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Davinci Resolve settings to edit iPhone SDR and HDR videos

Davinci Resolve (DR) is a free, popular, powerful, and fully featured video editor. Many of the features are designed for professional editors using footage shot in raw or Log that require colour correction to be applied. However, setting it up to edit out of camera footage without any colour correction can be challenging as there are multiple settings to get right.

Apple Macbook Pro computers from 2021 and later have an XDR (HDR) display that can be used successfully to edit both SDR and HDR footage but setting up DR to do so correctly can be puzzling. Sometimes footage looks over saturated after it is imported into DR’s timeline, and sometimes footage can look washed out when it is exported. The settings below ensure out of camera footage from recent iPhones looks identical to:
– the footage after it is imported into a DR Timeline without using any LUTs or colour adjustments; and
– footage exported from DR after edits have been done.

The simple test you can do with your settings (to compare it with the ones below) is to import the out of camera footage into a timeline, select 1-2 seconds, export the selection, and comapre the exported footage. Does it look identical to the original? The best test footage to use is to shoot a color reference target like the X-Rite Colorchecker, but any scene with a variety of colors and good dynamic range will do. The only change you should notice is that the exported footage is that it will have a different codec to the original footage.

SDR footage. Footage when HDR Video setting is turned off.

Display setting for SDR

– Choose the Display Preset HDTV Video. It is one of the Reference Modes. The XDR Display (P3-1600) setting also works and allows adjust to the screen brightness to suit your environment
– Create a new project in DR with Color Management setting for Color Space & Transforms using DaVinci YRGB Color Science, Timeline color space: Rec.709-A and Output color space “Same as Timeline”. You can also choose DaVinci YRGB Color Managed with SDR as the Color processing mode and SDR Rec.709 Output color space. Either will work.

DR settings for SDR

– Import the footage and place in a Timeline. Open the original footage in Quicktime Player. The footage should look identical (color and luminance) to the footage in the Timeline.
– Go to the Deliver tab and choose an export profile eg H264 Master or H265 Master. Do not make any adjustments to the presets. Export the footage and open in Quicktime Player. The footage should look identical to the source and timeline.

HDR footage*. When HDR Video is turned on.

Display settings for HDR

– Choose the Display Preset HDR Video (P3-ST 2084). This is critical to get the correct luminance. The screen might look dark compared to what you may be used to but it will display the HDR luminance range correctly
– Create a new project in DR with Color Management setting for Color Space & Transforms using DaVinci YRGB Color Managed, Color processing mode HDR and Output color space HDR HLG.
– *These settings only apply if you are working on a MacBook Pro with an XDR display. Editing HDR footage on a non-HDR display will require different settings.

DR HDR settings

– Import the footage and place in a Timeline. Open the original footage in Quicktime Player. The footage should look identical (color and luminance) to the footage in the Timeline.
– Go to the Deliver tab and choose the export profile H265 Master, do not make any changes to the preset. Export the footage and open in Quicktime Player. The footage should look identical to the source and timeline.

These settings also work for out of camera footage from Sony mirrorless cameras in two cases:

A. For SDR content with picture profile OFF and using a Creative Look setting. Footage from the camera use the colourspace/gamma Rec.709A. This is the same as an iPhone’s SDR footage.

B. For HDR content with picture profile PP10, the footage is in HLG BT2020 which is the same as an iPhone’s HDR footage

Jul 04, 2025 | Categories: Tech, Tutorial | Comments Off on Davinci Resolve settings to edit iPhone SDR and HDR videos

Setup IPv6 vlans on unifi with a /56 prefix on Unifi and NBN

I haven’t found any examples of how to setup ipv6 vlans on Unifi Network with a /56 prefix.

I have a service with Superloop in Australia. Superloop provides customers with a /56 IPv6 address. This means that with the appropriate router, you can setup 256 subnets. However, with Ubiquiti Unifi routers, it’s not clear how to assign a subnet to a VLAN. This is what works for me:

Assume I have 4 VLANs. Default, IoT, Servers, and Security. And I have this IPv6 prefix from my ISP 2401:8888:1234:a000::/56

You can see from using a subnet calculator that this gives the subnets :a000:: to :a0ff::

2401:8888:1234:a000::/64
2401:8888:1234:a001::/64
2401:8888:1234:a002::/64
…
2401:8888:1234:a0ff::/64

The Unifi Network app will automatically assign your VLANs with a subnet starting from “a000” once you choose either the SLAAC or DHCPv6 option for client address assignment – see screenshot below. And each VLAN you enable with either IPv6 SLAAC or DHCPv6 will get the next subnet. “…a000::”, then “…a001::”, “…a002::” and so on. You can’t choose which subnet prefix, it does this automatically. The configuration page (Settings/Networks/<Network name>) does say that the ability to select the subnet will be something that may be provided in the future, but not being able to choose doesn’t affect much for me.

