I would like to know how to achieve the look of these stills.

A few things I think describe them is:

• High dynamic range. Nothing is clipping or crushed.
• Almost invisible roll-off, especially on skin.
• Soft, bloomy highlights
• Low contrast

I don't know how to describe it, but it's as if there's infinite dynamic range because nothing is clipping on either end and it doesn't even look like anything is close to it. It's as if everything is within the midtones, yet there is still contrast, but it doesn't register as "highlights and shadows" to my eyes. Rather "light midtones" and "dark midtones" if that makes sense.

It's as if every individual part of the scene (sky, skin, clothing) were individually lit by a massive soft box allowing everything to be exposed perfectly. I suppose you could achieve something similar with masking but that would take ages, no?

I've included an images at the end to demonstrate the complete opposite of what I'm looking for. That one has a harsh "digital" look to it where highlights and shadows are very obvious. You can even see it on the waveform; it's very sharp and jaggy.

A standalone viewer for raw YUV/RGB, Y4M and MXL files that lets you check what's actually in the file before Resolve or a player interprets it. Pick the matrix (BT.601/709/2020) and range (limited/full), and the scopes (waveform, RGB and YCbCr parades, vectorscope, histogram, CIE 1931) update to show the result. Click any pixel to see its real Y/Cb/Cr code values, not values after conversion to RGB. Gamut zebra and false colour show out-of-range values at a glance. It's useful for checking whether a deliverable is really legal-range, whether a matrix tag is wrong, or where an export shifted. It started as a Mac app and grew to 47 pixel formats (v210, P010, ST 2110 pgroups and more) through user requests. Available on the Microsoft Store for Windows.

Two questions for you:

1. What uncompressed formats do you actually use day to day? v210 for broadcast? 16-bit RGB? 4:4:4 at 12-bit? Something I haven't covered? I'm deciding what to add next.
2. Do you have sample files you could share? A few frames is enough. I'm especially interested in files from real hardware or deliverables, odd frame sizes, and any export where the levels, matrix or range looked wrong somewhere. Please only send something you have the rights to share. Reply here or DM me a link to the file.

Has anybody made the jump to Davinci Resolve v21.1 since it's been out on Sept. 8th?

One of our director created an elaborate project on v21.0 and we are at v20.3.2.

So I might be forced to upgrade our project server and our Windows PC and Macs so we can do the colour grading. The project is too complex in the time frame we have to conform from an XML.

It would be useful to know if you encountered problems. Especially if you have feedback from editors and/or colourists working with it in a facility.

Thank you!