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judge color accuracy via the calibrated broadcast display you’re outputting to. Essentially, you are the color management, in conjunction with a trustworthy broadcast display that’s been calibrated to ensure accuracy.
DaVinci Resolve 12 introduced a color science option called “DaVinci YRGB Color Managed,” or more simply “Resolve Color Management” (RCM). This introduced a so-called “Scene Referred” color
management scheme, in which you have the option of matching each type of media you’ve imported into your project with a color profile that informs DaVinci Resolve how to represent each specific color from each clip’s native color space within the common working color space of the timeline in which you’re editing, grading, and finishing.
This is important, because two clips that contain the same RGB value for a given pixel may in actuality be representing different colors at that pixel, depending on the color space that was originally associated with each captured clip. This is the case when you compare raw clips shot with different cameras made by different manufacturers, and it’s especially true if you compare clips recorded using the differing log-encoded color spaces that are unique to each camera.
This Scene Referred component of color management via RCM doesn’t do your grading for you, but it does try to ensure that the color and contrast from each different media format you’ve imported into your project are represented accurately in your timeline. For example, if you use two different manufacturer’s cameras to shoot green trees, recording Blackmagic Film color space on one, and recording to the Sony SGamut3.Cine/SLog3 color space on the other, you can now use RCM to make
sure that the green of the trees in one set of clips match the green of the trees in the other, within the shared color space of the Timeline.
It should be mentioned that this sort of thing can also be done manually in a more conventional Display Referred workflow, by assigning LUTs that are specific to each type of media, or using Color Space Transform Resolve FX in order to transform each clip from the source color space to the destination color space that you require. However, RCM’s automation can make this process
faster by freeing you from the need to locate and maintain a large number of LUTs to accommodate your various workflows. Also, the matrix math used by RCM (as well as the Color Space Transform operation) extracts high-precision, wide-latitude image data from each supported camera format, preserving high-quality image data from acquisition, through editing, color grading, and output. These are all advantages when compared to lookup tables, which can have plenty of precision, but can clip out-of-bounds image data and introduce issues when differing lookup table interpolation methods cause minor inconsistencies with color space transformations from application to application.
The preservation of wide-latitude image data deserves elaboration. LUTs clip image detail that goes outside of the numeric range they’re designed to handle, so this often requires the colorist to make a pre-LUT adjustment to “pull back” image data in the highlights that you want to retrieve. Using RCM eliminates this two-step process, since the input color space matrix operations used to transform the source preserves all wide-latitude image data, making highlights easily retrievable without any extra steps.
Updated RCM In DaVinci Resolve 17
In version 17, DaVinci Resolve introduced the biggest improvements to Resolve Color Management (RCM) since it was originally introduced, adding numerous features to simplify setup, improve image quality, and make the “feel” of your grading controls more consistent. Specific improvements include improved metadata management for incoming media files that support color metadata, a new wide gamut color space suitable for using as your default Timeline working color space for any program,