Hello, Heiko from Hethfilms here with the second episode of our Davinci Resolve 14 tutorial series.
As always a big thank you to our sponsor Blackmagic Design for their support.
In our first episode we looked at what actually is required to do professional color grading.
Of course you don't have to do all of that to start grading your own projects.
We'll also only concentrate on the smaller more affordable micro panel for the rest of our series.
But more on that later when we discuss color grading indepth in our later episodes.
This episode is all about getting you started in Resolve and how to set up the software.
We'll also learn how to import our footage into Resolve and how to prepare and transfer an existing sequence from Adobe Premiere to Resolve.
Here we are in Resolve, the installation itself is nothing out of the ordinary.
If you have the Resolve micro or mini panel, you get the device drivers with the installation of Resolve so you don't have download anything extra.
Anyways, let's take a look at the software itself.
Let's start with this button right here.
Davinci works with databases, you have two different options: disk databases and SQL databases.
For what we do only the disk database will be used.
Down here you can create a new database.
Now select the database type, in our case "disk".
Pick a name and select the folder you want to save your new database in and click add.
We can export and backup our databases and we can import an exisiting database using restore.
If you don't see this panel just click this button.
I'll close this as we already have our database.
If we have created any subfolders we can see that down here in this structure.
I already created a sub folder for this series as you can see here.
I suggest we start by creating a new project by clicking right here on new project.
Enter a name and click create.
As you can see Resolve now opens up into it's main GUI on the edit tab. But we'll start on "media".
If you click on HELP and then welcome tour you can watch a little guided tour by BMD to learn more.
Also on the HELP menu is the Resolve reference manual which is constantly updated and worth a look.
Before we actually begin our new project we should take a look at all the available settings.
All options under the preferences menu are general settings for all of Resolve and are not linked to our current project.
Starting with media storage we have to add folders here to be able to add footage into Resolve from the panel on the top left.
I already added a drive here, but using this check box down here we can just add all connected drives. This way we have access to all our files.
On the video I/O tab we can configure all the available external hardware we might have and that Resolve supports.
Here you also see my intensity shuttle from last episode which is connected to my pc via usb 3.0.
This is where I tell Resolve I want to use an external reference display.
Another important checkmark is this so you can actually output sound from Resolve during playback.
On the control panels tab we already see the Resolve micro panel selected.
This is the panel we have connected to the pc right now and Resolve recognizes this.
Switching over to the USER tab we make sure to check "use grey background in viewers".
This way you can always differentiate between black borders in your video and the actual background.
Moving on to auto save.
If you check this box Davinci will constantly save your work any time you make any kind of change.
On the editing tab you can configure a lot of default behaviours for editing your footage.
One important feature is the timelines smart bin.
This way we always have a smart bin which shows us all available timelines in our current project.
Next up is the color tab.
All of these settings are still set to their defaults and I rarely have to change anything in here.
Again there is a control panels tab, but in here you can configure parts of your grading panel like the sensitivity for the rings and color balls etc.
For my purposes I've left these values on default as I got great results and precision from the panel using these values.
The mini panel has these two lcd screens so you can use this setting to control their brightness.
These settings are for any grading panel you can use with Resolve.
On the keyboard mapping tab you can customize your keyboard shortcuts.
There are predefined presets to choose from or you create your own preset and click here to save it.
You can always search for commands and pick them from the list below to change their keyboard shortcut.
Just select the command, click here to delete the old shortcut, enter your new one and hit save.
Allright, those are all the general settings for Resolve itself which are not linked to our project.
Now that we have configured all our system and user settings we can open the project settings.
This little cogwheel down here on the right.
And here you see all the settings we can configure for each of our projects individually.
Here in the master settings we can choose the resolution of our timelines.
Davinci works somewhat resolution independent, that means you can of course pick your resolution here.
But we can also work on a 4k project and still just work on a 1080p timeline.
As my reference monitor only displays 1080p max it doesn't make much sense for me to work in 4k.
I can still render out the final grade in full 4k resolution without any loss regardless.
But I only have this one project settings panel for all my timelines within this project.
That means I can only pick one framerate for this project and this affects all timelines.
So if I set this setting to 24p all my timelines within this project will be at 24 frames per second.
Below video monitoring we can configure what signal we want to output to our external reference display.
So for me this is the 1080p preset with the matching frame rate I chose for this project.
Next up is data levels.
My external screen expects video levels so that is what I have selected here.
What I personally change here is the video bit depth as my screen can only show 8-bit maximum.
Then we have optimized media. This is kind of a semi automatic proxy functionality within Resolve.
