Fade to black goes through "look" colours

I make short home videos, and the style that I've developed is to start with a title on black and fade in the video underneath. At the end I just fade to black. I think it creates a nice aesthetic for 2-4 minute videos of a family outing or holiday etc. Kind of like a little snippet into our lives.

The issue that I have is that now I'm learning about colour grading (as opposed to colour correction) and experimenting with things like the teal/orange look, my fades get colourised through these 'looks' and they look odd.

To be specific, if I make the shadows blue, when the picture is fading in it is effectively all shadow so it looks blue before it is bright enough for the majority of the image to get into the warmer colours.
Obviously this is an example, but any look that assigns artificial colour via luminance will have this behaviour.

My questions is, how do other people handle this?

I understand that fade to black isn't a common editing move, so it's unlikely to come up that often. I can probably automate something on those clips to cancel out the effects, but if your video starts with something that makes grandma ask "Why is that person blue?" then I'm thinking it's missed its mark!

My questions is, how do other people handle this?

I am unable to duplicate this behavior.
As tinted as blacks are in any correction, the clip fades to/from black, both using a transition or clips fade handles.
Are you using Resolve's Cross Dissolve to fade?

I remember seeing this happen on one of my student's projects. Think it had to do with highly compressed source material "breaking" under too heavy of a grade.
Do note that even in the tealest of grades, your darkest blacks should stay neutral to maintain a believable look.

Perhaps when you look at your timeline you will see that you are grading your transitions rather than transitioning your grades.

Perhaps when you look at your timeline you will see that you are grading your transitions rather than transitioning your grades.

Oh but I'm not,
I grade and output TV work almost daily which constantly involves dip to black/white as well as fade to/from black.
Of course that since parts of the transitions are transparent, they are affected by the color of the grade underneath, but as long as it dips/fades to black when transition is 100%, you're good, what else would you expect it to do?

Can you upload a few seconds to show the problem you are having?

Hello,

Maybe I did not quite understand what you're looking for but there are keyframes for titles, including shadow and especially opacity.

Have you tested?

OK , Is inverse : title with shadows to a clip color

Title_shadows.jpg

Color Tab: Keyframes can be added just before fading to black.

Edit :

And the reverse: Color to Black Fade for the end.
With Keyframes you can do a lot, a lot of things. We must train.

In more detail, I have:
- fade from/to black is using the fade handles on the clip in the edit window
- colour correction in the group and clip sections in the colour window
- colour grading in the timeline section in the colour window

I believe the order that the processing is done is:
1) colour of each clip is changed according to the group and clip adjustments in the colour window
2) the adjustments in the edit window are then applied
3) the adjustments from the timeline section in the colour window is then applied

If this is the case then the fades in the edit window (step 2 above) will be applied first, making the clip fade from/to black, which then is given to the timeline colour window adjustments (step 3 above).

In the timeline adjustments where I'm doing my colour grading, I have a 'look' that includes the following nodes:
- node that makes the shadows blue (via lift wheel), and mids and highlights orange (via gamma and gain wheels), followed by
- node that includes a sat vs luminance that desaturates the blacks and whites, but leaves the middle range alone
This should result in something that has desaturated blacks, blue shadows, warmer mids, warmer highlights, and desaturated whites.

If we start with this image:

Screen Shot 2018-02-19 at 12.39.45 pm.png (6.87 KiB) Viewed 5499 times

and then apply the grade in the timeline section of the colour window we get this:

Screen Shot 2018-02-19 at 12.42.29 pm.png (9.67 KiB) Viewed 5499 times

which is fine, however, if we fade it in using the handles on the edit page and we put the play head half-way through the fade-in we get this:

Screen Shot 2018-02-19 at 12.45.10 pm.png (17.84 KiB) Viewed 5499 times

Does that make sense?

Your post totally makes sense, but I am unable to recreate the problem. When I grade something using the steps you posted I am getting the expected result. If you wanted to post a small drp I would be happy to take a look at it and let you know if I am getting the same result. That way we could see if it is the program having a bug or your system acting strangely.

Does that make sense?

Yes, much more

Thanks Kye.

Timeline Grades will affect the black "empty" spaces between clips or at the end, Therefore affect transitions, and will also tint a dip to white/black (and of course graphics, logos titles)

Best workaround I can think of is using them less (Timeline Grades). Groups can help.
Would be nice to have a timeline mode that only affects clips.

In cases of black/white fades and dips, your approach to use a Sat Vs Lum is correct, maybe your curve is to gentle? All you really need is that the final point of transition goes to pure black/white

Nathan - I've never exported a drp, but I'll give it a go when I get home. I'm assuming this will export the source media with it? If so, I'll make sure I choose something small!

Hector - Thanks. I suspected that the timeline affects the "empty" spaces, as you say. The challenge is that I'm already using groups and AFAIK you can't put a clip in more than one group, which would be something I would like to use for other purposes even without this issue.

My projects are often shot on multiple cameras, so I put all the clips from each camera into a group and then do the basic corrections that are required for that camera (different contrast ratios etc) which go into "Group Pre-Clip" and then I adjust each clip in Clip to fine-tune.

If I had multiple sections in my final video it would be nice to add all the clips in the first sequence to a group and then in the "Group Post-Clip" I'd be able to grade each scene, for example to tweak the emotional response to be more appropriate. Then I'd like to use the Timeline to do all the nice things (eg, Glow plugin) and the safe things (desaturate the black and white ends of the luminance spectrum). Of course, I can't grade scenes with groups if I've already used Groups for cameras, and if there's no easy way around this problem, it looks like I can't use Timeline either.

I can put the 'nice' and 'safe' effects onto the Clip, but then when I get two thirds of the way through applying it (presumably from Stills to automate adding those nodes) and I get to a shot where Glow is too much, I have to manually go back through every clip in the timeline and adjust the Glow settings manually. This is why I like putting those things in the Timeline.

I've considered requesting that Blackmagic allow adding clips to more than one group, but then you're into a horrible situation where you have to control which order the groups are applied, which would be a PITA for them to write into the software. You'd effectively have a node graph of node graphs.
Still, it would make things hugely easier to grade.