kye

Sites and resources: The first place to look for Resolve info is the 1000+ page manual, which is excellent. It answers most questions if you're learning Resolve. BM forums for Resolve: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewforum.php?f=21 There are people there who use Resolve all day every day, as well as newbies asking the same questions over and over.. a great resource. LiftGammaGain.com forums are the best place to find professional colourists.. https://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php LGG sub-forums of particular interest are: Colour: https://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?forums/color.9/ Looks: https://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?forums/looks.49/ Resolve: https://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?forums/resolve.36/ Lowepost is some excellent free articles and good (but not very busy) forums: https://lowepost.com Intermediate Codecs comparison table (very useful reference for proxies etc) https://blog.frame.io/2017/02/13/50-intermediate-codecs-compared/ PostPerspective is about post-production and has some interesting colour articles: https://postperspective.com PremiumBeat has some interesting articles: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/ MixingLight is a paid site but has some free resources worth checking out: https://mixinglight.com LUTcalc is a plugin that generates LUTs for converting between colour spaces and gammas, and although in Resolve I'd recommend using the Colour Space Transform OFX plugin over a lut (the plugin doesn't clip data like LUTs do) this LUT generator has a few colour spaces that the Resolve plugin doesn't have, eg, GoPro, so it has its uses: https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/LUTCalc/index.html

There are awesome resources for colour grading and Resolve techniques out there, but they're scattered around the place, and are hard to find. Please post anything awesome you find. (Note: for those that are new to Resolve or colour grading, there are lots of YT "colourists" who have very little actual knowledge. These people provide a steady stream of bad habits, misleading and flat-out wrong information. There are exceptions, but on the whole you should be very suspicious of people selling LUTs and pumping out video after video - most of these people are professional LUT salespeople and/or YouTubers and not professional colourists!) Juan Melara is excellent. If you watch all the below you'll get a sense of how he uses Resolve, especially the Colour Space Transform plugin and which tools in Resolve are designed to work in which colour spaces.

I would imagine there would be additional grading. The GH5 + GHa LUT is equivalent to an Alexa with Rec709 LUT. Most people would add a complete look after the rec709 conversion if they shot Alexa, so the same applies here I think. To get you to sign up. Everyone wants you to sign up because then they can market to you. It's a PITA to sign up, so they have to offer some kind of reward.

I registered there in Jan this year, still haven't been approved. I kept tabs on it for a couple of months, and people who registered after me became common around the place, I figured that they didn't want new users and gave up. Having good moderation on forums is critical, and if you're so incompetent that you can't approve new users then your forum isn't worth any of my time.

I kind of don't know what to think about Casey Faris. On one hand he uses the simple controls like the pros tend to, he seems to be able to do difficult things pretty quickly and efficiently (like matching cameras), and in comparison to most other YT grading people who sell LUT packs he looks level-headed and like he knows what he's doing. There's a YT colourist who bragged in one of their videos that they don't plan their grading videos, they just hit record and then make up the grade as they go along. However, if you compare him to Juan Melara then there's an enormous gap between Juan and every other YT colourist I'm aware of. Juan doesn't even seem to use Resolve in the same way that everyone else does - it's kind of like he's from another planet. His videos are absolute tours of force, and it's obvious that he has enormous depth of technical knowledge about colour spaces, colour conversion theory, etc. These are good examples of the level of knowledge that Juan has: Whenever Juans videos are discussed on the LGG forums the pros there admire him but aren't amazed, so from their reaction I have concluded that Juan is very knowledgable but not beyond the norm for professional colourists. I think film-making on YT is kind of becoming it's own universe and people like Casey stand out. However in the traditional world of film-making there are colourists who are part of professional guilds, work as part of the feature film industry, go to industry conferences, and some of them teach - either in person or behind paywalls and we've never even heard of them. The YT world and that professional world don't really have much contact with each other, so if it wasn't for people like Juan Melara we almost wouldn't know that there are people who put the rest of us to shame. In a sense, Casey is doing just fine, and if he can make footage look good and match different cameras together then that's all that's needed. There's no right or wrong way to do art, after all. However, once you become aware of the skill level that is out there in the industry then it's a bit hard to look at the YT colourists who sell LUTs and wonder if they're professional colourists or if they're really just LUT salespeople who only need to know enough more than their customers to appear knowledgeable enough to make good LUTs. When there are people like Juan who know so much more than the colourists who take log / non-rec709 footage and just adjust it with the LGG wheels or contrast controls it makes you wonder what else they're telling you that's flat our wrong, let alone just unhelpful advice. I watched many hours of YT colourists to get familiar with Resolve, and after studying Juans videos and reading lots of LGG threads, I realised that much of the techniques I'd learned from YT were just bad advice, and I needed to unlearn them and learn good replacement techniques.

