Creating a template that handles dynamic clip lengths

Hi there,

I'm on DaVinci Resolve Studio 19, latest update, using it on both a Mac and a Windows PC.

Weekly I create videos with sports clips for a livestream. These are of course varying in length, but usually 1 - 3 minutes. For each of these clips I need to do a little bit of color work (usually always the same, with manual adjustments in maybe 1 of 10 cases), add some general graphics, add a little logo in the corner, and fade the whole clip at the start and end.

In some instances I also have to desaturate the clip to the value 25 starting at a given point in the clip.

Now I want to make a template to make assembling these videos as straight forward as possible. I come from the Adobe world, so I am used to clips inside of clips / precomps / whatever.

Here is my current template design:

Clip 1: A subclip in which I stick the actual source video. This subclip mutes some audio channels from the source that are not needed. This is where I do any editing required - usually cutting out unneeded parts or slowing down time.

Clip 2: This contains Clip 1 as a subclip, and is where I add color correction and any graphics needed. This includes on-screen stats (dynamic per clip) and the logo in the corner - the graphics of course "on top" of the color correction stuff so they are unaffected.

Clip 3: This contains clip 2, and all it really adds is the fade in and out.

I will be the first to admit that I am not great with DaVinci Resolve yet. I'm trying to learn, but the need for quick turnaround means that this is slower than I would like. Anyway, this is probably pretty far from the optimal way to construct these videos.

My biggest issue with this is that this does not seem to automatically handle the varying length of my clips. So say I make a duplicate of the Clip 1 template. I edit the video, and the end result is 1 minute 37 seconds long. I now need to adjust the length of the clip 2 and clip 3 subclips manually.

Another thing that would be great to solve is the ability to put a marker on clip 1 inside of clip 2. There would only ever be a single marker, and my goal is that this marker would represent a point where the saturation fades from 50 to 25 until the end of this particular instance of clip 1.

I am open to the fact that Fusion could be the solution to at least some of this, but is there a way to get the subclips to respond to their contents all the way up, so that I basically make a copy of my template file for each week, duplicate a clip structure, ingest the source video, edit it and... more or less done, time to export?

My goal is to streamline the editing process as much as possible, but no more than that. However, if I learn something about Resolve in the process, that is awesome as well.

Thanks for any pointers!

As general pointers. Resolve has differnt pages and that means also that its a lose way to think about how workflow should be done. From left to right. Each of the pages has not only specialized set of tools that other pages does not, but sometimes order of operations matters. When done correctly, it can be very flexible and very powerful at the same time. Usually people get into trouble or limit this power or flexibility when they try to use the resolve in a differnt way it was designed to be used.

That being said. I would avoid nesting clips or what would be called in Adobe space, as precomps. Almost always there is a better way that retains flexibility and can perform same tasks. While in Adobe space often precomps are the only way to do something, in resolve usually its the last thing I would do when all other options are already performed and i need to conform something..

In regards to dynamic graphics and automation.

Some of the automation and abilities have greatly been improved and or expanded with the release of new resolve 20 beta 1 which makes some of the older approaches no longer necessary or some things are now possible that we couldn't do in resolve before. Many of these new features are so called AI assisted automation. If you are looking to animate a lot of what you mentioned, that is something to look into.

But things like graphics and color grading remains more or less the same. So here are few things to look into to.

Color grading can be done in the color page and motion graphics in the fusion page or macros (fusion effects) prepared in fusion to be used on the edit page. As templates. And they can be made to be dynamic and change with the clip.

Color grading can be automated in the color page, and applied to clips in a way they don't affect edits or motion graphics, so there is no need to precomp or nest anything. Color page has both keyframe editor and almost any parameter can be animated and saved as preset for later or copy and pasted from one node to the other.

Copy and paste attribute between clips either in the edit page or color page, or fairlight for audio offers which attributes are pasted from one clip to the next. However, very useful function exits in the edit page, where you can copy and paste attributes that have keyframes but retain timing of the original or stretch to fit new lenght so they proportionally adjust to new clip. Color page also dynamically adjust keyframes.

Sometimes if you are doing something simple you can also do it adjustment clips with can be used to apply color grade on top of other tracks and simply dragging the adjustment clip you can control what is effected bellow it.

