User Manual

Data Levels Settings and Conversions
Different media formats use different ranges of values to represent image data. Since these
data formats often correspond to different output workflows (cinema vs. broadcast), it helps to
know where your project’s media files are coming from, and where they’re going, in order to
define the various data range settings in DaVinci Resolve and preserve your program’s
dataintegrity.
To generalize, with 10-bit image values (with a numeric range of 0–1023), there are two different
data levels (or ranges) that can be used to store image data when writing to media file formats
such as QuickTime, MXF, or DPX. These ranges are:
 Video: Typically used by Y’CBCR video data. All image data from 0 to 100 percent must
fit into the numeric range of 64–940. Specifically, the Y’ component’s range is 64–940,
while the numeric range of the CB and CR components is 64–960. The lower range of
4–63 is reserved for “blacker-than-black,” and the higher ranges of 941/961–1019 are
reserved for “super-white.” These “out of bounds” ranges are recorded in source media
as undershoots and overshoots, but they’re not acceptable for broadcast output.
 Full: Typical for RGB 444 data acquired from digital cinema cameras, or film scanned
to DPX image sequences. All image data from 0 to 100 percent is simply fit into the full
numeric range of 4 to 1023.
Keep in mind that every digital image, no matter what its format, has absolute minimum and
maximum levels, referred to in this section as 0–100 percent. Whenever media using one data
range is converted into another data range, each color component’s minimum and maximum
data levels are remapped so that the old minimum value is scaled to the new data level
minimum, and the old maximum value is scaled to the new data level maximum:
 (minimum Video Level) 64 = 4 (Data Level minimum)
 (maximum Video Level) 940 or 960 = 1023 (Data Level maximum)
Converting Between Ranges and Clipping
Simply converting an image from one data range to another should result in a seamless change.
All “legal” data from 0–100 percent is always preserved and is linearly scaled from the previous
data range to fit into the new data range.
The exceptions to this are undershoots and overshoots that you’ve deliberately set, also
referred to as out-of-bounds levels. The overshoots and undershoots that are allowable in
“Video Levels” media (known as sub-black or super-black and super-white) are usually clipped
when converted to full-range “Full Levels.” However, DaVinci Resolve preserves this data
internally, and these clipped pixels of detail in the undershoots and overshoots are still
retrievable by making suitable adjustments in the Color page to bring them back into the
“legal” range.
The out-of-bounds image data that’s preserved within the headroom of Video Levels by
DaVinci Resolve while working is usually clipped, however, when you either output to video or
render your output. There are two settings that let you get around this for instances where you
want to preserve these levels:
 A checkbox in the Video Monitoring group of the Master settings, “Retain sub-black
and super-white data,” lets DaVinci Resolve output undershoots (sub-black) and
overshoots (super-white) to video when Data Level is set to Video. When this is turned
off, these out-of-bounds values are clipped on output.
 A checkbox in the Advanced settings of the Render settings in the Deliver page,
“Retain sub-black and super-white data,” lets DaVinci Resolve render undershoots (sub-
black) and overshoots (super-white) to exported media when Data Level is set to Video.
Chapter – 7 Data Levels, Color Management, and ACES 218