This IS the Avid L2: [Avid-L2] LUT level shifts between versions of Avid the Saga Continues

Monday, June 17, 2019

[Avid-L2] LUT level shifts between versions of Avid the Saga Continues

I've posted how I get weird LUT level jumps going between MC 2018.12.1 and MC 2018.12.2 and above using Panasonic's Vlog to Rec 709 LUT from the Panasonic site. The long and short is a project I started in 2018.12.1 I reopened after upgrading to 2018.12.2 and my rendered safe color limit showed the correct video levels but monitoring the clips below the levels were all washed out. There was a history of lut levels changing from Avid 8.4.X to 8.5.X which Avid identified as LUT scaling. That was fixed by 8.6.4 or maybe even 8.6.2. So the lut scaling matched between 8.4.X and 8.6.X and I was told that was the correct LUT scaling.

So now when I open the 2018.12.1 project in .2 or later the LUT level is washed out. In fact it seems to match perfectly with an 8.6.4 LUT level of the same clip and panny LUT. The quirk is if I remove the Panny LUT and reapply it then the LUT level is no longer washed out it now matches the LUT level I was getting in 2018.12.1. It's a total pain.

Last week I had a client screening at a facility and my project was from 2018.12.3 on my home system, I tried 2018.12.5 but had too many crashes and the segment tool bug of the red arrow icon not appearing made me back rev to 2018.12.3. So I take my project to the facility and voila there is the same level shift on 8.9.4 with the washed out LUT level. I had already rendered the safe color so I was able to screen but I couldn't tweak any video levels as a result of this issue. I've seen it on two macpro 5.1 systems and it has been duplicated by Avid.

Am I the only one that's seeing this? Perhaps it's only with the Panasonic LUT but it's a major pain and I doubt they will fix it in 2018.12 world. This bug completely negates Avid's long history of forward and backward compatibility. I find it hard to believe I'm the only one experiencing this issue. I need a mob with pitchforks to join me. Here is the official bug number from Avid support: