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Any good guides on LUTs/color correction?

korach1921

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I'm using Davinci Resolve for my edits, but one thing that's really stumping me is figuring out how I should go about doing color correction if I want to do it for my project. Most guides for Davinci are for people working with RAW footage, not already graded Blu-Ray footage. Anytime I do try color correction on such footage, it always looks really unnatural or super saturated. Anyone got any tips?
 

Eyepainter

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As a fellow DaVinci Resolve user, Darren Mostyn's YouTube channel has been an absolute life saver! Here's his 5-minute explanation on how to fix your LUT's:


And since it's bound to come up, most blu-ray discs use a Rec. 709 color space and Gamma 2.4 for gamma, so in the example above, it would be wise to select Rec. 709 as your input color space and gamma 2.4 as your input gamma. Then, output gamma to Cineon Film Log. I personally like going all the way into film-like territory, so I select P3-D65 (P3 being a popular color space for 35mm film. D65 being the color temperature of said film) as my output color space.
 

korach1921

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As a fellow DaVinci Resolve user, Darren Mostyn's YouTube channel has been an absolute life saver! Here's his 5-minute explanation on how to fix your LUT's:


And since it's bound to come up, most blu-ray discs use a Rec. 709 color space and Gamma 2.4 for gamma, so in the example above, it would be wise to select Rec. 709 as your input color space and gamma 2.4 as your input gamma. Then, output gamma to Cineon Film Log. I personally like going all the way into film-like territory, so I select P3-D65 (P3 being a popular color space for 35mm film. D65 being the color temperature of said film) as my output color space.
THANK YOU!!! Will bookmark this for later
 

korach1921

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As a fellow DaVinci Resolve user, Darren Mostyn's YouTube channel has been an absolute life saver! Here's his 5-minute explanation on how to fix your LUT's:


And since it's bound to come up, most blu-ray discs use a Rec. 709 color space and Gamma 2.4 for gamma, so in the example above, it would be wise to select Rec. 709 as your input color space and gamma 2.4 as your input gamma. Then, output gamma to Cineon Film Log. I personally like going all the way into film-like territory, so I select P3-D65 (P3 being a popular color space for 35mm film. D65 being the color temperature of said film) as my output color space.
Hey, when I switch to Cineon Film Log, I notice the letterboxing/black bars also get washed out. Is there a way to solve this? Should I switch on the output blanking?
 

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Yes output blanking solves the letterboxed part getting unwanted grading or VFX.
 

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Hey, when I switch to Cineon Film Log, I notice the letterboxing/black bars also get washed out. Is there a way to solve this? Should I switch on the output blanking?

There are many ways to solve this issue, including output blanking. My approach is to add a letterbox node through Fusion and adjust the height (While it's not an exact science, I usually go for something like 1038 if the film I'm editing is in a 1.85 (flat) aspect ratio, or something like 818 if it's in a 2.39 (scope) aspect ratio). Keep in mind, though, that Fusion likes to do things on a clip by clip basis, so you may have to suffer through a little tediousness. Either that, or use an adjustment clip that encompasses the entire edit and then get it letterboxed via Fusion. After that, make sure you've set your resolution correctly in the Deliver tab. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of headaches when you start exporting.

What should I do with a film that switches aspect ratio (i.e. The Dark Knight)?

I've never dealt with that issue yet, but I think a solution would be to split the varying aspect ratio sequences via the cut page. Then, I can go back to Fusion and letterbox the IMAX sequences in whatever way seems appropriate (unless the IMAX sequences are in the 16:9 aspect ratio. If that's the case, then you only need to letterbox the sequences that are in scope rather than 16:9).
 

korach1921

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There are many ways to solve this issue, including output blanking. My approach is to add a letterbox node through Fusion and adjust the height (While it's not an exact science, I usually go for something like 1038 if the film I'm editing is in a 1.85 (flat) aspect ratio, or something like 818 if it's in a 2.39 (scope) aspect ratio). Keep in mind, though, that Fusion likes to do things on a clip by clip basis, so you may have to suffer through a little tediousness. Either that, or use an adjustment clip that encompasses the entire edit and then get it letterboxed via Fusion. After that, make sure you've set your resolution correctly in the Deliver tab. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of headaches when you start exporting.



I've never dealt with that issue yet, but I think a solution would be to split the varying aspect ratio sequences via the cut page. Then, I can go back to Fusion and letterbox the IMAX sequences in whatever way seems appropriate (unless the IMAX sequences are in the 16:9 aspect ratio. If that's the case, then you only need to letterbox the sequences that are in scope rather than 16:9).
Thanks. I actually saved this aspect ratio cheat sheet and it says that 2.35 is 817 and 2.39 is 803: https://www.wearethefirehouse.com/aspect-ratio-cheat-sheet
 

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Thanks. I actually saved this aspect ratio cheat sheet and it says that 2.35 is 817 and 2.39 is 803: https://www.wearethefirehouse.com/aspect-ratio-cheat-sheet

I'm not so sure about this, because on my end, Resolve has a hard time exporting files when the number of lines is an odd number. But when it's an even number (like 818, as I already mentioned), the file exports just fine. I don't know why that is (my educated guess is that it might have something to do with deinterlacing), but I figure it's worth mentioning so that I can spare you a headache or two in the future.
 

korach1921

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I'm not so sure about this, because on my end, Resolve has a hard time exporting files when the number of lines is an odd number. But when it's an even number (like 818, as I already mentioned), the file exports just fine. I don't know why that is (my educated guess is that it might have something to do with deinterlacing), but I figure it's worth mentioning so that I can spare you a headache or two in the future.
Okay, then I guess I'll do 804 for 2:39. Thank you so much!
 

