User Manual

Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display
Most computer displays do not operate at the color critical tolerances or specifications
required for broadcast or theatrical delivery. An additional issue, however, is that the
Viewer does not necessarily display each clip’s image data as it is displayed by the
calibration that your operating system applies to your computer display, depending on
which OS you’re running DaVinci Resolve on. This makes your computer display
potentially unsuitable for monitoring projects destined for the sRGB standard of the
web in its default state. For example, if you grade a project using the Color page
Viewer on your computer display, the resulting clip may not look the same in the
QuickTime player, or in other post-production applications.
You can address this in one of two ways:
 If you’re using DaVinci Resolve on macOS, you can turn on “Use Mac Display
Color Profile for viewers” in the Hardware Configuration panel of the System
Settings. This lets DaVinci Resolve use one whichever of the color profiles you
choose in the Color tab of the Displays panel in the macOS System Preferences,
thereby taking advantage of ColorSync on macOS to let DaVinci Resolve display
color the way your computer monitor does. This now works for all color profiles
that ship with macOS, even ones generated by calibration software, such as that
available from X-rite, Datacolor, or other applications. On supported computers,
there’s also an option to “Use 10-bit precision in viewers,” if available, that you
can turn on. With this option enabled, rendered output displayed in QuickTime
Player will match what is seen in the DaVinci Resolve Viewer.
 Alternately, you can apply a dedicated Color Viewer LUT for calibration, using
the 1D/3D Color Viewer Lookup Table drop-down menu that’s found in the
Color Management panel of the Project Settings. This lets you analyze your
computer display for calibration in the same way you would calibrate an external
display, using a probe and color management software, and apply the resulting
calibration LUT in DaVinci Resolve. Keep in mind that monitor calibration can only
make a high quality display standards compliant; it cannot make up for a display
gamut that’s too small. For more information, see the “Lookup Tables” section of
Chapter 3, “System and User Preferences.”
Strictly speaking, if you’re doing professional work, you should restrict your grading to a
calibrated, 10- or 12-bit class A external broadcast display of some type, connected via
a Blackmagic Design video interface. Assuming everything is running properly, an
image that is output to video from DaVinci Resolve should match an image output to
video from any other post-production application you’re using, and this should be your
basis for comparison when examining the output of two different applications.
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