How to Grade Blackmagic Camera Footage 

Little tip: if you're trying out different settings such as input color space in the project settings window, you can move the window to the side and use Alt+ click save to see your changes without closing the window every time.

If the footage is in braw, and you don't specify project level camera raw- settings in your project settings, you can see which color science the footage was shot in the RAW tab of color page. Also, one BM Ursa Mini Pro G1/G2 specific thing to watch out for is that in some low-light conditions those cameras can be prone to fix pattern noise in the shadow areas. That may require some massaging of the low end of your contrast curve.

As part of the setup you can also go to the Blackmagic RAW tab (first in the line above the wheels). This allows you to recover highlights, and make overall adjustments to exposure, tint and so on - all part of delivering that best starting point even before you provide the look...

When working on projects in school I have tried to include color space as a part of the camera report, but I noticed a lot of my fellow classmates don't really think that much about color space, so often I don't get the information needed. For my own movie, which was shot on Arri Alexa, I was very clear on needing the color space written down. But there are people in my class that filmed on black magic pocket 4k, and I never found out which color space they filmed on. In our 1st year we all filmed on black magic, and I noticed my newer grades of my old films are a lot better now that I learned how color spaces work. I am a bit sad we didnt learn about it in school though.

Knowing which specific Blackmagic camera the footage was shot on also helps with the educated guess. For example, if the footage was coming from a Pocket 4K or 6K, chances are it was shot with the Film Gen 5 color science (unless the camera was on super old firmware which would mean it was shot with Film Gen 4). BMD's naming conventions kinda suck so I totally feel for DPs and ACs that get asked what color gamut they shot with on set by post-production houses lol

Beautiful explanation for only scratching the surface. Wonderful video!

Working on a short film that was shot with Blackmagic Cameras right now. I have the BRAW files and what i did was in the RAW settings I changed it to DWG and Davinci Intermediate Gen 5 and started grading from there.

I have learnt soo much from Cullen… become a more pro colorist just by following through these teachings and other good ones at TAC

Thanks for this video. I looking longtime how to color grading blackmagic camera. Very thankful

Color management plays a critical role in printing, this is the first time I’ve seen it applied to video!

A super useful one ! I agree that BlackMagic should definilty do something about their color management, it's so confusing sometimes xD I often go with Film gen 5 and wide gamut gen 4/5 when using CST's, even done a preset for my sandwich DWG color management so I don't have to set it up again on each single project :D By the way great tip about Film being associated with log, I didn't know that. Next time it'll avoid me having to search in the Video ones ;) I'll only focus on the ones stating "film" in their name as my potential candidates !

I definitely ran into this and like you said, I just tried them all

Awesome vid, as always! 🎉 Wondering what computer u re using with the color grading level you do. Kind enough as to make a vid on that? I m deciding on one too, my iMac is already struggling now

I can't believe you are addressing this now. Just this days I was researching how to approach color management for BMPCC footage I didn't know how they shot. Believe in coincidences?

You can figure it out by using automatic color management. The image will look how they shot it. Take a still. Then go back to your normal color management settings and find the input color space that matches

Question that im hoping someone can shed some light on, I shot a 3 camera music video with 3 black magic 6k’s (one of them a pro) and one of the 6k’s was accidentally shooting identical settings but prores 422 while the others were shooting 12:1 Braw. Im having a really tough time matching the footage and was wondering if anyone has any knowledge if something like this?

