Is it a bug? My fix/workaround for washed out HDR export

Hello everyone,

before everyone rolls their eyes again - my problem is not about wahed out footage in the SDR Rec 709 on a Mac. I think everyone should understand that by now

I noticed a strange behavior and just wanted to understand whether it is a bug or not.

My project settings are:
Davinci YRGB Color Managed with Automatic color management
Color Processing Mode: HDR
Output: HDR HLG
Footage: Canon Raw BT2020 Clog3

Problem:
When exporting the material to H265, the colors are washed out. No matter whether you set data level full or video.

What's interesting is that when exporting to ProRes with data level Full, the export looks exactly the same as in the viewer or video feed. With Prores and Datalevel video it's washed out again.

Normally, shouldn't the video in h265 and data level full look exactly the same as the ProRes in full? What is also interesting is that the correctly output ProRes (Full) video looks correct in H265 after rendering in Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder.

Please don't be surprised that the screenshots are overexposed. It is only 8bit jpg. Of course it looks correct on my monitor.

What do you all mean?

Thx Kai

I've never tried HLG.

I do find my PQ exports coming out fine. Have you tested that?

I've never tried HLG.

I do find my PQ exports coming out fine. Have you tested that?

Hello Jim,

thank you for your message. That was actually an important clue. If I switch to PQ with Dolby Vision, the colors are correct!

Thank you thank you thank you

It frightens me that people are trying to work on HDR projects without calibrated displays.

It frightens me that people are trying to work on HDR projects without calibrated displays.

Unfortunately your post doesn't help.

You should always consider what the goal is. In my case it's "just" about creating private videos that can be shown to grandma and grandpa. At the same time, I would also like to watch the videos on an HDR TV. therefore HLG.

The XDR display from Apple is definitely sufficient for this purpose.

The minimum requirement is that the image shown to me in the viewer or Cleen feed matches the export.

final cut and premiere have no problem with this. only Davinci has behaved strangely.

As a side comment, ProRes is always assumed to be at video levels (other than 4444 - not sure). If you encode it at full levels then the software reading it must be told that the levels are full (I don't think you can do this in Premiere but you can in Resolve). This may not apply to ProRes4444, though - it may be assumed to be at full levels - no sure.

As a side comment, ProRes is always assumed to be at video levels (other than 4444 - not sure). If you encode it at full levels then the software reading it must be told that the levels are full (I don't think you can do this in Premiere but you can in Resolve). This may not apply to ProRes4444, though - it may be assumed to be at full levels - no sure.

That thread we had a detailed discussion in earlier has disappeared which is a bit weird - presumably deleted by the OP as there was nothing in it that would conflict with forum rules etc. Anyway I saved the links that Marc posted, one of which deals with this subject.

I'm reposting Marc's link about levels below, as the initial question here was about levels, although the OP's problem of washed out colors has nothing to do with levels. It is well worth a read though.

https://www.thepostprocess.com/2019/09/ ... -vs-video/

Maybe it was just the DNxHR 444 that is interpreted as full levels but not the lesser versions of DNxHR such as DNxHR HQ (which is at video levels). I was sure that ProRes was always treated at video levels which is why it is so difficult to use ProRes in my Ninja V from my Canon R6. The Canon R6 with Rec2020/CLog3 encodes at full levels over HDMI to the Ninja V and it dutifully records those full levels into ProRes HQ. When I bring that into Resolve I need to change the clip attributes from Auto to Full.

Add - This is from the levels article (I was misremembering what I read):

Quote - "DNxHR 444 is another codec that can confuse software. In my own tests with Resolve and Premiere, a auto level DNxHR 444 file rendered from Resolve will be interpreted as a full level file in Premiere. But Resolve actually encodes it to video levels with auto selected. Therefore the levels will be scaled twice leading to washed out luminance values in Premiere."