Yes, but is it a pocket cinema camera? (Yes, I'm kidding... welcome to the forums!)

I sympathise about device overload. While I don't carry that many devices, I certainly own that many through past upgrades and whatnot. Unfortunately these days it seems that we buy new gear when the new device adds one extra feature to the existing products with their dozens of features.

That looks interesting, but lots of reviews talk of bugs and the In App purchases don't make it clear what functionality you get with the app purchase. How do you use it for video editing? Just to extend your desktop?

I was referring to the physical controller, the software itself, and the controllermate software you have to buy on top of that. I remember jerry-rigging a midi synth programming box to my computer and using a virtual MIDI driver and a MIDI processing program to change the MIDI commands from the programmer into MIDI control messages, and it was a mess to setup and install and the above setup doesn't seem to be that much different. During the demo video the guy mentions a few different menus that seem to be controlled in different ways via different methods. I'm also a bit reminded of the PC days when you'd put a computer together and it wouldn't work and the support for each product would blame the other products and you'd be stuck in the middle with "have you tried restarting it?" as your only logical approach! I guess that's maybe why the other controllers are so much more expensive - because they can be. Resolve has brought cutting edge tools to the masses for a ridiculously cheap price but I guess the hardware options are still price gouging for what is essentially some drivers and a hardware controller worth a couple of hundred dollars. Your controller video is impressive, but I couldn't work out how you were steering the ant walking across the colour checker? ? I think with all of this stuff there's a learning curve and you need to use it enough for that time to be paid off, and you need to use it enough to even remember what buttons do what. I use Resolve enough to remember the basic stuff, but I find that I have to solve a problem two or three times to remember that I've already solved it and to remember what hotkey I set it to! and remembering the button combination on the controller is probably just as difficult as remembering the hotkey on the normal keyboard. Then again I'm not grading often, and when I am it's more in-depth troubleshooting rather than simple and repetitive, so I'm not really the target market. What I would pay for ahead of a hardware controller is something that would let me use my iPad as an external monitor while editing. A 13inch laptop doesn't have the ideal amount of screen realestate for Resolve and its a lot tougher to take an external monitor travelling with you than to pack an iPad too!

Here's what I suspect most people use MD for...

If you put a 60fps clip on a 24fps timeline and set it to 40% speed it will play it back at 24p, using all the frames in the original clip. The fps in the dialogue box is wrong. If you leave the clip attributes as default and change the speed on the timeline you can have the same clip appear multiple times on the timeline at different speeds.

I have just put a bunch of money into MFT and I think apart from choosing the lenses that give you the right look, the elephant in the room is about investing into the MFT system at a time when everyone seems to be going to FF. For me, I don't see my GH5 as an investment - it's something I will pay to use for the next few years and at some point I'll sell and take a large loss, or would keep as a B-camera. I suspect that my MFT lenses may also suffer the same drop in value, and I'm ok with that. If you're ok with that too then that's great, but if you're not then I'd suggest you consider what the MFT lens system is likely to be worth when you're up for your next camera upgrade that isn't MFT. Maybe the system will live on and if it does then that's great, but if it doesn't then be prepared for that outcome. In terms of the 'look', you can always buy sharper lenses and soften them in post (which works to some degree) or buy filters that will do the job in-camera. The added advantage of filters is that the look is adjustable, eg with Tiffen they supply various 'strengths' so you can choose which you like, or even buy multiples and swap depending on the project. With lens softness (eg, the Helios) you get one look (including the Bokeh, which at MFT crop isn't that strong, but is still there) so you better be happy with it.

FF 8K RAW shooting camera with 16 stop DR and anamorphic adapter..... on a gimbal!

Interesting. Although by the time you buy all the things it's not a huge discount. Do you use a controller to grade? I've looked at controllers before and ended up not having much idea about if they're even worth it for me. I see professional colourists constantly talking about their process being mostly to do very simple adjustments (LGG wheels) to every shot, so it's about speed and therefore a control surface with the large colour balls is the perfect tool. Of course they also build a look, but in Resolve you can just do that in one location for the whole timeline so speed isn't important there. If they're doing a feature then it might involve tracking windows across many shots, but for TV and doc work that doesn't seem to be the case. For me, who shoots in less than ideal situations that require much more correction and attention, and also shoot fewer and much shorter videos so I don't really need the basic/bulk approach.

