Hey guys Denver Riddle with you here, I’m
a colorist and filmmaker, I’ve been using
DaVinci Resolve since v8 and you might be
wondering if DaVinci Resolve 16 is right for
you… or if it will help you get the look
of your films to stand out and look big budget.
I will assure you, you can, in this DaVinci
Resolve tutorial I’m going to reveal how
to get started if you’re just a beginner
to Resolve and go from zero to hero in just
minutes.
I’m going to break it down
the complexity and we’re going to create
this amazing look together, which you can
download as a LUT or look up table to apply
to your own footage.
Also, while YouTube is a fantastic resource
for learning about so many different kinds
of subjects if you are looking for a step-by-step
guide that takes you all the way through discovering
the art of color grading and getting the big
budget hollywood film looks I want to let
you know about a free training workshop I’m
going to be doing where I reveal my top color
grading secrets, to attend the just click
the link below in the description and I hope
to see you there.
Alright, let’s do this thing!
When you first start up Resolve 16…. it
will open to the Project manager with a single
blank untitled project.
I’ve already added some projects, so mine
will look a little bit different than yours.
To get started let’s create a new project
by double clicking over the blank untitled
project… and we are in… let’s save this
project, so go to file, save project and choose
a name for it.
Now DaVinci Resolve is divided into 7 pages
following a left to right workflow where we
import footage in the Media Page, assemble
our edit in the Cut page or the Edit page,
work on VFX and graphics in the Fusion page,
do our color grading on the Color page, design
and mix our audio in the Fairlight page and
finally export our project from the Deliver
page.
It’s just that simple.
The Media page is where we can preview clips
by double clicking on them and import them
into the project by dragging them into the
Media Pool.
I’m just going to import a few
clips and once they are in the media pool
we can go to the Cut page or the Edit page.
Now you might be confused why there are two
pages, well not to worry both let you edit
like you would in any other NLE but the Cut
Page is a streamlined version of the Edit
page, for making fast quick cuts in a fast
paced environment like a news show or delivering
to the web.
What’s great is that you can begin your
edit in the Cut page, to get your roughs and
then move to the Edit page to continue refining
your edit.
So let’s begin our edit in the Cut Page.
I’ll create a new timeline by going to File,
then New Timeline.
we’ll give it a name and then click create.
This will create a new timeline.
Now let’s double click on our first clip
so it will show on our source monitor and
select the in and out points using the shortcuts
“I” and “O”.
To bring our selection to the timeline let’s
use the insert tool with the shortcut F9.
Now I’ll select in and out points for the
second clip and use the append tool to add
the clip to the end of the timeline after
my first one.
For that you can just drag and drop it after
the first clip or use the keyboard shortcut
shift + F12.
But let’s say we want to replace the first
clip in the we can use the ripple overwrite
tool or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+F10.
I’ll keep working until I have a rough cut
and then we can refine this with the trim
tools.  Again I'm just going over the keyboard shortcuts just to show you that the cut page is designed for speed.
Now to use the trim tools
We’ll place the cursor at the very beginning
or the very end of a clip and drag.
This performs a ripple edit, similar to Final
Cut Pro X’s magnetic timeline.
Placing the cursor between clips allows us
to perform a roll edit which moves the edit
point while expanding and contracting the
adjacent clips.
Placing our cursor on the thumbnail portion
of the video track and then dragging performs
a slip edit which leaves the clip where it’s
at in the timeline, but moves the in and out
points of the source clip.
So there’s all kinds of cool ways that we
can perform different edits.
Now let’s jump into the Edit Page.
In this page you can cut and trim your clips
like in the Cut Page but with a more of traditional
NLE interface.
If this is more familiar to you then you can
actually just skip the cut page and go straight
here to the edit page.
The Cut page is just for working quickly.
The Edit page has a traditional layout where
you can bring in clips from the Media Pool,
Source or Preview monitor to set in and out
points, the program or timeline Monitor that
play back our edit, the timeline itself, the
effects library to access transitions and
filters and the inspector panel so can make
changes to the scale, position, rotation of
our clips or for changing any of the properties
from the effects and transitions that we apply.
