Introduction into DaVinci Resolve

I have earlier blogged about the correct procedure for colour correction on Avid Media Composer and how I have struggled to get this workflow implemented on the footage for A Good One.

Yesterday, I went even deeper into the rabbit role of colour correction: I was introduced to DaVinci Resolve, or better: DaVinci Resolve 12. As we will henceforth be filming with either the Blackmagic Cinema Camera or the Blackmagic Mini Ursa Pro 4.6k, it was only natural that we would be introduced into the compatible software of the same manufacturer: Blackmagic design.

DaVinci Resolve usually comes in two versions: a free one for students that you can download and use almost all aspects of it (apart from 3D and visual noise reduction) and a premium one that you either have to pay for when downloading or that comes for free if you purchase one of the Blackmagic cameras. However, there are hacks online as to achieve visual noise reduction on Resolve using the Nodes Window (which I will talk about in a bit).

As with all editing programmes, Resolve won’t work if your computer does not have the proper specs. Which, for the DaVinci Resolve 14 version means a required RAM-size of about 32GB, to give a rough idea about the performance of DaVinci.

Right at the beginning, we learned why we should be filming each clip with a colour chart at the beginning. The colour chart, depending on the manufacturer and colour palette, offers a variety of different colours placed onto a board that is held up at the beginning of each clip (much as a clapper board). While they can range in price from £30 to £150 depending on make and model, it aims to help sync up the displayed colour proprieties in post for further reference. Once you know what type of colour chart you have in your hands, you can choose the relevant setting and DaVinci will make the magic happen.

But first things first.

Colour Correction and Colour Grading

Both colour correction and colour grading need to planned ahead in time of production as this is a time-consuming endeavour. While it is most often used to correct and to match footage in post, it is nowadays even more often used to give the footage a certain mood to it, enhance colours, or bring footage back up that has deliberately been under- or overexposed.

In enhancing and correcting the footage, there is always a rule to be adhered to. And that rule is that colour correction is always done BEFORE colour grading. And this has a simple reason behind it. As I mentioned in my last blog entry dealing with Avid Media Composer, colour correction is usually pertaining to correct the shadows, the high lights, and the mid-tones (gamma). Since white, black, and skin tones are psychological references for our eyes to interpret an image, it is natural that setting these parameters should go first before altering any other colour spectrum. While you, as a matter of nature, can manually adapt the aforementioned parameters, the use of a colour chart as mentioned above will make colour correction indefinitely quicker.

But how do we use DaVinci Resolve in the first place?

Starting a New Project

Our groups started off with opening DaVinci Resolve 12 and reaching the Project Manager panel in which you can create, name, and save a new project or select a previous one to work with. However, it is important to notice that DaVinci Resolve was not designed with shared networks and randomly-assigned workspaces in mind. Since we, at our uni, are using Editshare to work, it is important to assign a certain drive to our DaVinci database and stick to it or else DaVinci will be unable to find the relevant files. This means that you would ideally create an individual database (select a database) for every individual project.

To create a new database or choose from a previous one, you go to the top right corner, click the arrow-down button in the Project Manager, and select Database. Then, you either select a database already in existence or create a new database and name it. Underneath the field for naming the project, there is a Host field that opens up a new pop-up window if you click on it to assign the database to a network drive. In our case of working with the Edit suite at uni, we would then go to Editshare, assign the letter to our desired drive, and either select a previous folder on that drive or create a new one such as ‘Resolve Database’, for example. You then return to the Create New Database window and click on Create new database to finalise the process. A pop-up window will then inform you of a successful save. You finally highlight the database you desire and click on the Select button.

Back in the Project Manager window, you can then either double-click the tile named ‘Untitled Project’ to finally open your project in DaVinci Resolve or open a previous project. Entering Resolve, we immediately realised that it was set up and structured in the same way as Avid and Adobe, even though the description of the panels vary slightly.