Resolve can generate proxy media in the background from our original media while the program is idle.
These files are in a format that is easier for Resolve to handle and playback.
The downside is that these files are way bigger than our original files we imported.
Here we can also reduce the resolution of our proxy files to save even more on performance and file sizes.
The next tab we have is image scaling.
Interesting for us is the input scaling section.
Here we can decide how Resolve handles footage which does not match the current timeline resolution.
At default Resolve should scale the entire image to fit but we can also make it crop the footage.
Next up is another really important section, the color management.
As I mentioned in the last episode we will only concentrate on the rec.709 color space.
Important to remember is that if you work in rec.709 with a gamma setting of 2.4 your external display should also be calibrated to a gamma setting of 2.4.
As my screen is color calibrated I do have a LUT file for it which I can load in this section.
This is the file I have generated as you can see it's rec.709 with a gamma of 2.4.
Very important is to now set these other two pairs of settings to not also use our LUT.
Let's take a quick look into the general options.
By default "use s-curves for gamma" is checked as it should be, more on that when we color grade.
On the camera raw tab we can tell Resolve how to handle the different RAW formats that are out there.
So we can configure our settings here for all timelines on how Resolve works with RAW footage.
For example I can pick BMD's cinemaDNG format and select here the quality we want Resolve to decode it.
Switching to project settings I can then configure in detail how I want the RAW files to be handled.
Of course we are still able to pick different settings for RAW clips later on during grading on the color tab.
Last option are the presets.
The idea behind this is to be able to save all the settings we configured for our project.
This way we can create different presets for different project types and quickly load them whenever we start a new project.
Allright, now that we have set up Resolve we can start with importing our footage.
Remember, as soon as you import footage into Resolve the project framerate will conform to that footage.
After you have imported your footage the framerate setting cannot be changed again for this project.
No matter how many timelines you have in this project they'll all have that same framerate as the first footage you imported.
But that should be the only really tricky part to look out for, so let's take a look how to import.
Right here we have all the options to load our footage into Resolve.
As you already know, top left here is the area we can access all our drives to look for our footage.
So we can pick any subfolder containing our footage and it will show up on the right panel next to it.
On the far right we have our meta data panel and also the audio meters to check sound when we play a clip on the viewer in the middle.
We can hide the audio tab and only show a full meta data panel instead.
Or we hide both panels to make room for a larger viewer and footage area in the media pool.
Right here we have our favorites. We can put folders that we need all the time in here for quick access.
Down here we can also create new bins to import our footage into by right clicking here.
So to make all this a bit more clear, let's load in some footage. I already prepared a folder for us.
Now you can see the footage up here and you also see that I can scrub through the footage by just moving the mouse cursor across the thumbnails.
And now it's as easy as just mark all the clips I want and drag and drop them into the media pool.
As you can see I have them in the media pool.
Only when the footage is in the media pool it is available in Resolve.
I can now sort my footage for example by dragging these two clips into my bin that I've created.
If click on the bin here I can see my two clips in this subfolder accordingly.
After I imported my footage I can click on a clip and see my metadata for it right here.
And we see it's in full HD with 24 fps.
If we now take a look into our project settings and switch to master settings we notice something.
The timeline framerate is now greyed out and can't be changed for this project any longer.
You can search your footage by clicking this little search icon up here.
If I type in C0007 here we can see Resolve filters my footage and only shows me this one clip with c0007 in it's name.
Down here under smart bins we can also create new bins just like before.
The difference to our regular bins is that smart bins fill themselves based on predefined search criteria.
So I can create a new smart bin and call it c0007.
Now I can define that the file name has to be c0007 and click on create smart bin.
Now this seach is saved down here as a smart bin.
So I don't have to remember this and use the search field above when I need to find something.
This makes it easier for us to find something specific when we have a lot of footage.
In this example project we had a few characters, one of them is Susan.
So I can mark all my clips which contain Susan and under metadata I click on this drop down menu.
I select shot & scene and enter "Susan" in the keyword field here and save the metadata.
Now I create a new smart bin and call it character susan.
We then pick "shot & scene" here, select "keywords" right here, "contains" here and enter "susan".
Using this method we could now catalog our footage by creating smart bins for each character.
That way we could later quickly find all the footage of a specific character in a heartbeat.
So far so good. Now that we have our footage in here we need to know how we can start editing.
Down here we have the edit tab and when we click on it we see we have this empty timeline.
But as you can see our footage moved over from the other tab as did all our settings and bins.
So I still have all my smartbins down here, my folders up here and my footage to the right.
Now I can just select all my footage and drag and drop it into this empty timeline down here.