When it comes to motion graphics, you would probably do all that in fusion where you have many options, but requires familiarity with fusion. Fusion is probably something you can compare to after effects, but does things differnt and more things. So just like you would prepare templates with motion graphics in after effects so premier pro can use them, you can do that in fusion with added bonus of fusion being a click away as part of resolve.

So you can make your graphics in fusion and copy and paste them across differnt clips using thumbnails of clips, so it works similar to how you would copy and paste grades in color page. Using middle mouse click.

You can use fusion reference composition feature. So you can prepare graphics you need in fusion and than link it to reference composition. At which point if you want any other clip to inherent the same, you would also link it to one or more reference compositions which live in the media pool. At that point you can change one clip and leveraging the reference, the other clips linked to that reference will also update.

Another way to work is to create templates in fusion and saved them so that they can be used as drag and drop clips in the edit page. Resolve already ships with many such effects but you can modify existing ones or built your won in fusion.

These can be static or dynamic as you are able to build them. And pretty much allow you to control almost anything via fusion since they are front end for fusion nodes with custom controls. You can built them using tools in fusion to stretch and accommodate for new lenght of clips, or change animation based on various parameters. You can also color grade if you wanted or resize clips etc. Almost anything you like.

If you want more power and automation than that, you can use modifiers, which add more functions to existing tools and parameters. You can use expressions or scripts. Or you can use set of modifiers as nodes, called VonkUltra. They can be downloaded via reactor (depository for fusion goodies) Instead of using custom written scripts etc, vonk ultra nodes are like modifiers written as scripts and come in many forms and can be used to drive graphics based on database, or spreadsheet, or internet or almost anything. They are not for beginners, but if you are looking for more and more automation and complex graphics driven by data, that is the set of tools you want to look into.

"I am open to the fact that Fusion could be the solution to at least some of this, but is there a way to get the subclips to respond to their contents all the way up, so that I basically make a copy of my template file for each week, duplicate a clip structure, ingest the source video, edit it and... more or less done, time to export?"

You could probably do all that in fusion if you wanted to put the effort to set it up, but if not, you could use some of the things I mentioned to make short work of most of this. And with Resolve 20 and tools that are being added, you can probably automate much more, including editing. So maybe look into some of the things I mentioned and see what will work at the crossroads of your skills and needs.

"In some instances I also have to desaturate the clip to the value 25 starting at a given point in the clip. "

You could use color page with and apply denaturation at some point you like and have it mark a keyframe. Than when you copy and paste it to another clip it will adjust based on the lenght of the clip starting with first frame, or based on timecode if you wan that. Its easy than to move keyframes and with them timing of animation using keyframe editor on the color page. In case you want to adjust timing.

You can also do it with adjustment clip in the edit page with color grade, or you can do it in fusion. It depends on what you know how to do, what you need and what is the best option in respect to first two.

Hi Kruno,

Thanks a lot for your comprehensive reply, and sorry for the slow response in getting back to you. Got sidetracked by another project, then Easter happened, and here we are.

I was expecting that there would be a lot of different ways to do what I want, and your post also confirms that. I am eagerly following the new functionality in Resolve 20, but I will wait until it is out of beta before I use it for production stuff. I have tested DVR betas before and they have been pretty stable, but I don't want to end up in a situation where I can't deliver, so trying to make due with R19 for now, then if I can improve the workflow when 20 comes out, I'm all for that!

My problem right now is that this problem consists of several sub-problems, and each sub-problem has elegant solutions, but they aren't always easy to put together into one coherent whole - this is probably a me problem, not a software problem, as I don't yet know enough about exactly how to go about solving things.

I have used reactor in the past, but there are probably buckets of really helpful modules in there that I don't know how to utilize. I'll have another look at that!

For now, I will continue trying to find the most efficient workflow for getting me (as close as possible) to where I want to be. There really are only two "stages" to my current workflow:

1. I produce timeline X, chop it up using my speed editor keyboard, move stuff around, create the finished clip. The length of this clip defines the length of my deliverable.

2. The "finish" stage - a standard color correction should happen to the video, a still image graphic should be overlaid on top of the video for 15 seconds (case A) OR a desaturation effect should occur at some point in the clip (case B), a "logo bug" should be overlaid in the upper right corner, and fade in/fade out should happen at the start and end of the video.