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As a fellow DaVinci Resolve user, Darren Mostyn's YouTube channel has been an absolute life saver! Here's his 5-minute explanation on how to fix your LUT's:


And since it's bound to come up, most blu-ray discs use a Rec. 709 color space and Gamma 2.4 for gamma, so in the example above, it would be wise to select Rec. 709 as your input color space and gamma 2.4 as your input gamma. Then, output gamma to Cineon Film Log. I personally like going all the way into film-like territory, so I select P3-D65 (P3 being a popular color space for 35mm film. D65 being the color temperature of said film) as my output color space.
this answers some questions I had,but it raises another question. why apply a LUT for a particular film?
 

Eyepainter

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this answers some questions I had,but it raises another question. why apply a LUT for a particular film?

I think this video gives a good starting point for that answer:


Of course, my more thorough explanation is that LUT's are good as a cheat for making really nice looking color grading, although I don't consider them an insta-fix. I stopped using LUT's at the beginning of my fanediting journey (and none of my Star Wars prequel edits or my upcoming Eyes Wide Shut edit use one). However, I've started to appreciate them a little more over the last week, and if used correctly, they can make the color grading on a film sparkle! For example, I'm a sucker for things that look filmy, and my editing program features several LUTs that are designed to mimic the colors and looks of both Kodak 2383 and Fujifilm 3513DI stocks. They even have them organized by color temperature (D55, D60, and the most popular one, D65). I could take one of those LUT's, add in a Color Space Transform node behind it and convert the gamma to Cineon, and then, I can add more nodes to adjust the color saturation, contrast, offset, midtones, shadows, etc. until it looks just right. This can be especially helpful if the sources you have are, to put it nicely, terrible. My Terminator 2 blu-ray is a victim of bad color grading, especially when it comes to DNR. A LUT can be a good first step to making the film look just a little better.
 

korach1921

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As a fellow DaVinci Resolve user, Darren Mostyn's YouTube channel has been an absolute life saver! Here's his 5-minute explanation on how to fix your LUT's:


And since it's bound to come up, most blu-ray discs use a Rec. 709 color space and Gamma 2.4 for gamma, so in the example above, it would be wise to select Rec. 709 as your input color space and gamma 2.4 as your input gamma. Then, output gamma to Cineon Film Log. I personally like going all the way into film-like territory, so I select P3-D65 (P3 being a popular color space for 35mm film. D65 being the color temperature of said film) as my output color space.
Mind if I ask, how do you handle the amount of space applying the output gamma and LUT take up on your hard drive? I tried applying some LUTs and it ended up eating up like 60gb on my computer and I had to delete the project and the cachefiles
 

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Mind if I ask, how do you handle the amount of space applying the output gamma and LUT take up on your hard drive? I tried applying some LUTs and it ended up eating up like 60gb on my computer and I had to delete the project and the cachefiles

There isn't much I can do to help you out on that one beyond buying some more disk space. I use a 1tb computer that I built with my own two hands, and even then, I now have several 2tb Seagate drives and an external 1tb Samsung drive. Not to mention the zillions of 128gb Lexar USB flash drives I have floating around my house.šŸ¤£ Film editing, in my experience, takes up a lot of storage. Especially during the export stage when the file ends up being hundreds of gigabytes in size (That's the power of GoPro Cineform).

My best advice to try and save space would be to make a light color grading adjustment instead, and limit things down to the basic features (like saturation, contrast, offset, midtones, shadows, etc.). Stay away from a lot of the GPU-heavy features in your software (In my case, this would pretty much mean anything related to Fusion or the FX features in Resolve), because those will most certainly guarantee the need for more storage space.

Either that or save up and buy yourself an external drive, then get in the habit of storing things in it.
 

korach1921

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There isn't much I can do to help you out on that one beyond buying some more disk space. I use a 1tb computer that I built with my own two hands, and even then, I now have several 2tb Seagate drives and an external 1tb Samsung drive. Not to mention the zillions of 128gb Lexar USB flash drives I have floating around my house.šŸ¤£ Film editing, in my experience, takes up a lot of storage. Especially during the export stage when the file ends up being hundreds of gigabytes in size (That's the power of GoPro Cineform).

My best advice to try and save space would be to make a light color grading adjustment instead, and limit things down to the basic features (like saturation, contrast, offset, midtones, shadows, etc.). Stay away from a lot of the GPU-heavy features in your software (In my case, this would pretty much mean anything related to Fusion or the FX features in Resolve), because those will most certainly guarantee the need for more storage space.

Either that or save up and buy yourself an external drive, then get in the habit of storing things in it.
I actually do use several Seagate drives, but they're the portable ones (I use a laptop) and anytime I've tried outputting the cachefiles to them, the playback is super slow and jittery

Specifically these drives: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B07CRG94G3
 

Eyepainter

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I actually do use several Seagate drives, but they're the portable ones (I use a laptop) and anytime I've tried outputting the cachefiles to them, the playback is super slow and jittery

Specifically these drives: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B07CRG94G3

Unfortunately, the laptop explains everything. A lot of NLE's and video editing programs are built with the expectation that you have a professional GPU and/or CPU at the ready. Most of these types of GPU's and CPU's are often installed on desktops and Gaming PCs rather than on portable laptops. I'm not sure there's much you can do to fix the playback and speed, but the best thing I can come up with is to either A. play the files back on VLC, which can play most things, B. Move the files to a different drive or buy a Lexar USB flash drive that has more than enough capacity for the file, or C. Learn the valuable art and skill of patience. Otherwise, there's not much that can be done beyond uninstalling a program or two, and hoping that will speed things up. Unless you're using a very expensive gaming laptop, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here.
 
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