When I do this you can see this new timeline 1 has automatically been created for us up here.
This is where our timelines smart bin comes in handy as we can see here.
If I click on it we only see our timeline 1 that we had just created.
If we want to remove a timeline we just click on it hit delete on the keyboard and click remove.
In our viewer up here we can scrub through our footage and also mark an in and an out point.
When we now select all our footage, right click and select this setting we get this new pop up.
In this window we can now pick our own name for the new timeline, I'll use "all my footage".
Here's the important part. We have already marked an in and out point for this clip.
So we need to check this box right here before we click on create.
We can check this out by looking into our timeline here and scroll to the right to our clip.
And here it is, trimmed to only contain the portion we have defined with our in and out points.
This is a great way to pre-select only the important parts in each clip in the media pool before putting them into a new timeline.
Here's another great way to import footage in Resolve.
Just select the folder containting your footage up here and drag and drop it into the media pool.
This way Resolve imports the whole folder structure and all compatible media into your project.
All the subfolders you may already have created to sort your footage will be intact so you don't have to do all this work twice.
Great, now you know how to import your footage into Davinci Resolve to edit it there.
This brings us to our next topic.
We already have an edited sequence in Adobe Premiere and we want to color grade it in Resolve.
What's the best way to transfer our sequence from Premiere to Resolve for color grading?
Let's jump back into Resolve and take look at the different solutions we have.
After that you decide for yourself what's the best workflow for your own projects.
We start off in Adobe Premiere.
Here we have short sequence that has been edited in Premiere already.
We have a drone footage here and also clips from different cameras layered in multiple video tracks and two audio tracks with voice and music.
The first audio track is from a field recorder as we captured our dialogues externally.
The question now is how can we transfer this timeline to Davinci Resolve? Here's how.
Go to the file menu, pick export and select "final cut pro XML".
Our filename is the same as the timeline's name. Save the XML file.
This message pops up everytime, just click ok.
Now let's go back to Davinci Resolve.
As you may have noticed we did not render anything, we just exported a small XML file.
Let's switch to the edit tab.
Right click in this empty area and select "Timlines - Import - AAF / EDL / XML".
Here's our XML file, select it and click open.
Now we get these import options.
A helpful option to check is "automatically set project settings".
That way Resolve creates our timeline with the settings from the XML file for framerate etc.
Of course Resolve should automatically import our footage for this timeline, so check this one.
As we work with both projects and programs on the same PC this should work quite well.
It probably makes sense to also import the sizing information from the XML, we get to that soon.
Now we need to tell Resolve how to handle mixed framerates in the project, here we pick Resolve.
Let's click ok... As we can see we now have our complete timeline like we had in Premiere.
Well, probably. We now have to check if everything transfered smoothly, there's always a chance to run into problems.
And here we right away see that we have a problem.
Our drone clip was shot in 4K but we see here that it's way too small in our viewer.
We also notice we have a timing issue with this clip here.
And finally we see that all our footage came in with the wrong frame size.
So, let's get back to Premiere and see what we can find out there first.
Let's check out our drone footage in here first.
Now we see our footage in Premiere was scaled down to 50 percent.
And Premiere saved this scaling information of 50 percent to the xml file.
But Resolve somehow misinterpreted this scaling information from Premiere.
Basically, Resolve thinks our footage should be full frame size at 100 percent and scaled it down another 50 percent on top of Premieres setting.
This is why it's always a great idea to render out a reference movie from Premiere for safety.
So to do that we go back to Premiere and render our whole scene out. Therefore we go to export.
Pick our settings for a small movie without sound and click on export.
Back in Resolve we go to our folder with the rendered file and we now see our offline reference.
But we do not drag and drop this into the media pool like before, as we do not want to edit it.
Instead we right click the file and select "add as offline reference clip".
The clip now gets added to the project but we still have to tell Resolve for what timeline to use it.
So we pick our timeline, right click it and then select "timelines - link offline reference clip".
In this menu we then see the reference clip we just added to the project, so we select it.
Back to the edit page.
Here below our source viewer we click on this icon and instead of source we select offline.
So, let's just play the thing and compare what is correct from Premiere on the left and where we are in Resolve right now.
Right away we see this timing problem.
The clip on the right plays the wrong section.
Apart from our scaling problem the clips here all seem correct.
So, generally it worked pretty well. It's just the scaling we need to attend to.
Let's look at our project settings.
Click on image scaling.
Let's try and change this setting to "center crop no resizing".
That means no matter what, Resolve will not resize our footage if it's bigger or smaller.
After we save this change we see now Resolve shows our clips with the correct scaling.
