Display Referred, Scene Referred, Timeline Colorspace

[Jackey Lee]

Hi All,

I'm an aspiring colorist trying to learn how to grade professionally in Davinci Resolve. I have two questions that confuses me and I hope that I could have some insight from the community.

1. There are two terms that was constantly mentioned in articles and tutorials, display referred and scene referred. I work in Davinci YRGB which is a display referred color managment system. However, I'm grading everything prior to the color space transform which is a scene referred color grade workflow. Therefore, am I working in display, scene referred, or both?

2. I was wondering what preferences does everyone have for timeline colorspace. I currently do a CST to transform my log footages into DWG and set my timeline color space to DWG. From what I understand, timeline color space affects how the coloring tools behave. Are there any benefits coloring in the camera color space (Arri LogC) instead of DWG. 

Thanks for your insight and time to reply this post.

Cheers,

[vincenzo andolina]

Hi Jackey, 

1- If you are doing your corrections and grade before the output transform, then you are working scene referred.

On 2/20/2024 at 4:31 AM, Jackey Lee said:

From what I understand, timeline color space affects how the coloring tools behave.

2-  Correct.
About your final question it just depends. Do you want that project to be future-proof? What if the client will ask before final delivery for an hdr version? Do you have a lot of different cameras (think about documentaries) that needs to be matched, maybe using RCM or Aces could be a good choice instead of managing everything with groups and node based color management. It is just up to client/delivery needs and you personal preference.

Personally for commercials I use resolve YRGB and match the timeline color space to the main camera so color space aware tools/ofx will behave the right way. When there is even the smallest possibility that later we could have to switch to hdr or for long format with hdr delivery I use Aces.