Here we have the same editorial tools, like
we have in the Cut Page for doing inserts,
overwriting, trimming and the blade or razor
tool.
But don’t forget, these tools can automatically
be selected based on where we click on the
clip in the timeline.
So DaVinci Resolve 16 is really powerful.
Alright once our edit is looking the way we
like it, we are now ready to do the fun part
and that is color grading.
Now because this is a high level overview
and our emphasis is more on the color grading
which we teach to, we’ll just briefly touch
on the Fusion page so you at least know that
it is there and what it is used for.
In the Fusion page we have the nodes section
with an input and an output.
The input is for our original image coming
in and the output is for our image going out.
In between is where we do our vfx and compositing.
So let’s say for instance we want to add
a blur effect over our talents face, we’ll
go to the effect library, choose Blur effect
and this will be added to the node tree.
We’ll then go to the inspector and increase
the blur value, but you’ll see however this
effects the entire image so we’ll need to
add a mask.
Going back to the effects library, I’ll
choose mask and ellipse.
A node representing the mask is added to the
node tree as a property of the blur effect
and we can position and resize the mask on
the viewer or use the options in the inspector
tab.
We can also use a merge node to merge multiple
effect over the same image too and this will
allow us to do tracking, 3d compositing, all
kinds of stuff; now most people won’t need
to use the Fusion page so you can just skip
completely over it but it is there for vfx
artists and finishers when you need to work in a collaborative workflow.
Alright let’s go ahead and delete this blur
effect and let’s jump to the Color Page.
At the top we have the viewer, the nodal tree,
where we keep track of our corrections.
In the middle section we have all the clips
in the project represented as thumbnails.
And the bottom section is where we have our
color tools.
Now before we jump in and start grading this
thing, let’s discuss basic terminology for
how we define color.
The three basic terms that we use to define
color are Hue, Saturation, and Luma.
Hue is the name we call colors.
Saturation is the intensity or vividness of
a hue.
And Luma is the brightness or shade of hue.
It’s also important to know how to read
the video scopes, which can be super beneficial.
We’ll bring up the scopes by right clicking
on the viewer and selecting show scopes.
The two scopes I always use are the Waveform
in color overlay mode and the Vectorscope
with the flesh line turn on.
The waveform lets us correct for exposure
and with the RGB mode selected, and checking
the Colorize option, it allows us to correct
for white balance issues when the color channels
line up evenly.
If I overlay an image on top of the waveform,
you can see that the trace… the stuff you
see here… actually corresponds with the
image of the girl dancing.
The Vectorscope, corresponds directly with
the color wheel, and I’ve overlaid it here
for convenience.
It shows what colors are in the image as well
as their saturation.
The further the trace extends from the center
of the scope, the more saturated or vivid
the colors are.
Here’s a simple but powerful workflow for
color correction: We first correct the exposure
or brightness of the image, second the white
balance or color temperature if there are
any issues and lastly the saturation by either
increasing or reducing it.
This will make more sense as we actually do
it!
I’ll choose this clip as our Hero Shot.
Let’s first make a correction to the exposure
of this image using the primary color wheels.
The horizontal wheels adjust the exposure
and the pucks in the middle of the color wheels
adjust the color.
The lift mostly adjusts for the shadows or
darkest parts of the image.
The gain for the highlights or brightest parts
of the image.
And the gamma for the midtones or everything
else in between.
This fourth wheel is the offset control, which
adjusts the entire image and there are some
instances where you'd use it.
Now looking at this you can see it’s really
flat, this is very common to way to see it
if you capture in a Log or flat profile.
So how we’ll correct this shot is we’ll
adjust the shadows first with the lift control
while watching the waveform.
We want to bring the trace and the shadows
down until the darkest parts of the image
sit right above zero.
Then we’ll bring up the highlights so the
brightest parts of the trace sit right about
here near the top.
Then I’ll bring the midtones down by pulling
down on the gamma slider.
This gives us good contrast and exposure.
