Marc Wielage
Forum Replies Created
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Resolve is very demanding in terms of hardware, and laptops are not ideal for this kind of software. You can do small tasks with Resolve (particularly with simple file formats like DNxHD LB), but I wouldn’t try to push it unless you have a much more powerful CPU and a beefier GPU.
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If you do the key on the Color page, you should see it just fine in the Color page. What kind of source material are you using, and what specific hardware and OS are you using?
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Much good advice above. The cold reality is that while Resolve may “appear” to be inexpensive (either using the free or the $299 version), the fact is if you expect really fast performance with large files, you need to throw a lot of hardware at it. I’m guessing we have somewhere north of $60,000′ worth of hardware to get what we need out of Resolve, but we do some fairly demanding projects. (And without too much trouble, you could easily go way over six figures, particularly for Dolby Vision or projection applications.)
I think it’s possible to do low-end stuff in Resolve if you just work with very simple, low-compression HD files and don’t push the material too hard. I routinely do little tinkertoy things on my 16″ MacBook Pro, and both Resolve 16 and 17 have been very fast and responsive. It’s rare I do 4K there, but the 2K ProRes 444 stuff works fine and is very quick.
Jason Bowdach did a one-hour webinar over on MixingLight awhile back which was all about “performance optimization” with Resolve. I think a lot of what he says makes sense, and he might give you some insight as to why things are slower in one program (or with certain kinds of material) than another.
https://mixinglight.com/color-grading-tutorials/performance-optimization-in-davinci-resolve-webinar/
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Treat it as a key and use an Alpha to replace the black background with a new background. Read the 16.2 manual on “Introduction to Compositing Using the Alpha Output” starting on p. 2886, only instead of keying on a green background, you’re keying from black. Be aware that you may have to use garbage mattes to avoid losing details from the watch itself. For a lot of reasons, a black background with a live-action foreground subject is not ideal for keying, but it can be done if it’s lit extremely well.
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My best advice would be to keep it simple: just do it all in Resolve. You’d be going through far fewer steps and less trouble learning the basics of editing and color and mixing, and just doing it there.
To me, camera audio is often problematic, and you’d be better off using an external sound recorder and recording in multitrack.
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We use multiple timelines for features that are broken down into Reels. For example, a 2-hour film might have Reel 1-2-3-4-5-6, each about 20 minutes long. One reason to do that is because if any changes are done to the edit, it’s better to futz with a single 20-minute timeline than one massive 120-minute timeline with thousands of cuts.
We also use multiple timeline for VERSIONS. The first color pass of a TV show might be timeline 1, “showname_ep#_color_v1”, the second timeline might be version 2, the third timeline might be the final, the fourth might be a textless version or promos… there’s any number of reasons to do so.
If we start making a lot of changes to a project, I’ll generally do a Save-As and date the project as being “last week’s version.” That way, we have a record of it, but we’re moving forward with an uncluttered session that just has the timelines we need. If I need to pull up last week’s version, I can either look at the stills in the shared Gallery or I can use Dynamic Project Switching to pull up both projects simultaneously and compare them.
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Read these:
“Grading for Mixed Delivery: Cinema, Home, and Every Screen in Between” by Cullen Kelly
https://blog.frame.io/2019/10/14/grading-mixed-delivery/
“How to Deal with Levels: Full vs. Video” by Dan Swierenga
https://www.thepostprocess.com/2019/09/24/how-to-deal-with-levels-full-vs-video
and
“A Deeper Look at Consistent Color with QuickTime Tags From Resolve To YouTube & Vimeo on Wide Gamut Apple Monitors”
by Dan Swierenga
and I think they cover the issues and the solutions very well. Understanding color management is also helpful:
“Color Management for Video Editors”
https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/colour-management-for-video-editors/
My simple method: always export a second or two of SMPTE color bars at the very head of the project, and then check them on scopes in whatever player you’re using to see how it looks. If there’s a shift (video level or hue or chroma), you’ll see it very quickly in bars.
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[Mike Thomas] “3. Select all the clips on the timeline and create a “compound clip”. Name the clip the name of the scene including the word “compound”. After creating the compound clip “decompose” the clip, which just means to un-compound it.”
Did you consider my suggestion to use Metadata instead? This is exactly what Metadata is for, and it doesn’t change the clip, require you to create a compound clip (which uses up disc space), and it’s possible to do it very quickly. You can even select multiple clips and change the Metadata to all of them… like adding a scene number or changing the displayed clip name. All this is in the manual and in the Advanced Editing guide I mentioned above. -
[Mike Thomas] “Brand new to Resolve and shooting a feature film soon. I need to understand how to organize the movie by “scenes”. I’m switching from Sony Vegas where is was so simple. In Vegas each scene is saved as its own project, then each project is imported into a Master project. You work on each scene individually and the changes are reflected in the Master project automatically. “
Well, you could set up the bins and timelines so that each bin had (say) one day’s synced material, and then have one timeline per scene. When you’re ready to view the results, you can stack multiple timelines together to watch the entire thing in sequence. Once the project is locked, you’ll need to consolidate the timeline as individual shots for final color.A lot of this is explained in the basic Resolve textbooks (including the one on Advanced Editing), available for free on Blackmagic’s website:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/training
Specific philosophies for editing are kind of an individual choice, so that’s a wide-open discussion. One thing for sure: be sure to use the metadata options available for every scene & take in Resolve. Those are very powerful features, and they can allow you to locate shots in a specific location, or from certain angles, or with specific characters. Sorting and finding those shots quickly are a big part of working efficiently.
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[ido shor] “stop pointing people to the manual ☺ that’s what forums are for.. fast easy answers ☺”
To me, the forums are for helping people with problems not in the manual. If they’re so stupid they can’t or won’t read the manual, they’re not going to get very far with Resolve. (Or Premiere or Avid or Baselight or a dozen other similar complex post programs.)