Hi everyone,

I have a UHD film that might benefit from a quick regrade.
I normally use Resolve for corrections or regrades, but the free version seems to have issues with .265 video which might make it hard to use proxies. I have a LUT that I'd start off with.

Has anyone had experience regrading .265 video?

Thanks!

Are you looking to regrade in HDR? Pretty sure you need that paid version of Resolve for that.

I wasn't necessarily, but that's good to know! Thanks!

Edit: The website states that the free version supports HDR but only in 8-bit video. So I'd likely need the Studio version.

I would say you shouldn't edit or grade in 264 or 265. Pretty much every NLE has some issues with both formats. That's not to say you can't do it but there is always a chance of a dropped, improperly decoded frame, etc.

Best practice would be converting whatever you have to Prores, DNx or a similar format designed to be edited and then generate proxies for 4K if needed. But that's just me.

You don't need Resolve Studio to work with HDR per–say so much as it limits access to certain tools.

HDR in comparison to SDR is essentially a lower–saturated color space that operates on a LOG–like curve.

Depending on what you want to do with it, you could do a color managed workflow of some sort and convert it to a medium color format—like Da Vinci Wide or ACES—and then output again to SDR / HDR. In theory, HDR would be left intact (where if you did nothing grading–wise, it should look the same) and SDR would be a loose portview of how it'd look in HDR (as I assume you'd have no way of truly telling how it looks otherwise).

If you just want to apply a LUT to it though, always supposing the LUT is actually formatted for an HDR input, you could probably apply it using something like AviSynth.

Thanks PDB, Lucas.
I was thinking to convert it to ProRes but do just want to apply a LUT.

(2024-12-03, 08:47 AM)Serums Wrote: Thanks PDB, Lucas.
I was thinking to convert it to ProRes but do just want to apply a LUT.

What kind of LUT is it you have in mind? Usually they expect Rec.709–Rec.709 inputs and tend to only work in specific situations. Depending on the kind you have at hand, it would affect how to apply it to the footage.

Depending on the LUT, you might be able to also open it up in some text editor and see if there are any comments at the start of it that specifies the expected input–output spaces.

For example...

LUTs/Film Looks/Rec709 Kodak 2383 D65.cube Wrote:# Resolve Film Look LUT
# Input: Cineon Log
# : floating point data (range 0.0 - 1.0)
# Output: Kodak 2383 film stock 'look' with D65 White Point
# : floating point data (range 0.0 - 1.0)
# Display: ITU-Rec.709, Gamma 2.4

One I generated with DrDre's tool. I'll check the colour spaces.

(2024-12-08, 03:22 AM)Serums Wrote: One I generated with DrDre's tool. I'll check the colour spaces.

If it's done with Dr. Dre, then it's technically whatever your color spaces are for the input before–after and reference images, allowing you to bypass color science issues possibly.

Course, I don't recommend doing this, but depending on the level of error you're okay with (as I assume Dr. Dre's works most optimally with particularly dynamic image possible rather than something that's flat and desaturated), you could straight match up Rec.2020 PQ inputs to a Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 output, or alternatively another Rec.2020 PQ output. It all depends on your delivery I suppose.

I would love a guide on how to convert from a HDR UHD file to a 10bit intermediate codec for editing / grading, then back out of the NLE (Premiere) to a file for encoding (in x265 or similar).
I've never been successful in my trials, and over the past few years have had no time to research and experiment.

I'd really like to get back into fan projects, as my life has become somewhat monotonous and all this really gave me something to combat that
So any of your shared knowledge would really help me cut to actually start editing.