Insider Knowledge - A better way to grade Ursa Mini CinemaDNGs

Here comes another one...

Finally finished the second tutorial in the Insider Knowledge series. This time I turn my attention the Ursa Mini. And I show you how to bypass the not so great BMD Film Log start point when working with CinemaDNG files inside Resolve. I show you how to get access to the full dynamic range, richer colours throughout the full range and all in a curve thats a lot nicer to grade than BMD Film.

Corrections

CaptainHook from Blackmagic Design has been in touch with a few corrections. First of all the BMD 4.6k Film curve is actually able to hold all of the dynamic range of the sensor. It just stores the brightest highlights beyond the standard range. This is so that the image occupies the full range of code values, making use of all the available bits in the container. This is actually smart for formats such as 10bit Prores 422HQ and even 12bit Prores 4444 as the Ursa Mini records. It's not something you would normally see in raw formats as raw gets decoded into a much higher precision 32bit float space, so distributing the data the way this curve does is unnecessary. Keeping the curve consistent between Prores and raw is likely the reason it behaves this way.

The saturation issue is apparently a bug in the way Resolve interprets the old pre V3 colour science. Apparently no one who has downloaded and worked with this footage or shot their own pre V3 footage noticed or reported it. It should be fixed with the current V3 colour science.