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davinci_resolve_notes

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This page last modified 2021.12.22 14:25
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DaVinci Resolve - Notes

Resolve is used for video editing. (MacBook shorts)

Select All⌘A
Deselect all⇧⌘A
Select clips forward on this trackY
Select clips forward on all tracks⌥Y
Cut (remove a clip)⌘X
Ripple cut⇧⌘X
Razor (split into two)⌘B
Split Clips⌘\
Join Clips⌥\
Nudge clip left/right, / .
Snapping on/offN
Enable/Disable ClipD
Add MarkerM
Add/modify Marker⌘M
Modify Marker⇧M
Delete Marker⌥M
Play reverseJ
Fast reverse⇧J
Stop playK
Play forwardL
Fast forward⇧L
Zoom in/out timeline⌥scroll ball or ⌥two-finger up/down
(when in EDIT tab, 3rd from left bottom)
Go to First / Last frame current clip ; / '
Go to timeline start / end Fn left arrow / Fn right arrow

More shortcuts

Editing notes

Multiple cameras

In Media Storage, under Master, create a bin for each camera.
Then find clips on top and copy them below, into the appropriate bin

1440x1080 to 1920x1080

You want the narrow image to fill the frame.

  1. Import clips as usual. discover people very thin
  2. Either Select all clips, or select a clip in the media pool
  3. Right click on it, and from the dropdown choose Clip Attributes…
  4. Video tab
  5. For Pixel Aspect Ratio, select “1.3x Anamorphic” from the dropdown
  6. OK

Sorting clips in Media Manager

Note that selecting a bin and doing Sort By, sorts the bins and not the clips in the bin. To sort the clips in a bin:

  1. Select the bin
  2. Use the icon on top to display by list
  3. Click on Clip Name heading and see them sort
  4. Use the icon on top to display by icons

Renaming clips

Useful to help when setting up your B-rolls.
Enable “list display” in the media pool, right click the bar and select the “Display Clip Names” option. In that field, you can change the name of the clip.
Technically, the Clip File name is not really changed, but the displayed clip name is changed. I think this is a safe idea – it's very risky to change actual file names.

Use just one of the two stereo channels

Suppose channel 1 has loud hum (happened 20190710). How to split L&R to two channels and mute the noisy channel 1.

  1. Right click each source file in Media Pool
  2. From dropdown select Clip Attributes…
  3. Audio tab
  4. Format: Mono, Tracks: 2, Add
  5. See: Stereo with Channel 1 & 2, Mono with Channel 1, Mono with Channel 2. This is good.
  6. Pull each source file to the timeline. See:three audio channels.
  7. Mute (press M till highlighted and S till it's not) the Stereo and noisy channel 1.
  8. Done

Copy - Paste part of timeline to elsewhere

You want to extract a section of a timeline to someplace. Maybe you want to duplicate it in the timeline or maybe you want to pull extracts from a large production to another timeline in the project.

I did this 20190912 for 2 Bits and a Byte, they wanted a short extract of a long video. Timeline 1 holds the >60 minute video, I pulled sections of it, a minute here and 2 minutes there, to another timeline I created.

  1. In the source timeline, find start of section to copy, type i (mark the in-point)
  2. In the source timeline, find the end of the section to copy, type o (mark the out-point)
  3. Put cursor inside the selected area and ⌘C
  4. Go to new place you want it (the other timeline or elsewhere in current timeline) and ⌘V
  • To duplicate the timeline: Edit > Duplicate Timeline
  • To rename timeline: click on its name in Media Pool, and rename it
  • To change to another timeline: Above the viewing window, open dropdown by current timeline, will show you the others to select

Rename a Timeline

You have one or more timelines and you want to rename one or more of them.
Select Media view. See: list of media including timelines. Click on name of timeline and you can edit/change it.

Adjust volume

Show waveforms. You see white line; move line up/down to change volume level of the track.

To adjust within a track, put cursor on the white line press Alt(option) key and click. This adds a white circle, you can add several, and change volume between them.

Dynamic Zoom

You want to zoom in or out, or pan an existing clip.

  1. Select the clip. (You might cut its start and end so you have the range of video you want to zoom on isolated into a single clip.)
  2. In Inspector, turn on Dynamic Zoom, and Linear
  3. In preview window in lower left, select from the dropdown Dynamic Zoom
  4. Green box is beginning, Red box is end, of the zoom.

