The Resolve / Colour Grading resource thread

[DanielVranic]

Wish that Juan's Linny LUT worked on other cameras footage.

Used it on my A7SII and my X-T3 - (XT3 in 10Bit All-I) and the footage cracked. Banding that is not in original footage just shows up and the colors look posterized and the blue channel burns in the footage. But other colors look amazing. Too bad~~

[scotchtape]

So many  a7 cameras and they all have different color science

[kye]

9 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

Wish that Juan's Linny LUT worked on other cameras footage.

Used it on my A7SII and my X-T3 - (XT3 in 10Bit All-I) and the footage cracked. Banding that is not in original footage just shows up and the colors look posterized and the blue channel burns in the footage. But other colors look amazing. Too bad~~

Did you convert your footage into LogC and the right colour space before putting it through the LUT?

I haven't played with any XT-3 footage but my GH5 10-bit footage is really difficult to break, so I think it might be a processing problem.

[DanielVranic]

6 minutes ago, kye said:

Did you convert your footage into LogC and the right colour space before putting it through the LUT?

I haven't played with any XT-3 footage but my GH5 10-bit footage is really difficult to break, so I think it might be a processing problem.

I did, it breaks the footage. I have to TRY to break the XT3 footage really hard before i get banding, and that LUT just does it right away

[kye]

3 hours ago, DanielVranic said:

I did, it breaks the footage. I have to TRY to break the XT3 footage really hard before i get banding, and that LUT just does it right away

That's a pity, and it's also interesting to me. When I find something surprising that normally means there is something that I can learn.

I'm about to be out of internet range for a couple of weeks so I might play with it and see how it works and what it does

[Dustin]

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you for contributing to this thread, I will be bookmarking it. 

After 5 years of paying for the creative cloud, (most on the student discount) I simply cannot afford $60/mo. If it was the student price I would consider. That said, I have briefly played around with resolve, edited a few clips and watched a few tutorials and I think I should be just fine lowering my adobe to just photoshop. The only reason I’m keeping photoshop is I use a film correction plugin for scanning 35mm film (photography not video) and $10 a month is something I can afford.

As with any creative outlet I always like to pick the best tool for the job and budget, I’m looking forward to diving into resolve. It might take a few projects to get that muscle memory going but I’m pumped! 

At the moment I shoot 4k on my Sony a6500 and downscale to 1080p timeline for super crispy 1080p. In resolve will this downscaling happen automatically upon drag and drop or will I need to set it up to do so?

[kye]

9 hours ago, Dustin said:

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you for contributing to this thread, I will be bookmarking it. 

After 5 years of paying for the creative cloud, (most on the student discount) I simply cannot afford $60/mo. If it was the student price I would consider. That said, I have briefly played around with resolve, edited a few clips and watched a few tutorials and I think I should be just fine lowering my adobe to just photoshop. The only reason I’m keeping photoshop is I use a film correction plugin for scanning 35mm film (photography not video) and $10 a month is something I can afford.

As with any creative outlet I always like to pick the best tool for the job and budget, I’m looking forward to diving into resolve. It might take a few projects to get that muscle memory going but I’m pumped! 

At the moment I shoot 4k on my Sony a6500 and downscale to 1080p timeline for super crispy 1080p. In resolve will this downscaling happen automatically upon drag and drop or will I need to set it up to do so?

The scaling happens automatically.  Resolve handles almost anything you throw at it. Resolutions, framerates, bit-depths, gamma or colour spaces, the whole lot, and it does it so transparently that when I hear that other software doesn't it just makes me confused why anyone would write software any other way.

I also have photoshop as well as Resolve, they're good for different things.

[BTM_Pix]

19 hours ago, Dustin said:

 The only reason I’m keeping photoshop is I use a film correction plugin for scanning 35mm film (photography not video) and $10 a month is something I can afford.