Stage 2 is where I am still fumbling in the dark. Do I do all this inside timeline X? Or do I put timeline X into something else (back to the Adobe precomp thinking)? For each point I have questions.

- Color correction: I have learned that I can do CC nodes per video track instead of on a clip by clip level. For the general color grade/correction, that would to nicely. However, what about the "case B" situation where I need to desaturate the video at a certain point in the timeline? Can I trigger that by using something like a marker? Would that mean I need to involve Fusion?

- Still image graphic overlay: This sits "above" the color correction, i.e. it should not be affected by it. So this probably means that it needs to be a video track above the video track inside timeline X. This is a new graphic for each "case A" clip so it will probably be hard to automate 100%. It should always be 15 seconds long but with fade in/out at the ends. Any other way to automate this, or do I just drag the image to the timeline and add fades manually? Any way to tell Resolve "when I drag an image into the timeline, I want it to be 15 seconds long and have fades at either end"?

- Desaturation effect: If the clip is a "case B" situation, there is no still image graphic overlay, and there will be a point in the video where we pull the saturation value from 50 to 25 for a slight "bleached" look. Today I handle this manually by making a cut at the point it happens, then going to the color page for the part of the clip to the right, and doing the desaturation there. I also put a fade at the split for a smooth transition. I would love to be able to automate this process somehow - it isn't hard and doesn't take long, but I could save a serious amount of time if I could improve this workflow. All I want is basically "from this point in time, I want the video in track 1 to be desaturated", with a fade for smoothness. I can't see how to do that without getting into Fusion (and I am still not 100% sure I could do that there).

- Logo bug: This is another simple still image layer, really, but since it needs to sit on top of everything else, I don't know how to make it unaffected by the editing I do on track 1, and make it automatically the same length as the layers below. Today I drag the still in and manually drag it to start at the start and stop at the end of the video, however long that turns out to be when I am done cutting the source material. This is more manual fiddling than I would like - I just want the logo to be there for the duration of the clip.

- Fade in / fade out. Just the normal fade in from black, and back out to black at the beginning and the end. Another "precomp" situation, since if I add the fades on the tracks themselves, then we get a situation where the logo/bug from the last point fades out and becomes partially transparent for a moment (both the underlying video and the logo are partially transparent at this point). I want the logo to be 100% opaque on top of the video, but to fade out with the video - it should be opaque with regard to the video below it (no see-through), but still go to black like the rest of the video. Can this be achieved without putting timeline X into another timeline, and doing the fades on this "outer" timeline?

Sorry if there is a lot of repeating myself here, I am lacking the vocabulary to state what I want in some cases, and am trying to find the concrete steps to improve my workflow (which is more or less 100% manual at the current stage).

Thanks for any suggestions on how to improve this, even partial ones that solve one of the issues but not all of them. I'm all about iterative improvement.

Hi Kruno,

My problem right now is that this problem consists of several sub-problems, and each sub-problem has elegant solutions, but they aren't always easy to put together into one coherent whole - this is probably a me problem, not a software problem, as I don't yet know enough about exactly how to go about solving things.

I have used reactor in the past, but there are probably buckets of really helpful modules in there that I don't know how to utilize. I'll have another look at that!

For now, I will continue trying to find the most efficient workflow for getting me (as close as possible) to where I want to be. There really are only two "stages" to my current workflow:

1. I produce timeline X, chop it up using my speed editor keyboard, move stuff around, create the finished clip. The length of this clip defines the length of my deliverable.

Sounds pretty straightforward.

2. The "finish" stage - a standard color correction should happen to the video, a still image graphic should be overlaid on top of the video for 15 seconds (case A) OR a desaturation effect should occur at some point in the clip (case B), a "logo bug" should be overlaid in the upper right corner, and fade in/fade out should happen at the start and end of the video.

Stage 2 is where I am still fumbling in the dark. Do I do all this inside timeline X? Or do I put timeline X into something else (back to the Adobe precomp thinking)? For each point I have questions.

- Color correction: I have learned that I can do CC nodes per video track instead of on a clip by clip level. For the general color grade/correction, that would to nicely. However, what about the "case B" situation where I need to desaturate the video at a certain point in the timeline? Can I trigger that by using something like a marker? Would that mean I need to involve Fusion?

There should be no need to precomp or nest anything. This also seems pretty straightforward for the available tools.

