36 Project Settings for Pro Color Grading in Resolve

[@bigsnap5]

I would love a Dolby Vision deep dive. Please put that on the docket.

[@baharam98]

I learned a lot today from your Project Settings video. Thank you!

[@HealingTrailsOverland]

This is the first no bs breakdown of the settings. Great video. Thank you for creating it and sharing

[@nathanabrahams5305]

Thanks! I would just add one consideration to leave checked. As most people are finishing for online delivery I would change the target loudness level on the Failight tab in settings, from -23FLUFS (Broadcast standard) to -14LUFS (Online Standard KZbin Specifically). -23LUFS is a lot softer and so your video will be bumped up to -14LUFS by KZbin when uploading, and they generally don't do a great job at it. So I make sure its monitoring loudness specifically for a -14 environment. This is only if you are the editor as well as the colorist.

[@devonzacharias]

I’ll give it a try thanks

[@lkentertainment8760]

Not bad advice by any means, but so that people are aware and don't misinterpret; all that is going to do is change what Zero represents on the master meter. If you set it to -14 LUFS, then zero on the master meter now equals -14 LUFS. It won't change the level of your audio in any way. To reach target loudness, make sure to properly EQ and Compress in the mixing stage and always, always, always use a Limiter on the final output with a ceiling of at least -1db (to protect against clipping in the analog domain).

[@robfxdls]

Though I don't think KZbin actually increases volume if under-14 LUFS. KZbin only reduces volume if louder than -14 LUFS, but leaves softer audio as uploaded.

[@vmixer]

Another great, comprehensive video Cullen, thank you so much. Speaking up to say I'd love to see a dedicated Dolby Vision video sometime soon!

[@hirokutakicittanomoritanji]

I visit here everyday. I'm waiting for new video more than my salary day.

[@iomariani8822]

Same.

[@mellowmel2012]

Thank you so much for your generous sharing of your time and knowledge! Very useful!

[@TubeSilva]

Hey Cullen, thanks again! I can't wait for all the extra videos this one's gonna spawn, even though you never saw that coming.

[@FleuryVinicius]

Thank you for this content! Cheers from North Brazil!

[@Patrick-mg7vv]

Hey Cullen, hope you're doing OK in LA with the fire situation. Hoping you and family ok. Nice video, good must-know checklist thanks.

[@kstalk09]

AWESOME! I've been waiting for one of you guys to finally post one of these and YOU STEPPED UP! Very much appreciated - nice work - long time subsciber - Kel :\`

The Resize Filter will become important if you're working with footage containing very bright pixels like e.g. HDR panoramas or rendered EXR sequences with bright highlights. The "Sharper" filter will then cause pixels surrounding bright highlights to become negative and build a black halo around them. So better use "Bicubic" or "Bilinear" in that case.

[@campfilmmakers]

Great!!

[@HuysuzVirginia]

10:25 for detailed explanation on how each of these modes work, a lot of good visual explanations can be found with the "interpolation types" keyword search.

[@stevegalante]

Very informative as usual. I have one kind of "off-topic" question for you : I am watching your video on a 32" calibrated monitor, and I see a lot of banding on your grey background behind you. Is that due to KZbin compression ? How to deal with this problem in Resolve ? Thanks !

[@christianahm]

Timeline color space setting do effect the grading tools, it is not only for metadata

[@christianahm]

And sorry if the comment was a bit direct, really nice video - i have been struggleling with understabding timeline color space so just wanted to clear that out for others

[@weichung0319]

It will affect how some tools behave, as some are colorspace-aware

[@DanMavric-ey8vx]

One again, thanks Cullen! Can you explain the benefit or difference between enabling the ‘Color viewer lookup table’ using your ‘CKC macOS Viewer Transform’ in the project settings, compared to using it at the node level and turning it off when rendering?

[@stefanmaass7053]

I second this. Also came across the method of using the CKC macOS Viewer transform as a node downstream your workflow to monitor your grade and deactivating it prior to exporting. If I understand the intention of his Apple display video correctly Cullen wanted to give users a workflow that is suitable if you only use a Mac Studio Display or MacBook Pro for instance where there is a lack of an external reference monitor. In this case it is simply easier to be able to deactivate the viewer transform on a node than it is in the project settings. However I don't think the viewing transform will be taken into account by any render engine when exporting. So using it in the viewer look up table as a LUT would be the easiest way. Set and forget :)

[@manimentor786]

thanks A Lot Sir

[@odoniperin]

Optimized/Proxy media are quite usefull for editing purposes, when original footage is too heavy for playback. You can just disable them when going to the coloring process and work with full quality then. Cheers!