Cullen, i see you work on Mac. Could you please make a video explaining in extreme detail how you set up your color management AND EXPORT SETTINGS AS WELL -- because when i export the gamma always shifts without a doubt, and there doesnt seem to be a clear answer online for this. Many people have different takes. I trust you most, so a video would be extremely helpful for translating what i see in my timeline workspace to an exported playable file Thank you

Again, Cullen, a great teaching. But I do have questions that I trust you might cover in Grade School sometime. I am confused with “Tone Mapping” in the Color Space Transform in the Group Pre-clip and Timeline. I understand matching the Input Gamma to the camera that shot the footage and using Output Color Space to be DWG and Output Gamma to be DaVinci Intermediate, then going from DWG to display device Rec.709 at the end of the process. (Thank you for the great explanations you have made in previous videos). My problem is what do I expect to achieve with each item in Tone Mapping? For instance, if I use other than DaVinci for the Tone Mapping Method and instead use one of the others from the drop-down menu, like Luminance with various Max. Input (nits), what should I expect? The same goes for Max. Output. Then there is Gamut Mapping Method: None, Saturation Compression, Clip. What’s happening? Finally, could you explain the Advanced checkboxes at the bottom and what I should expect from each of them. This seems like a long series of questions so anything you can cover would be greatly appreciated. Les.

Great video, Cullen. Isn't it worth debayering from the raw tab directly into DWG Intermediate?

I'm just wondering if you grade for example BM footage together with DJI for drones and so on. I see you putting the LUT on the overall timeline. How do you get the timeline LUT correspond with the overall clips? And work with different camera settings and color management?

Man I’d love to see you color some Fujifilm footage

Could you please explain your template node structure? Are the nodes on the bottom level, Layer Nodes? And what are you doing on each specific node. Ie. I can see you have a Contrast Pivot node etc. thank you.

Do clip and timeline levels fall under the overall color management in project settings? I’m having to do input and output transforms at the node level and want to know if my output transform should go in the clip level or timeline level. (Davinci isn’t allowing overall color management with vlog from my lumix s5ii, so I’m forced to manage at the node level).

One thing I have been wondering is when using LUT's in the Timeline section, where does this node place itself in the overall grade? For example when using Denoise it's recommended for optimization to put that as the very first node, and something like Sharpen or Grain on the last node.. Where does this node sit on that timeline? Or does it work in a different way altogether and not affect the grading process?

You are over-complicating the whole thing a bit. Since the release of the first Ursa Mini 4.6k in 2016/2017 all cameras add the used color science version into the ProRes footage's metadata under Color Space notes. For BRAW you can check the firmware version under "Camera Firmware" metadata. Overall you can use these information I've compiled for you: Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5k & Original Pocket (have Color Science Gen 1): Color Space: BM Film Gen 1 | Gamma: BM Film |

I shoot on BM cameras and always know which Gamma and colour space I shoot in, but the cameras say nothing nothing about Gen 1 or Gen 3 and sometimes when I choose what seem to be correct options it comes out weird so I end up doing what Cullen did and seeing what works. Confusing.

Why do you bypass color management on the first clip if you picked the color management in the first place? Curious

Hi Cullen, thank you for sharing your knowledge. How do ou think one should handle DNG files from a Blackmagic Production 4K camera ? and the original 1080p camera ? Would you also suggest using the color gen 1 ? Thank you.

I’ve always been curious why there’s not a BMD film gen5 in the CST node.

It's incredibly weird to be working with BRAW and then literally not look at the RAW tab in Resolve. While BRAW "technically" isn't RAW, the RAW decoding section is incredibly relevant to selecting precisely how you want it to decode. Which then affects the input color space in the color management section. Because I've been enjoying using ARRI's tools, I actually decode BRAW into LogC3. From here in the project settings you can have your timeline colorspace in LogC3 and the input color space as LogC3 and use ARRI's LUTs (that are free) to get a powerful look you want quickly and easily. This is generally what I'm doing with all cameras now - and as Cullen says "a image centric workflow" instead of a "camera centric workflow". This works regardless of original color space and gamma. I've even done this workflow on 8-bit Sony files and it works fantastically well, provided the camera was setup properly to begin with and is also inside what an 8-bit camera can reasonably provide.