How to see X-Y parameters of the green and red boxes

TBD

Media Offline! Fixing

You're re-editing a project and some or all of the media reports “Media Offline”. Here's how I fixed it once.

  1. Go to timeline
  2. See or select Media Pool in upper left
  3. In media pool, right click on a clip (e.g., 00000.mts) that shows Media Offline
  4. Towards the bottom of the context menu, select “Relink selected clips”
  5. In the dialog that appears, navigate to the clip you want

If the clip (e.g., 00000.MTS) is inside a directory and you don't see it and can't select it, just select the containing directory.
It has worked when you see the contents of a video or the waveform of the audio in the Media Pool.

from https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=57380

Track and Blur an Object

Tutorial
In brief

  1. set up a track (cut left and right on timeline) that has what you want to blur
  2. select the track and go to Color tab (to left of musical notes)
  3. once there, alt-S to create a boxie
  4. select the boxie
  5. draw the window around the object using square or whatever
  6. adjust the square
  7. track right and track left
  8. Open FX, drag Box Blur to the boxie

Captioning your Movie

First, you need a caption file that Resolve can read. If you use Zoom you may have a VTT or caption file. For Resolve you need a SRT file. Two ways to get this SRT file. (You can also manually enter the captions but I'm not discussing that here.)

Method 1

  1. Copy VTT file to new file with SRT extension
  2. Edit the new SRT file
    1. Delete the first two lines, the WEBVTT file and the blank line beneath it
    2. For each timestamp, replace the period with a comma.
      • From: 00:00:03.090 (from VTT)
      • To: 00:00:03,090 (in SRT)

Converting, using vim.