Workspaces

In the bottom row of the entire window of Resolve 12, you can find four different workspaces that are aligned as tabs: Media, Edit, Colour, and Deliver. While Media allows you to load files into resolve, Edit is obviously the workspace to cut, trim, and edit both video and sound in a basic manner. However, since DaVinci’s primary specialisation lies in colourisation, the ‘Colour’ tab will allow you to do general colour correction and colour grading, while the workspace Deliver is used to render and export either your entire timeline or selections of it.

In case you prefer to load media into Resolve in a different way, you will be offered two options: Either go to the top left hand side, where you will find the Media Pool and pick your desired media from a list or go even further up to the tab ‘DaVinci Resolve’ in the top left corner and click Preferences and then Add to from the database.

Our technical demonstrator used this opportunity to give us advice on a good practice method that entails removing the media that is not needed or does not belong to the project. Not doing this might likely result in DaVinci Resolve slowing down due to the amount of data it keeps wanting to have access to.

Media and Edit Workspace

Once you have found the relevant clips you want to work with, you can highlight them and drag them into the media pool at the bottom of the screen. They will pop up on the left side of the media pool ready to use. If you then click onto the Edit tab at the bottom and lift the clips onto the timeline, they will appear in there. Video clips will be highlighted in blue, while audio clips are rendered in green, and titles in pale yellow. DaVinci Resolve will usually start out with a default setting of three video and audio tracks respectively, but can be expanded to 16 per media category.

Colour Workspace

Clicking now on the Colour tab leads to DaVinci opening up a timeline in the middle of the entire window. The clips here will either appear normally (unhighlighted) or with an orange frame (highlighted). Below this timeline, the Colour Wheels from the Colour workspace pop up that allow you to change Lift, Gamma, Gain, and Offset of the selected clip.

Nodes Window

Atop the timeline window, you will find the Monitor Window that will show you the clip with the relevant colour corrections, colour grading, or effects applied. To the right of that window, you will find the Nodes Window that depicts the various layers of effects of your selected clip.

On the left side within the Nodes Window, there is a small box, which indicates the starting point of a graph. If you then right-click into the Nodes window (or choose ‘Nodes’ and ‘Add serial node’ on the register top left), another box-shaped node will pop up with a miniature still of your clip that is linked to the previous one, delineating a track of multiple layers and their effects. With the Nodes window, you can split layers off, change them or put them back together, at your heart’s desire. The effects you select in the bottom window will however only apply to the nodes’ box that is highlighted in orange. You can also deactivate nodes by double-clicking on them.

Colour Charts and LUTs

Coming back to the Monitor Window for a bit, the default setting should entail a colour picker tool (that looks like an eye dropper) with a small arrow attached to it at the bottom left hand corner of the window. Clicking on that arrow will present you further tools to choose from such as e.g. Power Window, Image Wipe, or Colour Chart. Choosing the eye dropper icon, you can then right-click on the first node and select ‘3D LUT’, then either Arri or Blackmagic (whichever you desire). In our case, we selected Arri and then Arri Alexa LogC to Rec709 and applied a LUT (Look Up Table) to the clip in the Monitor Window.

Selecting the colour chart from the dropdown menu of the Monitor window puts a grid on the image in the Monitor window. If you now click on the Colour Chart Icon in the top left corner of the bottom window allows you to select the type of colour chart as I mentioned further above. During our time at The Northern School of Art, we will be using the Datacolor SpyderChecker as our default colour chart. Matching the colours to the colour chart on the clip now entails that DaVinci will try to change the image according to the colour chart depicted. However, since this is not a fool-proof automated process, DaVinci will also give you a percentage of how much each individual colour is off. This process of colour matching needs to be done to every clip in order to match them colour-wise. In case the image turns out to turn black, congratulations! You official defeated DaVinci Resolve.

Toolset

Coming back to the Colour Workspace in the bottom section of the window, it is divided in three parts: a – left) base camera settings and colour correction such as Colour Wheels, Colour Charts and Mixers, b – middle) colour grading tools and selection tools such as Curves, Trackers, and Qualifiers, and c – right) keyframe settings with Keyframes, Scopes, and General Information.

