Why Does My 4K Footage Look Soft in DaVinci Resolve? (Sony A7S III)

Hey! I've had a similar issue with my A7S III footage. The softness you're seeing is likely due to the way Resolve handles the compressed 4:2:2 footage in the viewer. Check your 'Timeline Proxy Mode' – if it's set to 'Half Res' or 'Quarter Res', that will make things look soft during editing. Also, make sure your viewer quality is set to 'Full' (the dropdown at the top-right of the viewer). If that's not it, try disabling 'Optimized Media' and 'Render Cache' for the timeline, as they can sometimes use lower-resolution proxies.

Another thing: in the Color page, under 'Clip' > 'Input Color Space', make sure it's set to 'Sony S-Log3 S-Gamut3.Cine' exactly. If you've set the input color space to 'Wide Gamut' or something else, it can cause a slight desaturation and perceived softness. I'd also recommend checking your project settings under 'Color Management' – ensure 'Input Color Space' is set to 'Rec.709' or 'Sony S-Log3' correctly, and that 'Output Color Space' is 'Rec.709 Gamma 2.4'. If you're using 'DaVinci YRGB Color Managed', try switching to 'DaVinci YRGB' (non-managed) temporarily to see if that changes anything.

Let me know if any of these help!

That's a good start, but I think the issue might be in your render settings or the actual source file. Since you're shooting XAVC S-I (All-I), it should be high quality, but Resolve sometimes has issues with the gamma tag on Sony files. In your clip attributes (right-click the clip > 'Clip Attributes'), check if the 'Video Bit Depth' is set to 'Auto' or '10-bit'. If it's set to '8-bit', that can reduce detail.

Also, when you zoom to 100% in the viewer, are you using the 'Zoom to 100%' button (the magnifying glass icon)? Sometimes the viewer defaults to a scaled-to-fit view, which might not show full detail. But if it's still soft at 100%, try this: in the Color page, add a 'Sharpen' node and apply a small amount (like 0.5) just to test if the detail is actually there. If it sharpens up nicely, then the footage is fine and it's a display issue.

Another common culprit: if you're using 'Optimized Media' for editing, even if you've disabled it, Resolve might have created optimized media automatically when you imported. Go to 'Playback' > 'Use Optimized Media' and make sure it's unchecked. Also, check your 'Project Settings' > 'Master Settings' > 'Optimized Media Format' – if it's set to a low-res format like 'ProRes Proxy', that could be causing the softness in the timeline.

Let me know if any of that helps!

Thanks for the suggestions, vlogguru97 and creatorwizard17! I checked the optimized media settings and it was set to 'Half Res' – that was causing the softness in the timeline. I switched it to 'Full Res' and now it looks razor sharp. I also adjusted the input color space to 'Sony S-Log3 S-Gamut3.Cine' in the clip attributes and that helped with the color accuracy. I'm now rendering out a test clip to H.265 and it looks great. Appreciate the help, this was driving me crazy!