[Marc Wielage]

The only way to color-correct with predictable results is to use a 3rd party color-managed video output card (like the Blackmagic Design HD and 4K products) and calibrate the monitor. You can’t believe what you see on computer displays, because the operating system will affect the picture. And computer displays are generally not very accurate.

We need to make this a “sticky” or at least a boilerplate, because this question seems to come up about 9 times a month.

[Marc Wielage]

A “baked” audio file as a single piece, one string-out. If you have hundreds of little short files, it’s going to be maddening to deal with in Resolve.

I generally ask for a rough mix for color, then we either added the final mix to Resolve for the final output, or I just output an MOS file and let the editor stitch sound and picture together.

[Marc Wielage]

Consolidation could be of use. Read pp. 385-387 in the v11 manual.

Resolve Collect is also useful:

https://www.niwa.nu/2013/06/collect-source-files-with-resolve-collect/

[Marc Wielage]

Color management is a very complex subject. If you’re going to grade in Resolve, get a Blackmagic Design video card going to an HD monitor, then calibrate the monitor, and make all your judgements on that. Otherwise, the operating system itself will affect what you see.

[Marc Wielage]

Resize the Node Window (make it bigger and make the Viewer smaller) and see if that helps. I think Node management in general will be improved in v12.

[Marc Wielage]

My advice would be to fix it manually. Color Match can only go so far. It does help to start with the overall balance in the ballpark before hitting the Color Match button.

Note that it is possible to manually match different cameras completely from scratch, just using the scopes and the controls available.

[Marc Wielage]

What if they just used the original Avid audio and only used Resolve for color only? This is my typical workflow.

The alternative is to have the client send you a “baked” audio file as one piece, then bring that in. In that case, you can output the whole show without any problems.

[Marc Wielage]

I believe if you’ve shot at 59.97 but need to be at 23.98, you’re going to see a lot of motion interpolation artifacts. The only way I know to get around that is to use a Snell & Wilcox Alchemist or a BMD Teranex, but even then it’s not perfect.

It is possible to do the opposite: take a 23.98 master and convert it to 59.97i. And that’s done all the time for U.S. broadcast.

[Marc Wielage]

[Eric Klassen] “I’ve got colored clips from 3 projects that need to be set up in one timeline and played in a loop together. From my research, there’s no simple way to do this. Can someone help me understand the best workflow to set this up?”
If they’re already color-corrected, I don’t see the problem with exporting them all as ProRes 444 or DNxHD220 (assuming HD), then pulling the separate exported flatted files into a single timeline.

[Marc Wielage]

[Charles Haine] “I have one client that shoots a lot of Alexa and for some reason the Arri LUT’s look terrible on it. No idea why: I’ve tried to find out (they’ve been a client a long time), not sure if it’s rental house issues, or something the DP does in camera, but LUT’s I use on other clients footage that looks great just doesn’t work on their footage. Specifically the red color channel goes super duper pink.”
I have never found the Arri LUTs to produce pink results — if anything, 90% of what I see is a gamma curve and a selective chroma increase. Note there are LUT-creation tools on Arri’s website that allow you to customize their Rec709 LUTs quite a bit. In general, though, I just start from Log and do it myself — it’s not that hard to come up with a setting within Resolve that will make perfectly usable pictures.

If you want to determine if there’s a legitimate issue with those cameras, have the DP shoot a DSC color chart and look at the results. If anything bad is going on, you’ll see it very quickly. There’s also a procedure in the Alexa manual to do a “first birthday” reset on the camera, which will restore all the settings back to the factory defaults. That will eliminate any possible corruption that might be screwing up the settings in some way, unless of course the camera is just defective.