Not all plugins are compatible with it so worth checking if your particular one is as Affinity Photo would offer you an option to break from Adobe completely for the price of a few month's subscription.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/desktop/

[DanielVranic]

If only there was a solution for the washed-out export concern.

I have tried every tutorial, calibrated my display, tried every combo of export settings in Resolve and literally nothing has worked. Shot a short test clip, and recorded a tutorial on grading Fuji X-T3 footage in Resolve and I can't post it because every export kills my footage..

[kye]

On 12/14/2018 at 9:30 PM, DanielVranic said:

If only there was a solution for the washed-out export concern.

I have tried every tutorial, calibrated my display, tried every combo of export settings in Resolve and literally nothing has worked. Shot a short test clip, and recorded a tutorial on grading Fuji X-T3 footage in Resolve and I can't post it because every export kills my footage..

Have you tried exporting from Resolve and then pulling the export back into Resolve and seeing if it looks different?

If it's different to what the graded shots look like then it's a problem with the export function of Resolve, otherwise it might be that Resolve isn't calibrated properly. Resolve has its own independent colour calibration and profiles capabilities so maybe they've gotten screwed up somehow.

For what it's worth I've edited, graded, exported, and uploaded a couple of dozen videos and they look fine to me, except for the usual browser and media player colour issues.

[Anaconda_]

2 hours on grading in resolve, from BMD themselves. 

[DanielVranic]

9 hours ago, kye said:

Have you tried exporting from Resolve and then pulling the export back into Resolve and seeing if it looks different?

If it's different to what the graded shots look like then it's a problem with the export function of Resolve, otherwise it might be that Resolve isn't calibrated properly. Resolve has its own independent colour calibration and profiles capabilities so maybe they've gotten screwed up somehow.

For what it's worth I've edited, graded, exported, and uploaded a couple of dozen videos and they look fine to me, except for the usual browser and media player colour issues.

Yea, I did that, and they didnt match up. I messed with the color profiles and then the reimport did match, but the exports were still gross. Except for in VLC

[kye]

On 12/17/2018 at 12:24 AM, DanielVranic said:

Yea, I did that, and they didnt match up. I messed with the color profiles and then the reimport did match, but the exports were still gross. Except for in VLC

If you're on Mac then I think there are big colour problems with QuickTime and I think VLC is regarded as more trustworthy than anything else, it's certainly what I use to view exports. I haven't noticed any differences between Resolve, VLC and watching YT but I might not be as demanding with colour as you.

I'd suggest asking the question over at liftgammagain.com, those guys will definitely be able to help.

[KnightsFan]

On 12/14/2018 at 9:30 AM, DanielVranic said:

If only there was a solution for the washed-out export concern.

I have tried every tutorial, calibrated my display, tried every combo of export settings in Resolve and literally nothing has worked. Shot a short test clip, and recorded a tutorial on grading Fuji X-T3 footage in Resolve and I can't post it because every export kills my footage..

Sounds like a video vs data levels issue? You can specify whether cmimported clips in resolve use data or video levels, and you can also specify which your export uses. You can also specify which to use in VLC. Neither one is universally correct, just check how it looks on whatever platform you distribute on.

[Trek of Joy]

Just saw that Blackmagic has uploaded tutorials. The grading tut is linked above, but I found their intro video to be far more comprehensive than any other I've watched so far. If you're new to Resolve, this is where to start. There are a lot of clever tools and time savers that nobody else talks about. As an editor its far more powerful and well sorted than I first thought. I get all of this is in the manual, but I'm a visual learner and things like the edit overlay and how you can choose where your clip is inserted into the timeline is much easier to grasp when you see it in action. Highly recommended.

Chris

 

[Emanuel]

: -)

[kye]

8 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

Just saw that Blackmagic has uploaded tutorials. The grading tut is linked above, but I found their intro video to be far more comprehensive than any other I've watched so far. If you're new to Resolve, this is where to start. There are a lot of clever tools and time savers that nobody else talks about. As an editor its far more powerful and well sorted than I first thought. I get all of this is in the manual, but I'm a visual learner and things like the edit overlay and how you can choose where your clip is inserted into the timeline is much easier to grasp when you see it in action. Highly recommended.

