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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

DNxHD Clips look washed out

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gregkraus

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I have exported DNxHD LB files from RedCine X. When I import these files into Avid MC 8.7 it appears the color space looks off. The files appear to be washed out compared to the RedCine look which has more of a crushed blacks look. I am kind of new to Avid so not sure if is how the project is set up or if it is something in the rendering.
 
What settings did you use in Redcine-X Pro? It could be you used RedLogFilm, which would be appropriate for final color but not good for editing. Do some tests and watch the workflow videos (and read the manual):

http://www.red.com/learn/workflow
 
Are you monitoring via SDI out of redcine using a proper output box? If not your just guessing, the viewer is not accurate enough
 
Also, you should realize that Avid's source and record viewers *display* full range. For example for 8-bit video what you see as black in the viewer has to be 0 (not 16) and what you see as the brightest white has to be 235 (not 255). This has the effect of making footage look washed out in the viewers. But if you have an external monitor or use full screen playback, you can change the levels to video. And you might now be able to change the levels for the source and record viewers; I'm not sure, but can check next time in front of an Avid. (You can by right-clicking on the viewer and choosing Display Color Space.)

One reason why Avid does this is that historically some cameras, like Sony and Canon could be set to (or default to) record into those "super" black and white areas to extend their recording latitude. This really isn't necessary with the higher bit depths that are out now, but many cameras can still do it. The other reason is that imported still images/graphics are very frequently mapped to full range, not video range. So Avid shows exactly what's going on there.
 
Yes sounds like you need to get educated on full range vs video levels and proper viewing output options. Otherwise it's a confusing shit show for sure. You have to know what signal your giving and getting, how programs interpret them etc. this drove me crazy for a long time too, and most people fight this so your not alone
 
Make sure your color space is correct. Sounds like you are on the wrong one.

There's RGB, and Rec709. Flip these in Avid, at your project settings.

Remember, Prores "flips" the color space for you within a Quicktime. Regardless of whether a Prores file is encoded Rec 709 or RGB, Quicktime will always "display" it to you accurately on your RGB laptop (even though the color spaces are about 15% off on black levels, hence the washed out look you're seeing).

DNX doesn't have this "adaptive" feature built in (Quicktime and Prores work very well together, Apple won the codec war for a reason!)...so you have to set the color space manually.

It's frustrating, but also why Rec709 DNX quicktimes always look washed out on a laptop. They have to be seen inside a Rec709 project, and on a broadcast monitor.

Hope this helps
 
Nick, I may be wrong, but I don't think that you want to change anything at the project level in Avid (if I understand what you mean). What you do want to do is right click on the viewer(s) and choose 709 (Full Range). That will map the 16 to black and 235 to white, which will increase the contrast and clip the superblacks and superwhites.

And I totally agree with you about DNx and QT. I fought with Avid for years over this. Some media encoders do encode DNx to display properly for QT, but Media Composer couldn't, which was/is crazy.

Another thing that really helped Prores was 4444 and that the first Alexas could only record Prores.
 
Peter Moretti said:
Nick, I may be wrong, but I don't think that you want to change anything at the project level (if I understand what you mean). What you do want to do is right click on the viewer(s) and choose 709 (Full Range). That will map the 16 to black and 235 to white, effectively increasing the contrast and clipping the superblacks and superwhites.
Click to expand...

Peter your probably right. I honestly never dig that deep, as all our clips are 709, so we match our projects and everything works.

Having to live btw both color spaces has always been a PITA...it's not talked about enough, too....
 
Color accuracy is the main reason why I've been blowing up the Davinci board, lol! When I create an H.264 from Resolve it looks gorgeous and plays properly on every machine, AFAICT. With MC, they look like crap. So I wind up trying to create a QT reference or a DNx 444 and bringing that into Adobe Media Encoder. A royal PITA. So I'm willing to deal with the growing pains of Resolve if I know that final product, and all the steps along the way, will be WYSIWYG.
 
Peter Moretti said:
Color accuracy is the main reason why I've been blowing up the Davinci board, lol! When I create an H.264 from Resolve it looks gorgeous and plays properly on every machine, AFAICT. With MC, they look like crap. So I wind up trying to create a QT reference or a DNx 444 and bringing that into Adobe Media Encoder. A royal PITA. So I'm willing to deal with the growing pains of Resolve if I know that final product, and all the steps along the way, will be WYSIWYG.
Click to expand...

I hear you.

Are you saying the H264 from Resolve looks terrible once loaded into Media Composer?

