This is a short video illustrating how to colour match raw videos shot with 2 Canon C200 using different lenses and one Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K with Davinci Resolve and the ACES colour space.

Rename the C200 proxy files so that they have the same names of the raw files. You can do this manually or you can use my MATLAB code that I illustrated in a previous video.

sourceDirectory = '\C_raw\'; % contains proxyes and RAW
destinationFolder = '\C_proxy\'; % will contain renamed proxyes
names = dir(sourceDirectory);
  for i = 3 : numel(names)
      if isequal(names(i).name(end-2:end), 'CRM')
           date = names(i).date;
           for j = 3 : numel(names)
               if isequal(names(j).name(end-2:end), 'MP4')
                   if abs(datetime(names(j).date)- datetime(date)) < duration(0,0,2)
                       movefile([sourceDirectory names(j).name],...
                           [destinationFolder names(i).name(1:end-4) '.MP4']); 
                   end
               end
           end         
      end
  end

The reason why I use the C200 proxy files is because I usually do a rough cut in Premiere Pro and then colour grade in Resolve.

If you want to generate proxies for the Black Magic files you can do that in Resolve.

Open Premiere Pro. Since I have three cameras here I just align the clips and created a multicamera composition. I can use the multicam to cut the timeline later. These are my three shots. For this demonstration I’ll need the three of them one after the one. So I duplicate this with alt + drag and change camera by pressing 2 and 3 here.
Go to File > Export -> EDL

In Resolve we are going to work in Aces colour space.

First of all, make sure you are working with the right resolution and frame rate. Then go to Color Management and select ACEScc under Colour Science and ACES 1.1 under ACES version And change ACES Output Device Transform to Rec.709. Import the black magic files and the raw C200 files to resolve. Do not import the C200 proxies.

Go to File -> Import timeline -> EDL, to Import the EDL timeline.

As you can see colours are almost matched, and this is because we are in ACES colour space.

Obviously there are some discrepancies. I have taken shots of the X-Rite colour checker video and we will use this to fix three things:

  • Differences between lenses
  • Slight differences in exposure
  • White balance correction

Before proceeding I place the clips one on top of each other because I want to find a point where the colour chart is uniformly exposed. Go to Colour Match panel, select the colour chart and use these parameters: linear, linear, and ACES. Adjust the window… and press ok. Repeat the same thing for the other clips.

We can check if the colours match by drawing a square around the calibration chart. Before we check the vectorscope I want to adjust the size calibration chart in the first clip. As you can see from the Parade, the waveform, and the Vectorscope, colours and exposure as almost perfectly matched.

As an extra, I will just remove the green screen. I will just place a random image in the timeline and reorder the the original clips in the timeline. Change the ACES input transform to sRGB or whatever colorspace of the background image. Right click here and add Alpha output and connect. Click on the qualifier, and swap the colours. You can then play with the Qualifier parameters to adjust. Note that in this specific case there is green in my shorts and in the thing I am holding. This is just a rough test. Then of course you can add a power window to isolate the subject. You can see the result in the edit panel. This is very rough test but it should give an idea of how to proceed.