I've asked a version of this question before, and found a workaround solution that worked for a while. But now I'm at a point that I'd like to find a real answer to my problem.
So I edit and color my films in Davinci Resolve 12, and I publish to YouTube.
My workaround workflow has been as follows:
- Shoot with my Canon SL1
- Copy the footage to my hard drive and then into Davinci it goes (I don't transcode cause I don't have room)
- Edit, color, do everything within Davinci
- Export from Davinci using the default QuickTime MPEG4 Video setting
- (Convert to x264 using Handbrake, send to client to watch via Google Drive; make changes as requested)
- Final convert for YouTube using MPEG Streamclip
- Upload to YouTube
If it helps here's the settings I use for MPEG Streamclip:
That workflow has worked well for 1080p videos up until this point.
The problem is, I'm trying to upload a 4K video now. When I try to convert this video, I get a screen that says compression error. (and nothing else) Since I never really liked this workflow from the start, I thought I'd take this opportunity to figure out the right way to do this.
The problem that made me use my workaround workflow in the first place:
Whenever I try to upload videos I've converted using Handbrake to YouTube, they look fine when I play them locally with VLC on my computer, but on YouTube they look pretty bad; the dark parts of the image become far too black.
I've researched this a lot and I think the problem has something to do with changing the RGB levels from full to limited. (0-255 to 16-235) From my understanding, this would change everything in the video below brightness value 16 to totally black. That makes sense as far as what's happening to me, so I think that's what's happening when I upload to YouTube.
So, my question is: How do I get exactly what I watch in Davinci to exist on YouTube when exporting in 4K?
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!