DaVinci Resolve 10 Colour Grading Resources

March 19, 2014
6 min read
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DaVinci Resolve 10.1.3 Colour Grading Resources

The latest version of DaVinci Resolve 10.1.3 is now out – so speedy are the folk at Blackmagic Design and so determined are they to keep improving their world class product. So what’s been improved in the updates?

DaVinci Resolve 10.1.2 update:

• The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K Film to Rec709 LUT
• Support for simultaneous video I/O for Resolve Live, when using Desktop Video 10 with a single DeckLink or Ultrastudio
• Support for SLog3, SGamut3 and SGamut3Cine for Sony Raw
• Support for Sony SLog3 to Rec709 1D LUT
• Support for Sony SLog3-SGamut3Cine to Rec709 3D LUTs

DaVinci Resolve 10.1.3 update:

• Color page GUI performance improvement when using Mavericks
• Update to RED SDK 4.6, which includes support for Dragon OLPF and Rocket-X when using RED ONE clips
• GPU debayer Preferences option for RED RAW clips
• Support for ‘Content Kind’ selected in the DCP composition name dialog
• Stereo Decision List import for ColorTrace

Colorist Juan Salvo has this to say about the new RED SKD support

DaVinci Resolve and the New Mac Pro

To really make the most of these new features, you’re going to require some seriously beefy machinery behind the scenes, and the new Mac Pro is definitely a good start.

In the video above, colorist Dado Valentic from grading house Mytherapy, shares his insights on Resolve performance with the new Mac Pro. He’s using a 3.6 Ghz 6 Core machine with 64GB RAM and the D500 GPUs, tested with a variety of different footage formats and resolutions. If you’re interested in purchasing one, it is well worth a watch.

The Coloristos devote an entire ‘colorcast’ to the subject of the new Mac Pro, finally settling on the suggestion that an 8-core, D700 machine might be the best configuration for grading in regards to bang-for-buck returns. You can also download a pdf of their results after much extensive testing, from the Lift Gamma Gain forum.

As more and more colorists put the Mac Pro to the test, the more valuable Twitter threads like these become. Click the date stamp to jump to the full conversation.

John Nierras has also posted a thoughtful review of the Mac Pro (with a similar spec to the Mytherapy machine, except with D700s) based on his initial experiences.

One of the acclaimed facts about the late 2013 Mac Pro is the ability to handle 4K media. Using DaVinci Resolve with the help of Thunderbolt 2 drives and the internal SSD drive, all I can say this baby screams speed! Pushing that many pixels is impressive, but it all depends what media/codec you’re using. Anything ProRes (HD, 2K, 4K) will work very smoothly within DaVinci Resolve. Up to a point I had about 20 nodes with different color adjustments, blurs, and resizing, it still kept playing real time. 20 nodes! That’s insane!

One of the interesting things that John mentions, is using a custom foam cut iM2500 Storm carry-on case from Pelican, to transport the diminutive machine around safely. Modelled here with a really important telephone.

Carry on case for the new mac pro

DaVinci Resolve 10 Tutorials

Colorist and trainer Warren Eagles walks through the new Highlight Difference feature – which allows you to see more clearly exactly which parts of the image a node is effecting.

Clay Asbury recently posted this useful tip on using variable speed changes in Resolve – that come through from your NLE’s timeline. Check out his full write up over on Premiumbeat.com. In the short video below Jae Solina demonstrates how to use power windows in Resolve Lite, a basic but essential ability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwDEyUxU5m8

If you own an iPad and want to make more use of it when grading (and don’t have an expensive DaVinci Resolve control surface) then the latest version of the Custom Keypad layout from Espirimenttocinema could be the answer. Download the cheap app from the iTunes store and then grab the free layout to get tapping in no time.

DaVinci Resolve ipad layout Surface

Art Adams has written up an interesting post on trying to convert the internal values of the DaVinci Resolve scopes to the usual 0-100 percentages. The whole post is worth a read, especially the chart that maps the values in different situations.

I decided to see if I could translate their data values into percentages using references created in software that does employ proper scopes. I created a series of test images in Final Cut Pro 7 that contained various shades of gray: 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100% and 109%. 40% is roughly middle gray on a Rec 709 vectorscope; 60% is the high end of normal flesh tone brightness; 100% is broadcast white and 109% is “super white.” I exported this footage to ProRes422HQ in YUV (video) format and then brought it into Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 10. I then used the RGB color picker to see where those values fell on Resolve’s 10-bit (0-1023) waveform. I learned some interesting things.

DaVinci Resolve To Avid WorkflowOliver Peters has written up a great step by step workflow for grading ARRI ALEXA files in DaVinci Resolve when round tripping through Avid Media Composer.

In summary you create one-light LUT DNx36 proxy files in Resolve, edit those in Media Composer, AAF back to Resolve to grade your original ARRI ALEXA Pro Res files and then return to Media Composer to complete your edit with your freshly graded files. As with all of Oliver’s post be sure to click the images for much larger screen grabs.

In another interesting read Scott Freeman shares some of his workflow secrets for making using of Resolve in other much more complicated offline/online workflow scenarios, particularly with Avid Media Composer.  So if you’re trying to do something clever and not quite getting there – this article might just have the answer you need.

Resolve Collect 2.2

Colorist and Editor Nikolai Waldman has recently updated his useful little app called Resolve Collect which “copies source files used in a DaVinci Resolve project (Media Pool or Timeline) to a single destination using a DaVinci Resolve Project (.drp) file, both V9 and V10.” It’s a handy app for being able to get all your media files into one place, especially if they are scattered across several drives, in just a few clicks.

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