Maybe it was just the DNxHR 444 that is interpreted as full levels but not the lesser versions of DNxHR such as DNxHR HQ (which is at video levels). I was sure that ProRes was always treated at video levels which is why it is so difficult to use ProRes in my Ninja V from my Canon R6. The Canon R6 with Rec2020/CLog3 encodes at full levels over HDMI to the Ninja V and it dutifully records those full levels into ProRes HQ. When I bring that into Resolve I need to change the clip attributes from Auto to Full.

Add - This is from the levels article (I was misremembering what I read):

Quote - "DNxHR 444 is another codec that can confuse software. In my own tests with Resolve and Premiere, a auto level DNxHR 444 file rendered from Resolve will be interpreted as a full level file in Premiere. But Resolve actually encodes it to video levels with auto selected. Therefore the levels will be scaled twice leading to washed out luminance values in Premiere."

Yes it's a compex article and a complex subject. I've read it several times and I'm still not on solid ground but it's the best explanation I've seen. His other article on the gamma shift is also really excellent.

My reading is that ProRes4444 should be video levels but some apps do not interpret that correctly and assume it to be full levels which gives incorrect results. Resolve seems to interpret ProRes4444 imports in exactly the same way as ProRes422HQ as video levels and are-export as auto will remain as video levels. The other thing I take away from the article is that it doesn't matter whether you use video or full levels for monitoring your grading in Resolve as long as you remain consistent and you use video or auto levels and not full for ProRes exports. In other words, you don't lose any data by remaining in video levels. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but that works for me with ProRes which is mainly what I use for exporting from Resolve.

ProRes should be always video levels as this what its spec mandates.
You can export full levels but then you need to manually interpret such a file as full levels on import (in different tools including Resolve).
Premiere use to treat ProRes444 as full levels, but this been changed and now it behaves correctly as far as I remember.
By using video levels you don't loose any details- you just loose tiny bit of precision due to less 'levels' available in video file, but for 12bit this is really meaningless in real world.
DNxHR 444 is different as it has levels flag in headers and can be properly singled with it. I think it still behaves badly in Premiere which is hard coded to read it at full levels. Resolve properly reads headers info, not blindly assumes one option.

ProRes should be always video levels as this what its spec mandates.
You can export full levels but then you need to manually interpret such a file as full levels on import (in different tools including Resolve).
Premiere use to treat ProRes444 as full levels, but this been changed and now it behaves correctly as far as I remember.
By using video levels you don't loos any details- you just loose tiny bit of precision due to less 'levels' available in video file, but for 12bit this is really meaningless in real world.

Thanks for that clarification Andrew.

Hi all,

It seems I encounter the same difficulty as Kai in his initial post : Trying to export an HDR content, it seems that all h265 exports display washed out blacks / colors.

Initial media is coming from Canon R6 H265 Clog 3 footage. Blacks are displayed black in resolve.
I manage to get the same blacks with full levels export in prores, but all h265 exports (HLG, PQ, Dolby Vision) display gray instead of black (no matter the level config). Saturation / contrast seem lower too.

I'm using Resolve 18.6.4 on a MacBook Pro M3, last revision of the os (Sonoma 14.2.1).

The project color config is as follows : Color managed, Davinci WG Intermediate, output Rec 2020 ST 2084 1000 Nits

Project color config

Capture d’écran 2024-01-07 à 12.01.19.png (147.05 KiB) Viewed 1637 times

Here is an example of what I get as output :

Capture d’écran 2024-01-07 à 12.06.00 - labels.jpg (538.7 KiB) Viewed 1637 times

Kai, it seems you managed to get it working using PQ curve. Could you please detail what you did ?
Do you have any idea or suggestion to manage to get a proper export (with right levels) ?

Thanks for your support
David

Hi all,
I'm using Resolve 18.6.4 on a MacBook Pro M3, last revision of the os (Sonoma 14.2.1).

The project color config is as follows : Color managed, Davinci WG Intermediate, output Rec 2020 ST 2084 1000 Nits

Capture d’écran 2024-01-07 à 12.01.19.png

Here is an example of what I get as output :

Capture d’écran 2024-01-07 à 12.06.00 - labels.jpg

Kai, it seems you managed to get it working using PQ curve. Could you please detail what you did ?
Do you have any idea or suggestion to manage to get a proper export (with right levels) ?

