Anyone using color management in Resolve?

[Shirozina]

I've got a timeline containing multiple codecs and profiles - REC709, S-LOG2, HLG, V-LOGL, BM, Canon C-LOG. I've traditionally been working with LUTS to help match them but setting up Resolve to RCM seems a better solution as it's not dependent on getting a LUT that matches the exact exposure. I've batch assigned my clips to their various profiles in the media bins and the input color space is set to bypass and the working and output spaces to REC709 2.4. Tone mapping is set to simple and gamut mapping set to saturation with the default values. So far the grading process is a lot quicker and the grading consistency between clips is much greater. I've been working with stills in a CMS workflow for 20 years since Photoshop 5 so it's been a long wait for CMS to come to video........ 

[Mark Romero 2]

I am just dipping my toes in to RCM. It does seem like it would be a big benefit.

[kye]

I use Resolve Colour Management but not in the way you describe above.

The way I use it is to just have the colour management for the clips set to the defaults, but I convert the colour using the OpenFX Colour Space Transform plugin, which (I believe) does the same thing as the Resolve Colour Management options you are using, but it does it in the node graph, so you can have greater control over how you use it.

For example, if I shot a clip in C-Log I would have a node graph like this:

1. Exposure and WB corrections using the Lift Gamma Gain controls
2. OpenFX Colour Space Transform from C-Log to Rec709
3. Nodes to grade the footage how I like

I find that having that first node before the colour space transform allows exposure and WB corrections to be performed similarly to how they would have happened if I'd done them in camera.  I've shot Canon cameras in normal profiles with bad WB settings before and you just can't get nice colours out of them, but I did some experiments shooting in C-Log with really really bad WB and exposure and using the above setup you can easily correct them without much damage to the resulting image at all.

This is a crazy interesting video by Juan Melara showing how you can use multiple Colour Space Transform plugins in the node graph in order to have nodes that are 'working' in different colour spaces.  I had to watch these a number of times before I got my head around what he was doing, but you can learn a ton from them, so they're worth watching.  

Also, this video shows what you can do when you understand colour spaces and the Colour Space Transform node:

Good luck!!  Resolve is like having the keys to the universe - and is almost as difficult to operate

[Shirozina]

Thanks - looks even better than RCM!

[Zak Forsman]

yep, i use the same method as Kye. the occasional drawback is you can't generate a LUT from anything with an OpenFX plugin in it if you wanted to create a monitoring LUT for whatever reason. To get around that, you could generate a transformative LUT at to use in place of the DaVinci Color Space Transform plugin.

https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/LUTCalc/index.html

[kye]

8 hours ago, Zak Forsman said:

yep, i use the same method as Kye. the occasional drawback is you can't generate a LUT from anything with an OpenFX plugin in it if you wanted to create a monitoring LUT for whatever reason. To get around that, you could generate a transformative LUT at to use in place of the DaVinci Color Space Transform plugin.

https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/LUTCalc/index.html

Thanks Zak - that's a great link.  Not as good as the OFX plugin, but as you say, a good alternative.