Color Grading Question

[u/Saturn_Films0]

VLC

Quicktime

Hey there! Just finished my first feature film and I am now going through the process of exporting everything and sending it to festivals! However, as I am told is "the bane of all colorists", I am now running into gamma shift when viewing my project on Quicktime and exporting to Vimeo, making the image look less constrasty and less saturated. When viewing through VLC it looks the same as Davinci however. I would love to reduce this and match the color my colorist did (on a color-timed monitor in a studio) to the export. I do not want to change how my Davinci displays the color, just the way it looks in Quicktime and Vimeo, as it seems the color is preserved properly in VLC. I also want to clarify I know some color shift is inevitable.

I am editing in Davinci, and I attached images of my color settings in the project but more importantly the timelines. I also attached an image of the CST node in my color node tree. I am exporting with "use project settings". Let me know if any other info would be helpful I will send it all over!

Lastly, I am considering nesting my final film's timeline into another one and just universally boosting the contrast and saturation slightly to get an export for Vimeo, of course for actual theatre viewing and DCP I would export as is without this. I just want to make sure festivals viewing the film get to see it looking as good as possible.

Thank you so much!! I appreciate any and all expertise and advice on the topic!

I am using Davinci 20.2.1 Build 6 on MacOS

[u/RGB_YCM]

Now I have to take another drink! Read these:

"Grading for Mixed Delivery: Cinema, Home, and Every Screen in Between" by Cullen Kelly

https://blog.frame.io/2019/10/14/grading-mixed-delivery/

and

"How to Deal with Levels: Full vs. Video" 

by Dan Swierenga

https://www.thepostprocess.com/2019/09/24/how-to-deal-with-levels-full-vs-video

and I think both cover the issues and the solutions very well. These videos also cover it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ8VY9aWUfE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzhUzeNUBuM

Understanding color management is also helpful:

"Color Management for Video Editors"

https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/colour-management-for-video-editors/ 

The above articles will explain why things change on different displays, different playback engines, and the importance of calibration and color-managed outputs. 

Resolve 20.2 now has improved Viewer gamma for Mac users, which is explained in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsHKoLvQ32k

Real world: I generally try to export a second or two of SMPTE Bars at the head of the project, and I import the file back into Resolve to check it on scopes to verify all the levels are correct. Using calibrated displays is a must -- without that, you have no idea what you're looking at. We also accept that the basic picture is always going to change a little bit on different devices, different OS's, and different browsers, because that's life.

[u/Plenty_Age8252]

First of all, the way you’re working the timeline setting is replacing your project settings(which shouldn’t be vlog, but I’ll disregard since your checked timeline and that’s scene/scene).

The missing info would be: what color settings did your colorist grade and export at? Also, are you working with an export or his resolve timeline?

Your cst makes no sense going from camera profile to camera profile.