Reason for that is that we now use the same logic as Premiere did. Our footage was too big so we had to scale it down.
If we look here we see our footage would be too big here too but thanks to the XML setting it's scaled down to 50 percent here too.
But we still haven't figured out why this one clip is totally off regarding it's timing.
We can try and just retime it right here in the timeline to match the original.
Naturally, we don't want to be bothered with this kind of problems everytime we import something.
But that is what conforming is all about. Try your best to rebuild the timeline to match the original.
But that's just the nature of this XML workflow.
The file format and what gets transfered between programs is rather old and never was updated.
Meanwhile the programs got better and better and had more features that now don't translate too well.
There's one big advantage to the XML workflow and that's when we work with RAW footage.
All other methods always consist of rendering out a movie from Premiere to grade in Resolve.
But if we render our footage from Premiere it's already interpreted and baked in.
So Resolve does not have any access to the RAW data anymore.
But let's take a look at the other workflow now.
For that we have to go back to Premiere to render out our scene first.
Best practice to do this and making sure we don't screw up anything is to duplicate our timeline.
The trick with the EDL workflow is that we just have on video track to work with.
Audio is rather irrelevant for color grading unless you want to do some audio work in Resolve.
Of course before we render out our scene we need to make sure there's nothing in there that would screw up our picture.
So I throw out this overlay here for example.
Now we need to start from the top and flatten our timeline down from video track to video track.
Of course this creates problems with transitions for example. CTRL+D creates a transition here.
To demonstrate this we say we want a dissolve from this clip to this clip here.
As soon as we flatten the track down we would screw up our transition.
Let's try this out.
I select this clip, hold down the ALT key and press arrow down on the keyboard to move it down one track.
Same thing for the next video track below, we select all clips on this track and press ALT+ DOWN ARROW.
Now we have moved everything down to video track 1.
Let's check out our transition from before.
We see it's fading to black instead of fading between the two clips.
As this transition is screwed up we have to delete it, select the clips and create a new one with CTRL+D.
Allright, now we are ready to render out our scene.
But this time we have to make sure to render out in a format that retains as much information as possible.
So no little mp4 movie but a robust codec and format we can work with the rest of the time in Resolve.
I use the DNxHR / DNxHD codec. We can pick the right one under video codec, for this it's 1080p DXnHD HQX 10 bit.
Only in the end for the final render that goes onto youtube it's okay to render out to an smaller 8-bit mp4 codec for example.
But up to this point we want to keep the quality of our footage intact as much as possible.
Since we have to render out during this step we need to pick a codec that gives us this much headroom.
Now we can click export, wait for the render to finish and are now able to export our EDL file.
Therefore, click on "FILE - EXPORT - EDL".
Here we now see that we want to export our video from video track 1. Everything else can be set to default settings.
Include transitions is checked which is what we want so Resolve will recreate that for us.
We click on okay and save our EDL and return to Resolve.
We now have to import our rendered movie. For that I will create a new bin down here and call it EDL.
Now we drag and drop our footage into this bin.
Next we right click our footage and select "timelines - import - pre-conformed EDL".
We select our EDL we just exported from Premiere.
Here's the interesting part why we created the bin before as Davinci now asks where the footage is.
We now have to de-select all bins first and then only the select the correct bin with our footage.
This way Davinci will only look in this bin for footage to create the timeline with.
So it's generally a good practice to organize our project with bins and use helpful names.
Allright, click on OK and we see we again have a new timeline created.
If we open this up we see we have all the clips in this timeline and none of the issues from before.
We don't have the timing issue and all scaling is also correct. Why is that?
Well we rendered out a complete movie and Davinci no longer has to guess or interpret anything.
So it's always correct. We also have our transition we created before in Premiere.
This will be very important when we start our color grading later on.
As Resolve created it's own transition here it'll be possible to smoothly dissolve between two clips with completely different color grades.
Otherwise we would have a harsh jump in the two different grades while the clips dissolve smoothly.
So this is basically the workflow we use here at HETHFILMS most of the time.
We very rarely work with RAW files so it's not that important to work with the original files.
Okay, that's all for today. I know we worked through a lot of information.
But we now know how to create a new project, how to configure Resolve and how to import our footage.
And we also know how to transfer our timelines from Premiere to Resolve.
That means we are now ready to start editing. So this is what we will look at next episode.
We'll also take a small look at how to master audio on the brand new fairlight tab in Resolve.
If you have any questions let us know in the comments below and I'll try to answer them quickly.
A big thank you to our sponsor Blackmagic Design for their support.
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That's all from me for today.
Thank you for watching and see you soon.
Bye!
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