Actually, the Black Friday sale on Filmsimplified.com is pretty good - 85% off on the Resolve training, and I've just bought it It's designed for beginners so i'm not sure how much stuff I've worked out already, but it includes Fusion which I have no clue about, and Fairlight which I only have basic knowledge of, so that should be useful!

That's probably true, but where are the 8K cameras they'll be shooting on? If you're developing 8K cameras for broadcast and you're also in the business of making MILCs then there's quite a lot of synergy there, considering that electronics are basically modular. Of course, for the A7sIII they might opt to keep it 4K and instead of oversampling an image they could do true 4K in hardware by taking a 2x2 grid and combining them to get 4K in 444 colour. If they did this then they could also have two blue pixels and average them in the conversion, which would help noise in the final image, and may keep the A7s range as the low-light leaders.

@webrunner5 Thanks! I think! I haven't tried them, but maybe I should. Much stranger flavours have been edible and if you put enough salt and sugar into something it's normally passable. Besides, if you use those little banana lollies as a benchmark the fake flavouring version of something only has to be vaguely in the same flavour universe to be successful ???

Some follow-up comments on the 8mm SLR Magic: The locking screw is a PITA and there doesn't seem to be any tension you can apply that gives adjustability with some friction - it's either locked or free-floating. I'm thinking I might have a go at grinding/polishing the end of the screw to hopefully smooth it out and allow a 'friction' adjustment, but I'm not optimistic. The distance markings on the MF are useful - I worked out where to set it for 'selfie' focus and that makes it nice and repeatable (I make home videos and am trying to be in them a bit more) It's pretty soft at f16. The difference between 1m and infinity focus is only a few degrees adjustment on the MF control, so I set it to infinity focus and f16 and run with it as a fixed focus lens but reviewing footage it's pretty soft, so later I swapped to f4 which is so much sharper the Focus Assist lines just about double their strength in comparison to f16. If you like a softer look then f16 could be a great option. f4 is FF equivalent of f8, so in a sense you can just think of the aperture ring as a "soften" adjustment It flares quite nicely. The part of the flare with the shapes all in a line isn't that much at all, but the general tint across the whole image (kind of like a light-leak) is quite pleasant and in the footage from Thailand where I move the camera from away from the sun to towards it (but not having the sun in frame) a warm 'wash' appears across the image. No flare: 10 frames later (identical grade): This has the GHAlexa LUTs applied, so the colouration of the tint has been modified - I just looked at the SOOC footage with the contrast pumped up and it's basically orange. It kind of reminds me of the Tiffen BPM filters when the sun is out of frame but still hitting the filter. This is with the naked lens - no filters attached at all.

Yes, Resolve is that smart. If you set the re-time controls to exactly the right number (24/60 = 40% speed) then it will give the same result. Do a test for yourself. Pull in two clips - slow one of them using Clip Attributes and slow the other one on the timeline with a 40% speed adjustment, then step through them one frame at a time and see for yourself what Resolve does. One thing to note - when you have a HFR clip in the timeline and you open up the Clip Speed dialog it shows one box for Percentage and another for Frames Per Second. The FPS box shows the timeline speed (24fps in your case) and when you say 40% it will update this box to show 9.6FPS. It's wrong so basically just ignore it. Incidentally, if you want to have clips conformed to exactly the frames that were shot, I recommend using the Change Clip Speed dialog box instead of the other controls. I remapped the Command-R shortcut to it as well. Entering exact values in there is the easiest way to get the exact value.

This thread is mostly going no-where, but it's not anyones fault. It's actually a symptom of how a nodal editor like Resolve works. Begin PSA In PP or FCPX a person can ask the question "how much power do I need" and someone else can give an answer that is useful because people use the software in basically the same way. Sure, you can have layers and multiple tracks of video, but mostly people edit with one shot visible at a time, and PP and FCPX have such limited colour functionality that you would only use a couple of colour effects. Resolve is different. Resolve is a nodal editor, which means that you can make an infinite arrangement of adjustments that apply to some or all of the image. It's a "how long is a piece of string" question. It's not uncommon for a 'basic' grade in Resolve to include: Lift/gamma/gain/offset level and tint adjustments (to set black and white points exposure and adjust WB) A luminance vs luminance curves adjustment (adjust contrast and finer adjustments like shadows) A luminance vs saturation curves adjustment (desaturate extreme shadows and highlights) A hue vs saturation curve to take one over-saturated item and make it not be distracting A node adjusting mid-tone detail, maybe contrast, and some levels that has a key to only be applied to skintones An oval qualifier with level adjustment for a vignette adjustment This is without any OFX plugins, LUTs, Colour Space Transforms, etc. When you think of Resolve as an EDITOR, you can compare it to PP/FCPX in terms of how it works, but when you think of Resolve as a COLOUR GRADING tool, you should compare it to After Effects. You wouldn't ask "what computer do I need for After Effects" because it depends on what the hell you're using After Effects for - you could be tracking a window or you could be rendering an entire CGI universe. Grading in Resolve is the same as that - you could be setting WB and contrast or you could be doing a day-for-night transformation. End PSA ???