De-saturation of the video should be easily done in the color page, where you can keyframe almost all of the differnt adjustments. The color page keyframe editor and copy and paste attributes function or node graph feature should allow you to easily apply adjustments you need.

The Film Look creator filter includes a built-in Bleach Bypass effect, if desired. You can easily use keyframes to control when the effect starts and stops, either abruptly or gradually. In the color page keyframe editor, these are referred to as static and dynamic keyframes, which are the same as linear and easing, in edit page. You can add, delete, adjust, change, or convert keyframes as needed.

You can copy keyframe timing across multiple clips using the copy and paste attributes panel.

sshot-1213.jpg (258.94 KiB) Viewed 343 times

sshot-1205.jpg (135.25 KiB) Viewed 343 times

There are lot of ways to control grades in color page, but for what you said you wanted, that seems to be the easiest one. However, you could ripple grades, work with groups, remote and local grade management, layer stacks, clip or timeline adjustments etc.

- Still image graphic overlay: This sits "above" the color correction, i.e. it should not be affected by it. So this probably means that it needs to be a video track above the video track inside timeline X. This is a new graphic for each "case A" clip so it will probably be hard to automate 100%. It should always be 15 seconds long but with fade in/out at the ends. Any other way to automate this, or do I just drag the image to the timeline and add fades manually? Any way to tell Resolve "when I drag an image into the timeline, I want it to be 15 seconds long and have fades at either end"?

The mix and unmix option bellow the viewer of the color page, allows you to apply grade only on the clip, not the logo but see the overall effect.

If its just a logo image, you can drag and drop it above your clip and extend it as much as you need to. For example the lenght of your clip. If you link them, you can move them together and snapping feature will snap it to where you need to.

If you wanted to add fade in and out and adjust those and apply them equally or individually, probably the easiest is to apply transition effect, like cross dissolve or some form of that. You can add it and adjust it easily, you can even make custom transitions with fusion, but those that are already available should cover simple fade easily. You can apply them in bath and adjust as you need to. Its all there.

You may have to click on the image to show full lenght here, but to illustrate how transition effect can be applied to a clip and logo image of youtube logo, above it, and than fade at the same time. or if you wanted only one of them you apply to just that layer/track/clip.

sshot-121433.jpg (469.62 KiB) Viewed 343 times

- Desaturation effect: If the clip is a "case B" situation, there is no still image graphic overlay, and there will be a point in the video where we pull the saturation value from 50 to 25 for a slight "bleached" look. Today I handle this manually by making a cut at the point it happens, then going to the color page for the part of the clip to the right, and doing the desaturation there. I also put a fade at the split for a smooth transition. I would love to be able to automate this process somehow - it isn't hard and doesn't take long, but I could save a serious amount of time if I could improve this workflow. All I want is basically "from this point in time, I want the video in track 1 to be desaturated", with a fade for smoothness. I can't see how to do that without getting into Fusion (and I am still not 100% sure I could do that there).

This should be pretty easy to do using methods I mentioned above. Color page can do the keyframed adjustment, and fade if you wanted to, or sudden change. And you can copy adjustments in the color page as well.

- Logo bug: This is another simple still image layer, really, but since it needs to sit on top of everything else, I don't know how to make it unaffected by the editing I do on track 1, and make it automatically the same length as the layers below. Today I drag the still in and manually drag it to start at the start and stop at the end of the video, however long that turns out to be when I am done cutting the source material. This is more manual fiddling than I would like - I just want the logo to be there for the duration of the clip.

If you link the clips and using standard auto selector functions, you should be able to treat them more or less as one, simultaneously.

- Fade in / fade out. Just the normal fade in from black, and back out to black at the beginning and the end. Another "precomp" situation, since if I add the fades on the tracks themselves, then we get a situation where the logo/bug from the last point fades out and becomes partially transparent for a moment (both the underlying video and the logo are partially transparent at this point). I want the logo to be 100% opaque on top of the video, but to fade out with the video - it should be opaque with regard to the video below it (no see-through), but still go to black like the rest of the video. Can this be achieved without putting timeline X into another timeline, and doing the fades on this "outer" timeline?

The simple solution is to use same style of transition effect on both logo and video bellow. If you wanted more than that or have something happening in the middle of the video to logo, say move position but not the video or whatever else you want, you could keyframe it in the edit page, and copy and paste the attributes, including keyframes, with options to mainting timing, or strech to fit. This covers most scenarios. So you can apply it easily across many clips.

