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Best way to work FCPX with DaVinci
Hi everyone.
I am using FCPX for my edits and DaVinci for the color grading. Doing the XML round trip works fine, however I notice two issues:
1. When I export back from DaVinci to FCPX and I want to re-edit the color grading, I have to export again from FCPX to Davinci which means I lose all the previous color grading nodes I did, which is not the ideal scenario.
2. Doing the XML round trip leads to two copies of my videos (one from FCPX used for the edits and one for the color grading that was done in DaVinci). This fills up the HD quite fast, especially if the footage is in 4K.
From your experience, what do you suggest? Is there a better way to work with both programs?
Cheers,
Antonis -
4 Replies
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Yes, that’s the way it works. Resolve has to render color-corrected, trimmed media, which corresponds to your timeline. Don’t make changes to your edit, except for minor trims, after color correction. Sending to Resolve is the last step in the process.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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As someone who has graded 10 docs in Resolve that were cut in FCX, I concur with what Oliver said. When you grade the footage, the only way to get that grade applied and sent back is to render it out as a new clip. This is true of ANY color grading done outside FCX. The apps can’t just send the information that then applies to the media in FCX…the only way to do that would be to grade in FCX.
But yes, any re-editing you do will then have to be resent to Resolve. This is why color grading is, as Oliver said, the last step in the process.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I used to always send the final edit from FCPX to Resolve for my color grading. I had done this for years and was mostly happy, but it was always a pain because of having to cut and paste back in the audio with the effects (audio and video) in FCPX and also having to roundtrip to and from Resolve again if I needed any editing/color correcting changed.
So I decided to just do all my color grading in FCPX. Wow, much easier, and the results are the same, once you get used to using the color board. I don’t think, for most projects, using Resolve adds anything to color grading.
I wonder if many others have discovered this.
Maybe you can give it a shot and see what you think.
Happy editing!
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Resolve us a completely different beast when it comes to colour grading. There are things that I’d be tearing my hair out trying to fix in FCPX that take five minutes in Resolve, so to me it’s worth the pain, although I rarely round trip back again. Resolve is my final step.
But I agree that it’s more effort than most of my projects need. I probably finish 90% of my projects in FCPX using colour finale – but when you need resolve’s perecision and tools, there’s no other way to go.
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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland
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