Thanks for your support
David

Firstly try Rec2100 ST2084 Output Color Space for HDR PQ and set the MacBook Pro display preset to HDR P3 ST 2084. This definitely works for ProRes and H265 HDR PQ exports if you have everything set correctly in Resolve Prefs - System -General: Use 10 bit precision and use Mac display color profiles.

I'm not sure what is happening with your levels but ProRes exports should be video not full levels although this will be recognised automatically when rendering to ProRes if set to Auto anyway. An exported ProRes file at full levels should look more contrasty in Quicktime than it looks in Resolve which it doesn't appear to in your screeenshot so I'm not sure what is happening there. First thing to check would be if you are using the correct general Resolve prefs, the correct Mac display preset and the the Output Color Space I suggested above.

Thanks for your message mikspixels, I could do some more experiments and I think I'm understanding the issue better.

First, resolve is set as follows :

Capture d’écran 2024-01-07 à 14.11.39.png (39.34 KiB) Viewed 1583 times

I dit a new export using REC.2100 ST2084 as you suggested and looked at the way my display was configured :

Initially it was set to Apple XDR and I get this (resolve on the left, QuickTime on the right)

Capture d’écran 2024-01-07 à 14.19.37.jpg (256.64 KiB) Viewed 1583 times

Then I changed to HDR Video (P3 ST2084) and now I get this

Capture d’écran 2024-01-07 à 14.20.25.jpg (250.16 KiB) Viewed 1583 times

In both cases, the quicktime window displays the same file.

It seems that my issue is probably related to my monitor configuration not being is the right color space.
I'll do more testing.

Thanks for pointing this out.

Best
David

Thanks for your message mikspixels, I could do some more experiments and I think I'm understanding the issue better.

It seems that my issue is probably related to my monitor configuration not being is the right color space.
I'll do more testing.

Thanks for pointing this out.

Best
David

Don't mention it David. You will get there for sure. The problem with Resolve is that there are so many choices which is beneficial if you know what you are doing but very difficult if you don't. i was using Final Cut Pro for HDR grading before I started using Resolve and that is a lot easier as there are only a few choices and it just works. I knew what I should be seeing and,after a day or two of frustrating experimentation in Resolve, I figured it out and I've never looked back.

It is very important to use the right Mac display preset which gives a constant luminance as well as getting the Resolve settings right. One thing to note is that you can't take a screenshot of a HDR scene and expect it to display as HDR on the web. It will never look right. If sharing, it would be better to post a short video clip to Dropbox or similar for downloading.

DNxHR444 is RGB color space, not YUV. Since RGB is associated with PC levels, interpreting it as FULL levels would be logical. That said, when using DNxHR444 as the source input to x265, the latter does not change the input levels upon conversion to YUV. And since the HEVC export will be YUV (video), the expectation is also that the HEVC player will see it at VIDEO levels. Therefore for HEVC output from a DNxHR444 master, the master should be exported at VIDEO level.

DNxHR 444 can be both RGB and YUV. This is why DNxHR has range flag which should be set and read properly by tools. This way you can avoid confusion.
Resolve uses RGB mode, but eg. Adobe YUV (if I remember well).

I am also experiencing "washed out" colors with HLG exports in Davinci. Seems I have to boost colors 115 or Saturation ~55 and reduce gamma a tiny bit to match my PQ content. For this reason I completely ignored HLG for delivery, but for instagram reels I have to use HLG + additional "compensation" node.
I wonder if it is related to Mac or Davinci or other part of my setup?
I will try to use probes with full colors and following encoding in the Compressor. But I think it is too much for workaround.

Therefore for HEVC output from a DNxHR444 master, the master should be exported at VIDEO level.

Probably safest way. h265 can be also kept as full levels with appropriate flag, but this can be lost when you upload to YT etc.