Chris

 

What is it about a 1000+ page manual that isn't quick and easy to read?? Lol.

I saw they put out a bunch of videos but haven't looked at them yet. Great to hear they're useful

How are you getting on with learning Resolve?

[Trek of Joy]

1 hour ago, kye said:

What is it about a 1000+ page manual that isn't quick and easy to read?? Lol.

I saw they put out a bunch of videos but haven't looked at them yet. Great to hear they're useful

How are you getting on with learning Resolve?

So far so good, after a couple weeks its becoming very intuitive - almost as fast as FCPx with better audio editing tools. I'm focusing on my three needs -- audio production, grading and most of all editing. I'm really liking just about everything about it. Its replacing FCPx & an older version of Protools, or Premiere and Audition depending on the project. Its really well sorted on just about all fronts, if you see the logic behind it, it really makes sense. That's why I like the BM video so much, they show a lot of really great features that I hadn't discovered in other overview videos I've gone through in the last few weeks. What seemed like a really steep learning curve is actually no worse than any other NLE I've worked with, it just has its own process and its actually pretty easy to grasp once you see the basics. And its so easy to move between editing, audio production and grading, I love just clicking on the icons on the bottom and bouncing between media, edit, color and audio. It took awhile to wrap my head around nodes and the ways to link them, how to use them and so on, now it makes perfect sense.

I just have to figure out how to get it to show the estimated file size when exporting a finished edit, so I can adjust the bitrate to suit file size limitations like Facebook uploads without waiting for the finished product. Most of the time its not an issue, but I was doing 1-hour versions of a Yule Log project and getting the file size correct took a few tries, at about 4 hours each. Then there was the 8-hour version ( lots of looping) that took 22 hours to export. And it took 4 tries to get the bitrate right and it froze on me a couple of times. Grrr.... But I think the project just overtaxed my ram or video card. On shorter pieces, like 30 sec to 6 min its been fantastic, and really fast from start to finish.

And that manual, aye. Seems like a good chunk is Fusion and that one is way beyond most of my needs. I'm not a motion graphics person, so I'm all about the templates. But I do need to learn to animate titles so after getting comfortable with grading, audio and editing I will start work with Fusion basics.

The above is a long winded way of saying no regrets about jumping in and making the switch. I really like the all-in-one solution. I tried v12 and didn't like it, but v15 is so much better. I'm now producing photo and video pieces for VISIT FLORIDA and Resolve is going to play a big part in what I do going forward. Eventually a Pocket 4k will too, I shoot a lot of sunrise/sunset stuff so raw will be a welcome addition sometime early next year.

Every day I spend 30 minutes or so on a tutorial to sharpen my skills. Thanks for all the help and resources. I check this thread almost daily to see if anyone posts anything new.

Cheers

Chris

[kye]

21 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

So far so good, after a couple weeks its becoming very intuitive - almost as fast as FCPx with better audio editing tools. I'm focusing on my three needs -- audio production, grading and most of all editing. I'm really liking just about everything about it. Its replacing FCPx & an older version of Protools, or Premiere and Audition depending on the project. Its really well sorted on just about all fronts, if you see the logic behind it, it really makes sense. That's why I like the BM video so much, they show a lot of really great features that I hadn't discovered in other overview videos I've gone through in the last few weeks. What seemed like a really steep learning curve is actually no worse than any other NLE I've worked with, it just has its own process and its actually pretty easy to grasp once you see the basics. And its so easy to move between editing, audio production and grading, I love just clicking on the icons on the bottom and bouncing between media, edit, color and audio. It took awhile to wrap my head around nodes and the ways to link them, how to use them and so on, now it makes perfect sense.

