and see what you get.

Sorry all you movie-professional guys... I've not learned all the color science, gambuts and mapping stuff -- I just do what works for me :-/

You tube doesn't touch anything except compression (at least when you send one of few standard source types).
Download youtube re-compressed file and check in Resolve, Premiere etc. against source. Colors+gamma will be the same (apart from tiny changes due to compression).
All problems are down to the way how you watch youtube: browser type+OS or TV etc. vs. your editing app preview. You just cover main problem by setting levels to full (it's actually quite bad practice for YUV based files), not really solved it

Latest Resolve 15 should give you same preview as QT X for 2.4 gamma based projects (BM done some hack in Resolve to match QT X). Problem is that when you watch this on youtube it will be way brighter as then OSX processes it as 1.96 gamma. This is OSX color engine issues which treats Rec.709 tagged files as 1.96 gamma based, instead of 2.4 (or at least 2.2).

FCPX uses same 1.96 gamma for its preview so this way it matches QT and youtube (so at least you have consistent look).

Read this article on Color Management:

https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video ... o-editors/

exports that I view in QuickTime

I think that's the problem right there. You should only ever view the work critically under the proper conditions - from a hardware player going to a calibrated display.

How it looks under any other conditions is beyond your control.

I think the original poster's point is that when delivered using FCPX -- it looks okay but when delivered with Resolve (defaults) it does not. This surely indicates that it's not just the issues surrounding QT and such or the device on which they're being viewed -- or they'd both look the same when rendered to a QT output and viewed on the same device. It can only be the way that resolve's defaults are configured and they seem to be configured when compared to FCPX's defaults.

Read this article on Color Management:

https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video ... o-editors/

Very very good article Mark. This should be a sticky on every color grading forum lol. A quote from the top of the article to entice everyone:

Why does the colour look different in Quicktime vs VLC vs YouTube vs Vimeo vs Chrome vs Safari, all on the same monitor?

QT X preview is wrong. FCPX and other Apple tools (eg. Safari) use same math so they are the same, but it doesn't mean they are correct.
QT X uses 1.96 gamma for files which you grade in Resolve to 2.2/2.4 gamma, so it has no chance to be correct.
There is a way to make special adjustment to MOV headers and QT X will use 2.4 gamma and will match Resolve preview. Problem is that this is not the solution. Until Apple fixes its color engine and how it interprets Rec.709 flagged files issue will remain. BM hacked Resolve (in one of the v15 releases) preview to be wrong in order to match wrong QT X preview. Bad workaround.

Hello! I found the issue!!

--ATTENTION ALL MAC USERS--

All I had to do to adjust my display and make my exports look IDENTICAL to what I was seeing inside Resolve (or rather make what I was seeing in Resolve look like what I was exporting) was turn on "Use Mac Display Color Profiles for Viewers" under the general settings tab in preferences (See photo attached). I'm not sure if I accidentally turned this off at some point or if Resolve 16 came that way, but the difference is literally night and day!

I hope this helps others who have been having the same issue!

Also thank you guys for the great learning resources! I have already read through a few of the sent articles twice now and am happy to say they were what led me to my eventual epiphany.

This should be ON from the beginning. Don't be excited too much as preview will be the same only for 2.4 gamma based projects as this is the 'special' case due to BM hack. It's still not a real solution.

Hello! I found the issue!!

This just made my day. Had to log in to say THANKS!

First,

This is a great thread. I find it very helpful, I think we can jump into some conclusions about the post-production pipeline when we know where this is going to land . if it's a project to be delivered for web purposes. then my recommendation is that you have a timeline in resolve in SRGB, and then in your export options go for SRGB color space as well as SRGB for the gamma tag.

This way you will end up with same color/gamma across QT/VLC and other players, also most of your clients will receive what you see in your screen. there might be a slight to minimal color shift, but it's very close.

if this is landing for broadcast, then you will have to revert to the rec709 master and use a highly calibrated monitor . In the case your project is being both published to web and broadcast. then you will need to export different versions.

Crazy looking back at this thread 3 years later.

I am now a full time color assist at Company 3 where I troubleshoot for some of the people that kid who wrote this initial post only dreamt of meeting. For anyone who sees this, keep pressing forward and don't give up! Everyone encounters issues, and you'll never know everything you need to know. Just don't stop trying and it WILL come together eventually.

What we need is push from companies like Company 3, etc. Unfortunately those places don't do much in such a cases. To busy making $

Coming back to this thread, 5 years later. I ran into this issue (working on a 2021 MacBook Pro M1) and tried all of the solutions in this thread, but it still did not fix the issue for me. My export still was brighter and had less contrast than my timeline playback. But, after troubleshooting myself for a while, I figured it out!

I simply created a new timeline and copy/pasted all of the new clips into that new timeline - and it fixed the issue. It changed the color of the timeline playback to match the color of the export.

I'm not sure if it was a fluke and I just had a timeline with some weird glitch, or if there was a lot more to it than that - but I hope this helps!!