This is the first step.
Next we’ll fix the color temperature, since
our image looks too cool.
We can clearly see the blue trace dominating
the middle of our Waveform.
Our goal is to neutralize or white balance
the whites so the way to do that is to first
find something in the image that should be
white.
In this case we can use her sneakers.
Let me look for a frame with a clear view
of the sneakers.
Our goal is to get the color channels to align
evenly and when they do the trace will turn
white indicating that we’ve achieved white
balance.
A quick and easy way to do this is with the
white balance eyedropper found under the lift
wheel.
Keep an eye over on the trace as I click on
the sneakers.
And voila!
A huge part of the trace, corresponding to
the gray background, shadows and some highlights
turns white.
In case you’re not happy with the result
or if the whites look too sterile or clinical,
we can manually adjust, using the temperature
and tint sliders found under the number “two”.
In this case I think we can warm up the image
a little bit.
Lastly let’s boost the color a little bit
by increasing the saturation.
Here’s what the clip looks like before and
after the correction.
Doesn’t that look awesome!
If it does… go ahead give this video a like!
Alright!
Now that our hero shot is color corrected,
let’s move on.
On this next shot we’ll repeat the procedure,
going for a nice balance of exposure with
the lift, gamma and gain controls.
The color temperature in this shot looks off
too, so we’ll use again the white balance
eyedropper, this time, over the truck in the
background.
I’ll then refine it a little manually.
Lastly we’ll add some saturation too.
Moving to the third shot, we wanna match it
to the first shot for obvious reasons, since
this is pretty much a wide version of the
scene.
To give us a good starting point let’s copy
the correction from the first clip to this
one.
To do that we’ll go to the first shot, open
up the gallery, right click on the viewer
and select grab still.
What this does is it adds a still to the gallery
saving our correction so we can use it later
on.
Open up the Gallery
Now coming back to this clip we’ll right
click on the still in the gallery and select
apply grade.
And bada bing, bada bang!
That’s gives us a good starting point but
you’ll see that we do have some matching
issues.
To help with matching, let me share with you
my preferred method for doing this.
We’ll turn on the Split screen view and
change the dropdown to Selected Clips.
If we now command, or control click if you
are on windows, on shot 1, we can see the
images side by side.
We can also see them side by side in the waveform
which makes matching a breeze.
To match the traces better we’ll bring shadows,
midtones and highlights up with the offset
control.
That’s a nice looking match!
In the interest of time I’ve already gone
ahead and performed color correction to these
remaining clips.
But in this last shot you’ll see that the
yellow pole looks greenish compared to the
ones on the other shots.
To fix this we’ll need to do what’s called
a secondary or an isolated color correction
on the pole.
Well fortunately we can easily do this in
resolve by creating a new node, and we’ll
use one of my favorite tools for doing secondaries
and that’s with the HueVSHue Curve, where
we’ll place two points on the color spectrum
to isolate the yellow tones, then add a center
point and drag up a little bit to lean those
Hues more towards red.
Now, if I disable and enable this node, you’ll
notice that this correction slightly affects
the brick wall on the background.
We don’t want that, so a cool ninja trick
I want to show you is to further qualify or
isolate our correction with a power window.
Going to the windows panel, we’ll turn on
a Curve Window and draw a shape mask around
the pole.
Then we’ll add some softening or feathering
to the edges so the window isn’t so apparent
and Voila!! our correction now only affects
the pole.
But now you’ll see that when we play the
clip back the camera moves making our power
window move out of place, so we want to address
that.
Going to the tracker panel we can easily and
effortlessly track the shape by clicking on
the track forward button.
Isn’t that awesome!!!
This is one of the things I absolutely love
about DaVinci Resolve 16.
Now we’ve completed our basic color correction
for all 5 shots.
But, let’s say that for whatever reason,
our client decides they don’t like the yellow
poles.
Say they want them to be like a pink or magenta.
Well the cool thing is we can fix it in post
with the HSL Qualifier Tool.
To do that we’ll add a new node and then
going to the qualifier panel and with the
eyedropper we’ll drag through the pole to
isolate it.