From the colour grading and colour correction tools in the bottom middle, you can select from a range of tools such as Curves, Colour Picker Qualifier, Windows, and Tracker.

You could, for example, apply a Gradient filter (also grad filter) onto the clip by selecting Window, then your desired shape, and then put this shape around the desired part of your image (such as a person) before selecting ‘Curves’. Any change of colour that is done within Curves is now directly applied to the selected shape as the effect remains within that area.

Usually, DaVinci will extrapolate from that image and apply the grad filter to the rest of the clip (which, in this example, would mean that the shape follows a character and applies an effect to it) in the tool Tracking Finder. However, this only works if the image’s contrast is high enough. This is how I learned the purposes of crosses in green screens: They serve as track markers for this kind of software.

Within this setup of shapes and effects, picking the colour picker and choosing a colour can also be used to assign a certain effect to that colour within the shape only. Furthermore, using the Invert Tool allows you to select different areas of the image and apply changes to that (so instead of inside the selected shape, you can also apply effects OUTSIDE of the selected shape only). However, it needs to be noted that overlapping shapes might cancel each other’s effects out in the overlap area. The grad filter can furthermore be used for tracking items in the background.

Moving on in the row of colour correction and colour grading tools, you can also choose tools such as e.g. ‘Blur and Sharpen’, ‘Key’, ‘Crop or Move Shot’, ‘3D’ (only in the premium version) and ‘Data Burn In’ (adding information either for clip or project on the image). Finally, you also have access to the reset option of every tool located at the top right corner of the bottom middle box.

Delivery Workspace

Finally, in order to export a project, you hit the Delivery tab in the bottom and choose the desired video format/codec. With us at The Northern School of Art, this codec will mostly be Quicktime, however, DaVinci also offers solutions such as H.264 or DNxHD. Set the data rate to ‘Import’, choose whether you want the controlled bit rate (CBR) or variable bit rate (VBR), choose ‘Automatic’ for Keyframes and ‘Default’ for Resolution. Moving on to audio, the audio bitrate should either be set as 16 or 24. You then select how many channels should be rendered. Finally, you hit ‘Save as’ in the Render Window, browse and choose the target folder under ‘Render to’, and create a folder for renders out of DaVinci. You then hit ‘Add to render queue’ at the bottom right of the Render window and the clip will then pop up in the Render Queue on the right hand side of the screen, ready to be exported once you hit ‘Start render’ beneath it.

Restrictions

So far so good. As with all other editing software as well, the usual shortcuts for the keys I, O,J, K, and L in DaVinci Resolve remain the same. However, I would like to add that this software is sadly not made to work with footage taken on either the Panasonic AVC nor P2 due to their different colour spaces (402 colourspace for AVCs and 401 colourspace for P2s) and the technical quality that comes along with it. That means that I sadly will not be able to move on to DaVinci Resolve but will most likely be stuck with Avid to improve the footage for A Good One in the remaining time.

However, I am looking forward to learning more about the so-called AAF Roundtrips: Transporting files from Avid to DaVinci Resolve and back. For it is rumoured to be a difficult task to master.

References:

Bai (2018) DaVinci Resolve 15 – Tutorial for Beginners [COMPLETE] – 16 Minutes! [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbqmZjJEsBw [Accessed on 18 October 2018]

Casey Faris (2018) Resolve 15: The Ultimate Crash Course – DaVinci Resolve Basic Training Tutorial [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk1iLsYytDE [Accessed on 18 October 2018]

Charnley, L. (2018) Introduction to DaVinci Resolve 12 The Northern School of Art, Hartlepool, 18.10.2018

Colour Grading Channel (2018) DaVinci Resolve 15 Tutorial: Color Grading Crash Course [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvEOIozAJk[Accessed on 18 October 2018]

Teacher’s Tech (2018) DaVinci Resolve 15 Tutorial – Designed for Beginners [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C2WUsvWGdc [Accessed on 18 October 2018]