[@travisdaki]

But we're not 'editing' here, are we now? Like the man said, when you're on the *Color Page* you want to be able to see each pixel at its highest resolution.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

@@travisdaki I commented above - I know many editors and colorists now that use the proxy method to transform longGOP camera originals to a less compressed format. Proxy just means substitute - you can go either way.

[@Anthony_Ponce]

thankyou for this. Im no professional but having trouble recently with coloring a project and seeing wash out that looks like it wasnt touched on phones. (I help business with social media content) I'm going to search your videos just incase you've covered it. Also quality. i'm seeing super crisp videos everywhere but my uploads are so low quality and pixelated some times. (have "allow high quality uploads" on) Thanks in advance if you answer this!!

[@filmbyeea]

Hi, I’ve been following you for a while, and I find your videos very valuable and educational. As someone who is training to become a colorist, do you have any recommendations for practicing with images? I kind of struggle with real-time practice in Resolve because I find it difficult to access raw images.

[@hethfilms]

There is one thing in Resolves scaling behaviour that still does not really make sense to me. I'm using a BMD ultrastudio monitor 3g box via thunderbolt from my mac studio. From there I go with SDI out into the 6g mini converter SDI to HDMI and applying my display calibration LUT there and then with HDMI into my EIZO reference display which is 1080p. One would expect if I use the video monitoring section and set that to 1080p in Resolves settings, that I would have a 1080p signal going into my box and from there in to my reference display, no matter what timeline resolution I use. But that is not the case. It does seem to use the output resolution from the image scaling section. If that is set to use timeline resolution, I get a center crop of my UHD timeline on the reference display. So only way to fix that is to change the output resolution to 1080p too. Annoying thing is every time I go to the deliver tab the output resolution is set to 1080p even though the timeline resolution is set to UHD. So, what's the point of having the video monitoring section if Resolve still uses the output resolution from the image scaling tab?

[@stefanocson6237]

great

[@JimRobinson-colors]

Proxies are just substituting one codec or file for another. The misconception arises that they are always smaller or lower res files. I guarantee if your original media is long GOP ( h.264 or especially h.265 ) that using the proxy workflow to a less compressed codec, that you will want to grade and render the proxy over the original media. So I agree that in pro footage that the proxy conventional method is as you describe, that modern prosumer camera originals are harder to work with. So in that case, it probably is better to use the proxies. Optimized media was set-up for that purpose, but seeing how Resolve has removed every column in list mode referencing Optimized media and you can no longer check, or delete it within the NLE, I think that it's being phased out and is only still there for legacy reasons.

[@cnihon5894]

Thanks for the comprehensive breakdown. Just two things. The link to the greyscale DCTL is 404'ing and could you point me to the MAC OS display fix you talk about in the section on pre-loading LUTs? Again, much appreciation for supporting all of us still fumbling our way through color grading. Cheers!

[@cnihon5894]

Apologies, was viewing on my TV and the link to the video on the Mac OS Viewing Transform didn't appear. I have requested the download. Thanks!

[@CullenKelly]

fixed!

[@sofetybilali349]

Hi, Cullen. I do have a question I need some help. I have to subject grading scene. They all share same skin color but I need to work more on one individual's skin color and smothing while isolate the other one and not touching. How can I do it?

[@TyroneclayMarkeisha]

Great content, as always! A bit off-topic, but I wanted to ask: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How can I transfer them to Binance?

[@laniakeasupercluster4606]

Using Resolve Studio 19.1.2: Selecting ‘Luminance Mixer Defaults to Zero’ in the Project Settings seems to have no effect on the project. After enabling this option and saving the settings (as expected), even restarting Resolve doesn’t make a difference. Could this be a bug in this version?

[@liammarbro]

Hey man the link to the grey scale DCTL is broken

[@ja-kidnb6416]

just add dctl to the end and it will take you there

[@CullenKelly]

Fixed!

[@motopixelz]

Your background got m&rd&red by the compression.