To see what we’ve selected we’ll turn
on the highlight feature, the magic wand you
see here.
To refine our key we’ll change the hue,
luminance and saturation selection.
We’ll then further clean up the key with the
matte finesse tools.
Ok now let's turn the highlight feature off
and drag the Hue control to the right until
the poles turn magenta.
Haha, yes!
Isn’t that so cool!
Now keep in mind the yellow poles are on almost
all our shots, so we’ll need to copy this
correction to those other clips.
But before we do that, let me show you something
really cool, if we right click on the node
we have an option to choose Save as Shared
Node.
You’ll see it now gets labeled as Shared
Node 1.
Let’s right and change the label of this
to pole.
Now let’s go ahead and copy this correction
to the other clips
and now if say I now want to change the pole
to look green… because we used a shared
node in all the clips I can simply right click
on the node, turn off the Lock node option,
make the change… and now the color of the
pole automatically is updated in the other
shots that are using this shared node.
Pretty cool, right?!!
The blackmagic design has serioulsy thought
of everything.
Ok, now to the really fun sexy part, and that’s
creating an awesome look for these clips.
I’m gonna show you a quick way to apply
the same look on top of all of these clips
and this we’ll save you tons of time and
ensure that you have a consistent look across
the board.
Okay so to do that we’ll select all the
clips in the timeline using the shift key
to select a row, then right click and choose
the option Add into new group.
We’ll give it a name: in this case we’ll
call it Orange/Teal Look, since that’s the
look we are going for… then click ok.
Then we’ll change this dropdown from clip
to group post clip.
This simply means that when we want to make
a change, it’s applied to all the clips
in the group.
You see if I push an arbitrary color into
one of the clips… you see they are all updated
with the same change.
Alright let me reset that and now let’s
create the look.
The Orange/Teal Look is a really popular look
because it uses principles of color contrast
to make the skin tones or our talent pop out
from the background.
And frankly it just looks awesome so you’re
going to love this!
In our first node let’s dial up the contrast
for our look.
To stay organized we’ll right click on the
node and choose Node Label.
In this case, I’ll just call this Contrast.
For this part of the look we’ll use the
Custom Curves which allow us to make complex
adjustments to the exposure or tonal range.
Now just a quick crash course on the way this
works… the bottom point adjust the shadows,
the top point adjust the highlights and we
can make as many points along the curve in
between to fine tune the contrast.
In this case we don’t want to affect the
highlights or the shadows too much so we’ll
create contrast in-between these areas known
as the undertones and midtones.
I’ll make a point here in the midtones and
drag it up.
This improves our exposure but makes the undertones
look a little washed out.
So let’s add another point here and drag
it down to adjust the density of the undertones,
there that looks nice, now we have a much
richer contrast.
For color, let’s add another node and name
it Teal.
Here we’ll push teal color into the overall
image with the offset control.
This is where we’ll start to see that color
contrast.
Next we’ll add a parallel node or a color
adjustment at the same stage of the grade
and we’ll bring out the skin tones.
We’ll just label this node Skin Tones.
Now this is where we’ll get them to pop,
going to the Hue VS Sat curve and using the
eyedropper tool we’ll click on the skin
tones to auto set the range of points on the
curve isolating the skin.
Then dragging up on the center point we can
make the skin tones pop without affecting
anything else.
We’ll then just refine the curve to make
sure that all the warm colors that we find
on the skin are saturated evenly.
Lastly because we pushed teal into the entire
tonal range with the offset control it’s
making our shadows also teal, so we’ll want
to clean them up so we can have clean shadows.
To do that I’m going to show you a really
awesome trick
We’ll add another node call it Clean Shadows
and go to the Luma Vs Sat curve.
Now the way this tool works is the shadows
are to the left and the highlights are to
the right, and then anywhere that we place
points on the curve, we are able to affect
the saturation for that part of the tonal
range by either pulling up to increase the
saturation or pulling down to decrease it.
