FILMCHECK guide
Professional image quality control: inspect, analyze, identify, verify. Analysis only - it never changes your grade.
FILMCHECK measures the frame under the playhead and tells you, in plain language, what may need attention: exposure, highlights, shadows, RGB balance, white balance, saturation, contrast, skin tone, estimated noise and tonal smoothness. It can also paint diagnostic overlays on the picture and compare one shot with a stored baseline shot.
It is an analysis assistant. It does not change exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance, color balance or skin tones, and it does not know what you intended. A warning means that something is measurable, not that it is wrong.
With View set to Off, FILMCHECK is an identity: the host skips it and your picture is not touched or slowed down. Overlays are drawn into the picture, so set View back to Off before you render.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| GOOD | No significant issue was measured against your limits. |
| INFO | An observation, or a measurement that cannot be judged on this frame (for example no neutral areas for white balance). |
| CHECK | Something exceeds a limit. It may be intentional: a lamp should clip, a night scene should be dark. |
| FAIL | Only when you set a Delivery Limit under LIMITS and clipped or crushed pixels reach it. FILMCHECK never decides on its own that a frame fails. |
All limits are judged on the display signal (Rec.709 power 2.4), whatever Input Encoding your timeline uses, so 98% means the same on every timeline. Measurements are taken on a regular grid of samples (default about 100,000 pixels), so the same frame always gives the same numbers.
| Item | How it is measured | CHECK when (Standard limits) |
|---|---|---|
| Exposure | Median luma of the frame. | Median below 12% (dark overall) or above 80% (bright overall). |
| Highlights | Pixels where any channel is at or above the Highlight Level (98%). | At least 0.5% of the frame. |
| Shadows | Pixels whose luma is at or below the Shadow Level (2%). | At least 1% of the frame. |
| RGB Balance | Channel averages, and channel-by-channel clipping. | One channel clips while the others do not, or one channel average is more than 0.3 stop from the mean. |
| White Balance | Warm/cool (red vs blue) and green/magenta bias of near-neutral pixels (low saturation, mid brightness), in stops. | Temperature beyond 0.20 stop or tint beyond 0.15 stop. INFO if under 2% of the frame is near-neutral. |
| Saturation | Share of pixels at or above 85% saturation (ignoring near-black pixels). | At least 4% of the frame. |
| Contrast | Spread between the 5th and 95th luma percentile; also the shadow / midtone / highlight share. | Spread below 22% (flat) or above 85% (very hard). |
| Skin Tone | A colour model finds likely skin and measures its distance from the vectorscope skin line. | More than 12 degrees off the line. INFO if under 0.5% of the frame matches. |
| Noise | Median of a high-pass response over the picture, converted to a standard deviation (estimate). | Estimated luma noise above 2.5%. |
| Smoothness | Share of populated 8-bit levels across the used range of each channel (estimate). | Under 80% populated, which suggests banding or posterisation. |
Skin tone is probabilistic: wood, sand or a warm wall of a similar hue can match, and not every match is skin. Noise and smoothness are estimates: film grain and sharp texture read as noise, and flat graphics read as gaps. FILMCHECK labels them accordingly and never claims laboratory accuracy.
| View | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Off (clean image) | Your picture, untouched. Zero cost. |
| Report on screen | The report drawn in the top-left corner of the picture, recomputed on every frame. |
| Exposure (false colour) | Purple crushed, blue low, green around 18% grey, yellow high, red clipped. |
| Highlights | Pixels at or above the Highlight Level in red. |
| Shadows | Pixels at or below the Shadow Level in blue. |
| Saturation | Very saturated areas in magenta. |
| Skin tone | Likely skin in green. Probabilistic: other warm areas can light up too. |
| RGB channel clipping | Which channels clip: red, green, blue, or white where all do. |
| Chroma | Colour intensity from blue (low) through green to red (high). |
| Noise | Fine detail and noise amplified in amber. |
Overlay Strength controls how much the diagnostic replaces the picture (0 shows your clean image). Show Guides adds a small legend. Report Details adds a one-line explanation under every item in the on-screen report.
The Limits menu loads starting values into the controls under LIMITS. They are practical starting points, not official delivery specifications of any broadcaster or streaming platform, and FILMCHECK does not claim compliance with any of them. Change any limit and the menu switches to Custom.
| Limit | Standard | Broadcast | Cinema | Web |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highlight Level / Limit | 98% / 0.5% | 100% / 0.1% | 99% / 1.5% | 97% / 1% |
| Shadow Level / Limit | 2% / 1% | 0.5% / 0.2% | 1.5% / 3% | 3% / 2% |
| Saturation Level / Limit | 85% / 4% | 80% / 2% | 90% / 6% | 85% / 4% |
| Dark overall below | 12% | 12% | 8% | 15% |
| White balance tolerance | 0.20 stop | 0.20 stop | 0.30 stop | 0.20 stop |
| Noise limit | 2.5% | 2.0% | 3.0% | 3.0% |
Sensitivity scales the percentage and noise limits: below 1 tolerates more, above 1 flags smaller problems sooner. Delivery Limit % (FAIL) is off at 0 and is never filled in by a preset.
Compare only reports. It never changes a shot. Use LUMERIX when you want to match shots.
FILMCHECK analyses on the CPU and does not use the GPU. Analysis uses a regular grid of samples, and the picture is not processed at all while View is Off. Measured with the repository benchmark (median of 9 frames, float RGBA, one development PC: Intel Core i7-12700KF, 20 threads, Windows 11):
| Operation | HD 1920x1080 | UHD 3840x2160 |
|---|---|---|
| Analyze (full measurement) | 5.0 ms | 4.5 ms |
| On-screen report view | 8.7 ms | 19.0 ms |
| Highlights overlay | 4.5 ms | 20.9 ms |
| Noise overlay | 7.1 ms | 31.8 ms |
These numbers describe one machine and the engine only, not Resolve's own overhead, other nodes, codecs or disk. They are not a promise of real-time playback on your hardware. Sampling Quality under ADVANCED trades steadiness for speed.
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| Nothing is drawn on the picture. | View is Off. Choose a view under DIAGNOSTICS. |
| The report text is old. | The inspector report updates when you press Analyze. The Report on screen view updates every frame. |
| Colours or levels look wrong. | Check Input Encoding. It must match your timeline, otherwise every limit is judged on the wrong signal. |
| The overlay is in my render. | Overlays are drawn into the output. Set View to Off before you deliver. |
| Skin tone shows INFO. | No pixels matched the skin model. It looks for skin colours on the vectorscope skin line; stylised or very unusual grades may not match. |
| The report says nothing about white balance. | Fewer than 2% of the frame is near-neutral, so a bias cannot be judged on this frame. |
| Analyze does nothing. | Make sure the clip is connected and the playhead is on a shot, then try again. |