By the way I have one question : when using CST's (especially for BM footage) we get to pick the colorspace AND gamma in input. But with the project level settings it only allows to pick one colorspace. Should we assume that Resolve is automatically picking the right gamma curve for the chosen colospace ? What if we pick the wrong gamma for a chosen colorspace in CSTs ? That's the confusing part for me xD Especially with BM again, because if we take Arri Wide Gamut, we know that it's either log C3 or log C4. But with BM there are so many options for gamma curves too, is there a chart that can tell us which gamma is associated with which colorspace ? Thx !

I just upgraded to 18.1.4 so maybe I have some sort of system bug going on but whenever I switch the input color space on project settings with Blackmagic 4K BRAW clips nothing happens at all. Even tried on non BM color spaces and it just doesn't change. Definitely has color management on it as it looks decent and I can bypass management in timeline and see the log footage. My settings are exactly like Cullens but nothing updates when trying different input color spaces.

To cut down the time it takes to try different color parameters - you can hit the :Save" button while holding down the Alt/Option key when hitting Save and the change will take hold without the window closing. When trying a bunch of options, and you can see the results in the source monitor- this really makes things a lot faster. Not sure why Blackmagic Design who makes the cameras and the software, can't find the metadata functionality to track the versions and LOG etc. to the BRAW for us to see quickly what was used to shoot the video? You would think that that would be selling point to people for shooters or editor/colorists. If I opened an XAVC file in Sony Catalyst Browser application - I can read the lens setting, Log type and Gamut etc. So it doesn't need to be in RAW for a company to include that in the metadata - so not sure why BMD who holds the cards doesn't accommodate.

Is YRGB color managed preferable to just the YRGB setting?

Can you or anyone please help how to set the color management or cst in resolve for slog3 using phantom luts? Also in this scheme of wide gamut which is like log isn’t it hard to do secondary things like pick up skin colour as everything is more broad so it will be hard to pick? I use it after the phantom put conversion

Finally❤❤❤

Coming from a stills background I'm rather drawn to change some of the camera settings first by clicking on the camera icon. It is raw after all?

So why do some do the color magament through the nodes? That seems useless if you can do it globally on the project settings right from the start. Am I missing something?

Hey cullen, I was wondering why do we have apply resize transformations as gamma. Why not log or any other option?

One of the things you mentioned is not knowing in what color space your own camera shoots. I asked myself this question after watching your video on color management and I have to admit I'm not 100% sure. Where can I find in what color space I shot?

What frames u shot this in ?

a useful lesson, since you often come across a similar question: and in what color space the material was shot.... Answer... mmmm...

Just curious, what would be your input color space and input gamma if you use CSTs?

спасибо!

YES!!!!!!!!!!

so by adding a lut at timeline, then the rest does not apply to the rest of us

I must say. I really love your tutorial. ❤ But there's something that's a bit of concern to me. At the timeline level, can you be more detailed on creating a look, without using LUTS. It'll really help and make you standout more. Thank you 🙏

But isn't there anywhere you can see all the camera metadata including all the camera settings? I cant find it in the clip info or in the media pool or anywhere?

Why not just to start with Davinci automatic Color Management as a starting point?

hm.. your test footage is in Apple ProRes 422 and not in BRAW...

Cullen you're a national treasure in the color grading world! We all need to keep sharing and liking your videos so the RU-vid algorithm help you get more subscribers. You always put out quality content that definitely deserves to be seen be millions of people! 🫡👏🏽

When you say. Color space from the camera when shooting what do you mean ? How do u know. Nothing in camera says “Color Space” 😆

Boys and girls, do note that inputdrt is set to NONE. This is crucial. If you leave it on davinci , the rolloff is completely different

The video starts at 3:42

Am I the only one that has to lower the low-end of the red curve automatically with BMPC4K?

dude, over 9 min in and you haven't started grading on a 12min video...cmon man.

pls make a video for lumix v log footage also

This is why ProRes is such an embarrassing format to shoot in. BRAW has the camera and color science metadata baked in. Also, Gen. 1 color science was released in 2012 - really baffled how/where did you find footage that ancient. The successor, Gen 3 released in 2016 as far as I can tell.

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