I’ve tested this with both SLAAC and DHCPv6 and either works fine with my ISP. Note if you have Android devices on your network, SLAAC is recommended.

Unifi setup for SLACC

Feb 20, 2025 | Categories: Tech, Tutorial | Comments Off on Setup IPv6 vlans on unifi with a /56 prefix on Unifi and NBN

Time Machine on macOS can chew up disk space for photographers

Public service announcement for photographers and anyone that add and delete lots of files on their Apple Mac computers.

If you’re using a Mac, and your disk seems to be filling up even though you’re deleting files, check if you’re using Time Machine (TM) for backups. If you are, Time Machine’s Snapshots is 99% going to be chewing up your disk. Here’s why…

Snapshots is macOS approach to create a restore point so you get your Mac to a known state. It does this by combining the last TM backup with a snapshot. The backup has all the files just before the snapshot and the snapshot has all the files that you have deleted since the backup.

So, let’s say you’ve just copied from your camera 1000 photos for editing and have now decided to move those 1000 photos to an external disk, NAS or just delete them. Even though you’ve deleted the 1000 photos, macOS has kept them in the Snapshot, and will keep them in Snapshots until a TM backup has been done. It will still keep those on your disk until at least 24 hours after the TM backup, because that’s what it does. So your 256GB or 512GB SSD is going to fill up pretty quickly and deleting files isn’t going to get you back your disk space until you’ve done a TM backup, and then 24 hours later.

But, luckily there’s a simple solution. Go into the Disk Utility App and choose Show APFS Snapshots in the View menu. Select your disk and you’ll see probably several Snapshots. Click on the – sign and you can delete the snapshots, start with the most recent going back to the earliest. And Voila. Disk space reclaimed. Of course, if you do that, you won’t be able to recover the files in the snapshot. But since you deleted them anyway, you probably don’t want them.

And, the way to avoid this and keep using Time Machine is to create a separate disk Volume that is excluded in Time Machine backups. You need to create a separate volume because excluding a Folder in TM won’t stop TM keeping the deleted files in the snapshot, it just stops TM from backing up that folder.

More technical details about snapshots here https://eclecticlight.co/2024/04/08/apfs-snapshots/

Nov 17, 2024 | Categories: Reviews, Tech, Tutorial | Comments Off on Time Machine on macOS can chew up disk space for photographers

Swapping a UDM Base for a UCG-Max

I’ve had a Ubiquiti Unifi Dream Machine for almost five years powering an NBN Fibre Gigabit service. Knowing that the probability of electronics that run 24/7 tend to go bang goes up every year it was time to swap it out for something more current and keep the UDM as a backup router/gateway.

Ubiquiti has released a lot of new equipment this year and one that is ticking a lot of boxes and have received good reviews is the Unifi Cloud Gateway Max, aka UCG-Max. This is essentially an upgraded UDM without a built in wifi access point. The UCG has not only the Network app that delivers the routing, VLAN and firewall, but several other applications in the Ubiquiti universe like Protect which is used to manage cameras. The other main feature is that it features 2.5Gbps ports and can route traffic at 1.5Gbps with a packet inspection firewall turned on.

Migrating from the UDM to the UCG is incredibly straightforward. Backup the system, and restore it to the new device. Unplug the UDM and replace it with the UCG. The following video shows how it’s done.

Oct 26, 2024 | Categories: Internet, Tech, Tutorial | Comments Off on Swapping a UDM Base for a UCG-Max

The book that inspired me to love design

When Apple created the Macintosh, Steve Jobs also created the Laserwriter. It was Steve’s interest in “typography, graphic layout, and font design” that led to the Apple Laserwriter and the birth of what was then known as desktop publishing. Consumers had for the first time access to beautiful proportionally spaced type and fonts without having to go to a specialist offset printer. Apple made a little booklet called The Basic Elements of Design and it’s a wonderful introduction to typography, page layout and text-based graphic design. To this day, it’s the book that inspired me to love text based design. While the booklet is out of print, you can download a PDF of it here.

Oct 07, 2024 | Categories: Design, Tutorial | Comments Off on The book that inspired me to love design