I just have to figure out how to get it to show the estimated file size when exporting a finished edit, so I can adjust the bitrate to suit file size limitations like Facebook uploads without waiting for the finished product. Most of the time its not an issue, but I was doing 1-hour versions of a Yule Log project and getting the file size correct took a few tries, at about 4 hours each. Then there was the 8-hour version ( lots of looping) that took 22 hours to export. And it took 4 tries to get the bitrate right and it froze on me a couple of times. Grrr.... But I think the project just overtaxed my ram or video card. On shorter pieces, like 30 sec to 6 min its been fantastic, and really fast from start to finish.

And that manual, aye. Seems like a good chunk is Fusion and that one is way beyond most of my needs. I'm not a motion graphics person, so I'm all about the templates. But I do need to learn to animate titles so after getting comfortable with grading, audio and editing I will start work with Fusion basics.

The above is a long winded way of saying no regrets about jumping in and making the switch. I really like the all-in-one solution. I tried v12 and didn't like it, but v15 is so much better. I'm now producing photo and video pieces for VISIT FLORIDA and Resolve is going to play a big part in what I do going forward. Eventually a Pocket 4k will too, I shoot a lot of sunrise/sunset stuff so raw will be a welcome addition sometime early next year.

Every day I spend 30 minutes or so on a tutorial to sharpen my skills. Thanks for all the help and resources. I check this thread almost daily to see if anyone posts anything new.

Cheers

Chris

Good to hear you're making progress and getting good results

Getting an estimated file size seems to be a bit of a challenge, but when you look at how compression works you realise that it's basically trying to guess the future.  The bitrate controls in Resolve are based around maximum bitrate, not average bitrate or minimum bitrate.  This is important because sometimes the video to be compressed might be very simple and not need much bitrate (eg, a mostly black screen with silhouettes, titles, very little motion, etc) or they could be very difficult and need lots of bitrate (eg, trees moving around in wind and rain) so the bitrate that will actually be used in the video export is dependent on what is in the video, so can't really be estimated accurately beforehand.
You will find that if you compress a video to max bitrate of A it comes out as X Mb, but if you then export it with a max bitrate of A/2 the file size is almost certain to be more than X/2 because the video won't have been hitting the A bitrate limit the whole time.  In fact, you can sometimes halve the max bitrate and only knock a few percentage off the export file size.  This makes sense because sometimes there are big changes in what you see (a straight cut changes every pixel on the screen) but most of the time the changes are very small (people talking and only their faces moving) so most of the time the max bitrate isn't having any effect on the export bitrate at all.

There are a few tricks you could do for longer edits though:

• Export a minute from the middle of a video and then estimate the total size from that
• Write down what file sizes you're getting with what settings to give a good starting point for future exports (I also include the bitrate in the filename eg "Cool video - 10k")
• You can also queue up a few exports with different bitrate settings and then hit go and let it render overnight, then choose the one with the right file size

I have the same issue, but as I only make short videos I just re-render them.  It also helps that for some reason I'm not completely critical of the video until I'm watching the exported video file so I often export, notice mistakes, then tweak and re-export anyway!  I have also gotten a feel for which max bitrates I tend to end up using to upload so start with those numbers and tweak from there.

I would imagine that you'll like Resolve even more when you get the P4K because the RAW stuff is included (and will be high priority for full support).  One of the best things I find in Resolve is that you can adjust any part of the workflow at any time without having to re-render, re-export, or whatever.  Half-way through colour grading you can change the edit, fix some sound, then grade a bit more, then change the edit, etc.  I know that people often work in passes, doing edit first, then sound, etc, but a lot of my process is just noticing things that bother me and fixing them as I go.  If I was round-tripping or had to make-do with the puny colour tools of other packages I think I would feel like I was working neck deep in mud with one arm tied behind my back.

[anonim]

Resolve 15, but not so about grading, but composing - not to open separate thread, this was three days urgent task to imagine story and make birthday gift for one local actress. I had just few photos from facebook and one our to shot several additional shots. So, result with wonderful Resolve 15 and by-myself-modified verses of Louis Aragon ...