Hooray! After people started getting their Pocket 4K cameras we only had the Panny S1 to argue about - now we can get excited about the inevitability of 8K vs Sonys ability to quadruple the data rates and not have the camera actually melt! With Japan gearing up for the 2020 Olympics to be broadcast in 8K there is only ~20 months before an entire 8K distribution network (including something like 1000 8K cameras) must be in place, having been constructed, tested, and bug fixed. You'd be mad if you think that Japan will let themselves fail to deliver a technological feat like this while the entire world is watching, Moores law be damned. So, if we're going to have an entirely functional 8K capture, processing, distribution, and consumption network in place in less than two years for the worlds most watched event, then exactly when do you think the tech will be made possible? The day before?

I hear you - it's like flying the space shuttle. I think there are two paths you can take. One is to do as @kaylee suggests and do a small project and search google and YT for the answers for every function. If you learn best by doing then that's a good approach, but I think it's frustrating and you kind of miss out on the big picture about how Resolve works and how it's designed to be used. My understanding is that the overall workflow is different to other packages. The second one is to watch a thorough walk-through of the user interface so you can see how it's organised and what is available. One of the key differences with Resolve is that there is so much stuff in there that is simply absent from PP / FCPX (especially in the Colour tab) and so if you only learn what tools you think you need you'll miss lots of the things that Resolve has that you didn't know existed. If you're going to do this then find the longest and most thorough walk-through possible and just watch that. There's nothing worse than watching a walk-through that isn't thorough and then having to watch another one where they repeat everything you just learned! A couple of points: Unlike almost every other piece of software on earth, the Resolve Manual is absolutely excellent and will answer most of your questions, so look there before asking the internet about something The second place to look is the BM forums where someone might have asked the question before. If you google then other sites pop up but mostly the people who actually know things are at the BM forums. Use YT for learning what buttons do what and what features are available, but don't try and learn colour grading / fusion / audio mixing or mastering from YT folks - they are mostly amateur hacks who use the wrong tool in the wrong way at the wrong time. If you go down this route then you will spend a lot of time unlearning their techniques later on. If you want to hear from people who actually know about colour grading, then liftgammagain.com forums are the best (free) place I've found. There are regular posters there who are polite and helpful who have been grading for decades and really know their stuff. You can also ask here.. Good luck - it's a long process but a worthwhile one IMHO. Put on some music and attack it in bursts with good breaks

I just change the playback speed of the clips in the timeline. Right-click on the clips you want slowed down and it's called something like Clip Speed, set it to whatever percentage you want (ignore the fps box in that pop-up - it's wrong and makes no sense) and choose if you want to ripple the sequence or not, and it's done. I don't know how other people do it, but I think this is one of the great features of Resolve. You can ingest footage of any resolution and frame rate into your timeline, you can change the speed of any clip to any arbitrary speed, and then you can export a file in any other resolution and frame rate and Resolve will handle the whole thing seamlessly. If you're doing any speed changes where you aren't doing a 1:1 of input frames to output frames, you can enable a feature called Optical Flow (in the main page of the project settings, down the bottom) and it enables the Twixtor style of frame interpolating for any sequences in the project that aren't 1:1. I did some tests comparing 4K25p and 1080p50 both at 50% speed in a 1080 timeline (ie, the 4K with the Twixtor effect vs the 1080 just conformed to 25p) and for situations where there isn't a lot of complex motion the 4K looked slightly better or you couldn't tell the difference. The work I do is just for myself and friends and family and isn't critical, but I just do whatever speeds I like and if I want a shot to go a certain duration but I want the shot to start on a certain action and end on another one then I just choose whatever percentage makes that happen. As long as you're not pushing things too far then the effect is normally totally fine.

My advice is to ignore the titles of videos, and to only watch the ones that seem interesting. They're a stills photography channel, I wouldn't bother watching if they had a video about something that only applied to a type of stills photography that didn't interest me. In terms of squirrels, memory is different to attention span, but sure, I'll stop vilifying them publicly

Yeah.. ain't that the truth. Probably buried deep in my hdd somewhere, but the overall lesson was that the recommended solutions (like a steadicam, shoulder-rig, or other rigs with three points of contact) are the best ways. I had fun experimenting, but I eventually came to the same conclusions as the rest of the industry.