  1. fix dot to comma: :g/^[0-9]/s/\./\,/g
  2. remove names from captions: :g/[A-Za-z].*:/s/^.*: </color> ===Method 2=== - Browse to VTT file - Convert - Download SRT file ===Adding the captions to your movie=== * In Resolve, Timeline Edit * File > Import file > Import Subtitle, select the .srt file. * In timeline, above Video 1, right-click and add subtitle track. * It becomes a third track area, above audio and video track areas. * Copy the srt file to this track. * I have found that if the captions start at 00:00:03,090, after you import the captions start at 00:00:00,000. So you need to select all captions (cursor on first caption, Y to select all tracks, Command-click on the audio and video tracks so only captions are selected, and slide it to the right (e.g., to 00:00:03,090). * Then select the caption track, and go to inspector. I have found these to be useful: * Open Sans size 35 line spacing -10 Left alignment * Transform position x=808 y=32, anchor bottom and centered * Drop Shadow: x offset 4, y offset -4 ===Rendering with Captions Showing=== * Open Subtitle Settings * Export Subtitle * Format “Burn into video” ====Save a Frame as an Image – Export Frame==== from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnainUbQ4qY - Select clip in timeline - Go to the Color tab - In video preview, move the time marker to the frame you'd like to save - Right-click on the video preview, and select Grab Still - On the left in the Gallery, right-click on the still and select Export - Find the place on your computer to save it and name it - Change file type to JPEG or whatever, and hit Export to save the frame as an image ====Combine MTS files to MP4==== In Any Video Converter Ultimate… - Select Convert Videos - In Finder, go to the directory private - See: AVCHD, right click on it and Show Package Contents - See: BDMV, right click on it and Show Package Contents - See: a bunch of MTS files like 00000.MTS, 00001.MTS - Select all of these (shift click) - Copy these to Any Video Converter - Make sure they are in the right order, 00000, 00001, 00002, etc - Choose the output format, I use: HD MP4 Video (X264, Auto size up to 1920×1080, AAC, Stereo, 44100 Hz - Put checkmark in the box Merge All Files - Specify file name - Select output folder (e.g., Any Video Converter) - Convert Now =====Other Notes===== ====Tweaks==== Improving your interaction with Resolve. from a 2/24/2020 blog * Performance mode. Preferences, User settings, playback settings. * Set Performance Mode=Automatic * set Hide UI Overlays * set Minimize interface updates during playback. * Speed up playback during editing.
    Look in upper corner when playing, see frames/second (e.g., 29.97) and green or red dot. Red dot means your computer can't keep up with the playback. The following will likely help. * Playback > Proxy Playback. Set to half or quarter. * This speeds up playback. * Image may appear a bit blurry, but the playback won't jump. * Does not affect final output of your project. ====Archiving/offloading projects to preserve disk space==== You have (finally!) finished working on a project and you want to put it away some place so it won't take up space on your prime drive and also so that you can pull it back intro Resolve to work on it some more, if that's ever needed. https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/understand-project-files-davinci-resolve/ (with some mods by smi)
    When you initially open Resolve, you’ll see a project window called the Project Manager. Here, you can load an existing project, or you can create a new project from scratch. However, you may notice that you don’t get to choose where the project file will be stored. Even when saving your project through the “Save Copy As” function, you still don’t get to choose the location — only the name. This is because Resolve operates within an industry-standard database system. Any item that isn’t a media file will be stored in the database. Admittedly, if you haven’t worked with a system like this, it can seem daunting at first. A quick Google search for “DaVinci Resolve save location” will bring up hundreds of frantic search queries from worried users. In hindsight, I can say it makes a lot of sense. All projects are stored in the same place on your system drive, but if you need to back up, transfer, or import a project, you do so within Resolve and not in explorer or finder as you would with Premiere. In fact, renaming or moving projects outside of Resolve can result in a project becoming corrupted. It’s a big no-no. Let’s have a look at how you execute these tasks. ===Archive everything about a project=== - In your Project Manager, right-click on the project and select Export Project Archive… - Select the place where you want to store the archive and verify the Save As archive name The .dra directory is created and it is the archive of your project. At this point you can Delete the project from Resolve and Send the original media files to Trash. This will copy all of the media in your project to the destination folder. Rest assured: the original media will remain untouched in its original location. It’s important to note that if you’re using hundreds of gigabytes of media, not only is the process going to take a while, you’re also going to have to make sure the new drive has enough available space. Note also that this does not copy the mp3 file and the output file (mp4 or mov) and you'll have to do this yourself. ===Restore everything about a project=== With your project fully archived, you need to restore it to use in Resolve. - Back in the project window, right-click anywhere, and hit “restore.” - Navigate to the archived project folder, and select open. Resolve will then import the project, bins, and media exactly as you left them prior to archiving. A 2-minute video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJNYKgvDE2w ===Import and Export=== Import and Export are very different from Archive and Restore – Import/Export only deals with the project files (timelines, bins, settings), everything but the media. ====Recent Findings and Process 17oct2020==== I have been using one project for many programs. So what I am doing now is: - Projects > right click on the project > Export Project. - This exports the .drp file that holds project information, no media. - Export project twice: once with and and once without Stills and LUTs. - Add date to the file, eg:
    WWII Interviews 20201017 Stills LUTs - I am storing these in directory Resolve Project Backups - DRPs on my D24 disk - Copy the source directory (e.g., 20200823 WWII John Doe that holds the raw video and photos) for each recording (program or timeline) to directory on backup disk (me: Resolve Video Backups'' on D24 disk) ====Draw Text Onto Video==== Added 20201101: You want text not just to appear, but to stoke itself on. Writing your text onto the video. - Timeline, Media Pool, Create new fusion composition. Name it, drag it to timeline where you want it. - Select it, go to Fusion tab - Hide Keyframes - Add a text thing (see: T+) - Give it text, pick font. - Connect it to MediaOut - Select the text, Command-Shift-Space, MaskPaint - On MaskPaint Inspector, Tools (next to Controls), Invert (so you can see the text) - MaskPaint, Controls - Brush controls: Adjust the size of the circle so it will cover the strokes in the text, softness to zero - Stroke Controls: set Stroke Animation to Write On - Go to frame zero - Then click and drag the mouse to cover the text left to right - Back to Mask Control and uncheck Invert - Bring back Keyframes - Select all of the white marks, they turn yellow - Right-click and choose Time Stretching - Shrink them till they use the time you want,eg 1 or 2 seconds - Right-click and disable Time Stretching There may be more details I didn't include and maybe a few more steps but it should be easier with the above. From and with great thanks to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge4b_Ktw5bk ====Cleaning Up After==== April 2020: I found 114GB of space used in the CacheClip directory. If Resolve is not running, then you can delete this directory and regain the space. Movies>CacheClip This decision is supported by * CreativeCow: Resolve should clean them up but you can delete them * BlackMagicDesign Forum: You can delete the folder and Resolve will re-create it when needed ====Fonts of Interest==== * Comic Sans * Hannotate SC * Noteworthy * Skia * Tamil MN * LiSong Pro Command ⌘
    Shift ⇧
    Option ⌥
    Control ⌃ today=10/total=12043
davinci_resolve_notes.1609968726.txt.gz · Last modified: 2021.12.22 14:25 (external edit)