For Color Accuracy between Davinci and Avid we've found the following works pretty well:

1) Export DNXHD Quicktimes from Resolve. Make sure they are 709. AMA them into Avid, and consolidate and transcode. These should look identical to what you see in Resolve.

2) Create MXF media out of Resolve. This is always the most realiable, as MXF is native to Avid and I believe has the most accurate color within Avid ecosystem.

That said, QT's are far more convenient - for clients to screen, for GFX designers to work with in AE, so my cients always request DNXHD QTs.

Hope this helps.

best
 
Hi Nick, thanks for the tips, which I'm sure will be helpful! What I was talking about above was that when I would be working on a project in MC, I would send out H.264 QT's to other people, and depending on the media player, platform and OS version of that platform, there would be color range shifts, gamma shifts. Add to that the just generally crappy encoding quality of MC's H.264's, and I wound up with some pretty horrendous files.

I've spoken to Avid at length about this, and it wasn't their problem, it was with QT (which apparently is a royal effing mess for programmers to deal with). But Adobe Media Encoder and Resolve both make gorgeous H.264's.

I also spoke with SMPTE about the need for a SMPTE approval process for media *players*. Avid touts that DNx is SMPTE VC-3 certified (which Prores is not). But if the player isn't doing what it should, then even a SMPTE compliant file will still look wrong.

Avid maybe very well be right that it isn't their fault, but Adobe and Davinci have found workarounds to make the files look as they should, AFAICT.
 
Thanks everyone for your comments. I will let you know what I come up with.
 
Peter Moretti said:
Color accuracy is the main reason why I've been blowing up the Davinci board, lol! When I create an H.264 from Resolve it looks gorgeous and plays properly on every machine, AFAICT. With MC, they look like crap.
Click to expand...
As long as you put a second of color bars and/or gray scale in each render, then check the internal scopes, you'll know very quickly if the levels are right. One of the most critical issues of post is you have to check the workflow.
 
Marc, I definitely agree with that and its usefulness!!

The problem I regularly confront is creating files for all different sorts of people to look at. They could be producers, investors, actors, writers, friends, confidants, etc.. I have no idea what computer, OS version or media player any of these folks are using. (And they don't have scopes or any kind of color calibrated viewing device.)

I've found that the H.264's out of Resolve and Adobe reliably look the same across these different variables. But the ones from Media Composer don't. It has to do with flags that are set inside the QT container. I've gone so far as to use a hex editor to set some of these flags manually. It doesn't always work b/c the deep inner workings of QT are poorly documented... and I'm not a developer, lol.

So the issue is really with QT container's flags that determine how the file is decoded, not how the essence itself was encoded. ...Well there is also a problem with the file encode itself, which has to do with the utterly crappy H.264 compressor MC uses. The artifacting is atrocious. That's b/c MC uses the H.264 compressor that is native inside QT, not something like x264.

Now with the EOL of QT, maybe this will get better inside MC.
 
Peter Moretti said:
Hi Nick, thanks for the tips, which I'm sure will be helpful! What I was talking about above was that when I would be working on a project in MC, I would send out H.264 QT's to other people, and depending on the media player, platform and OS version of that platform, there would be color range shifts, gamma shifts. Add to that the just generally crappy encoding quality of MC's H.264's, and I wound up with some pretty horrendous files.

I've spoken to Avid at length about this, and it wasn't their problem, it was with QT (which apparently is a royal effing mess for programmers to deal with). But Adobe Media Encoder and Resolve both make gorgeous H.264's.

I also spoke with SMPTE about the need for a SMPTE approval process for media *players*. Avid touts that DNx is SMPTE VC-3 certified (which Prores is not). But if the player isn't doing what it should, then even a SMPTE compliant file will still look wrong.

Avid maybe very well be right that it isn't their fault, but Adobe and Davinci have found workarounds to make the files look as they should, AFAICT.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, Avid is terrible at making QT's. We always just export the Same as Source and make in Sorenson. You can tell Avid gave up on QT encoding, when they GIVE you Sorenson for free.
 
So true, LOL! :smilielol5::crazy:
 
MC just uses the basic QuickTime engine to do it encoding outputs which is crappy to start. I always export OP1a out of MC because it is fast and does not have to deal with the MOV wrapper and its mood swings for how to play back a file. From there I encode in a dedicated encoder like Sorenson, Adobe Media Encoder, etc. Here is a blog I did on using OP1a:

http://24p.com/wordpress/?p=278


Michael
 
Michael, I read the blog post. Thanks very much, I especially like the ClipToolz suggestion. One downside, IIUC, is that you are limited to the DNx codecs, right?
 
Thanks Marc! And some of the features in the paid version look pretty great, like scopes.
 
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