So this is really cool way for selectively
reducing the saturation in the shadows without
affecting anything else so to do that we’ll
place a point here so nothing above is affected
in the midrange like the skin tones and then
we’ll drag the left point all the way down
to reduce the saturation in the shadows.
Voila our shadows are nice and clean.
If I toggle this node off and back on again
a few times you can see the difference it
made in pulling the teal out of the shadows
on the wall, her hair and the trash can.
Okay, so don’t forget that cool trick.
As a final touch, I want to apply one of the
free LUTs from Ascend that you can download
when you sign up for the free online workshop.
I want to show you how we can actually preview
LUTs in realtime in DaVinci with the LUT Browser
and this totally amazing that we can do this!
At the top left of our screen we’ll find
the LUT Browser option, let’s go ahead click
on it… and now we have a list of all of
our LUTs.
Now this is also the same as if you right-clicked
on a node to view the LUTs, but the big difference
is that we have a visual preview of the LUT
before we apply it and this makes finding
the right LUT for your project SO MUCH EASIER!
I’ll navigate to the Ascend LUTs and hovering
the cursor over the LUTs thumbnails you’ll
see a real time preview of each LUT in the
viewer.
We’ll choose the 3strip LUT by double clicking
on it.
At first you’ll see that it’s too strong
but that’s okay because we can dial it back
to taste by going to the Key panel and pull
back on the output gain control until we have
a result that we’re happy with.
You can kind of think of this like reducing the opacity of a layer in Photoshop.
Now let’s play this whole thing back…
What an amazing look!!
Alright to wrap this all up I’ll jump to
the Fairlight page.
Although we’ve placed a lot of emphasis
on the color grading which I believe is Resolve’s
greatest strength, I think it’s worth pointing
out that Fairlight page gives us professional
audio tools that you’d normally only find
in high end tv and film production tools.
So it’s truly remarkable that we’ve been
given so much in DaVinci Resolve 16.
But if you have simple audio needs, like adjusting
levels etc.
You can handle that all within the Edit page
but if you know what you’re doing and need
some high end audio finishing or mastering
you can do that in the Fairlight page, so
let’s explore it real briefly.
Here we have access to media pool… we have
the effects library which will list any VST
audio plugins that you have on your system…
if your an audio person you’ll understand
this….the Index section which displays the
Tracklist… and markers…. we have the timeline
and transport controls.
A mixer, meters, metadata section, an inspector
to see the characteristics of any audio clip
and pretty much anything else you’d need
to make a really sweet audio mix.
In my particular case I don’t have any audio
with these clips so we can just jump to the
Deliver page, but I wanted you to see that
this is all in here.
Now the Deliver page has four sections.
The Render settings, the viewer, the timeline
and the render queue where we basically press
go.
For this project we’ll output for uploading
to youtube, so we can choose one of the convenient
presets.
We can change the output resolution to 1080p,
specify a location for exporting, and finally
click add to render queue, then Start Render.
It’s as easy as that.
Now I know that I covered a lot of things
here, but my purpose was to help you get started
with seeing a difference in your films today.
If you’re looking for more guided help in
discovering the power of color grading I want
to invite you to our 1-hour color grading
workshop where I reveal the top color grading
secrets used in Hollywood and how best to
do color grading in DaVinci Resolve 16.
You’ll find a link to register for the workshop
in the description below.
In the web class I reveal how I went from
being a wedding videographer down to 0 wedding
bookings during the recession of 2008 to improving
the look of my films and landing client work
with some of the biggest brands like Facebook.
I reveal the same techniques that have had
the biggest impact on my career, so if you’re
serious and want to be guided every step of
the the way you won’t want to miss it.
I also want to point that if you want to learn
more about our Color Grading Academy it’s
the only way you can do that.
People ask if we do formal training, well
this is your opportunity to discover that
and we’ll have a special offer for the it
at the end of the presentation.
So be sure to save your seat, click the subscribe
button and then the bell for more grading
videos!
I hope you enjoyed this beginner crash course
as much I enjoyed creating it for you and
I look forward to seeing you at the training.
Have a great day!