If you wanted just simple fade in and out, use transitions. They offer easiest application with most options for this type of effect.

If you wanted more than that , you can leverage fusion, but to me it seems everything you said, doesn't really require fusion or precomping of any kind, just standard set of keyframes and copy paste attributes and some transition effects. All easily applicable and available as you work.

Sorry if there is a lot of repeating myself here, I am lacking the vocabulary to state what I want in some cases, and am trying to find the concrete steps to improve my workflow (which is more or less 100% manual at the current stage).

Thanks for any suggestions on how to improve this, even partial ones that solve one of the issues but not all of them. I'm all about iterative improvement.

You can do a lot more than I mentioned, if you apply fusion in the mix. But it seems to me that for your needs, simple features I mentioned are there for that kind of work.

Hope that helps.

De-saturation of the video should be easily done in the color page, where you can keyframe almost all of the differnt adjustments. The color page keyframe editor and copy and paste attributes function or node graph feature should allow you to easily apply adjustments you need.

Yes, if I am just doing one clip, then all of this is easy. It only takes a few minutes. But if they dump 50 clips on me.. then not so much. I don't want to have to go into each page and do adjustments if I can avoid it. I'm looking for maximum automation. I know I'm being greedy here, but if I could just jump into the Cut or Edit pages, chop up the source video (and perhaps insert some clips in some instances), and then this timeline would have All The Stuff (tm) done to it automatically, that would pretty much be optimal.

Adding clips, dragging stuff around, messing with keyframes etc. is what I do today - and I get the job done, let there be no doubt about that. But it takes so much extra time per clip. And if I were still using Premiere Pro with a mogrt from After Effects... I could have automated most of this away. I just want to use Resolve instead.

The mix and unmix option bellow the viewer of the color page, allows you to apply grade only on the clip, not the logo but see the overall effect.

This is very interesting, thank you!

If its just a logo image, you can drag and drop it above your clip and extend it as much as you need to. For example the lenght of your clip. If you link them, you can move them together and snapping feature will snap it to where you need to.

Yup, this is what I do today, and what I would like to automate away. The logo image should ALWAYS be on top, no matter what - if possible, I would like to not have to fiddle with the length or anything.

If you wanted to add fade in and out and adjust those and apply them equally or individually, probably the easiest is to apply transition effect, like cross dissolve or some form of that. You can add it and adjust it easily, you can even make custom transitions with fusion, but those that are already available should cover simple fade easily. You can apply them in bath and adjust as you need to. Its all there.

Cross dissolve is what I do today. But as far as I can tell, they are automatically individual per clip/track. That means that in the middle of the fade, the logo is 50% transparent, and the video is 50% transparent. This means you can see the video through the logo! I don't want that.

This is what I mean by the Adobe precomp thinking - if I make a timeline in Resolve containing the video in track one and then the logo in track two, and I put a cross dissolve at the start and end of both clips, then I get a partially transparent logo that I do not want. However, if I leave the fades out of this timeline, and put that in another timeline, now I can put the cross dissolves on the start/end of the timeline (precomp/subclip/compound clip/whatever I should call them), and now I get the expected effect. The logo is always opaque over the video, but the whole sum of the video fades in and expected.

This should be pretty easy to do using methods I mentioned above. Color page can do the keyframed adjustment, and fade if you wanted to, or sudden change. And you can copy adjustments in the color page as well.

It is easy for sure. It just takes a lot of time to do manually for each clip. Which is what I want to put an end to.

If you link the clips and using standard auto selector functions, you should be able to treat them more or less as one, simultaneously.

I didn't think of linking them, this seems to work fine when performing cuts, but not when inserting new stuff into the timeline.

Say I have a timeline with video on track 1 and the logo on track 2. I'm in the middle somewhere, and looking at video from some other clip that I want to put inside my timeline. I mark in and out points and then do an Insert (F9 by default). This inserts that part into my current timeline on track 1, and leaves a "hole" on track 2, giving me another few seconds of manual work to patch this up.

I'm not trying to be intentionally difficult here, but I could be SO much more efficient with this using Premiere Pro and After Effects, and I really don't want to go back there. I'm sure there is a way to do this with Resolve, I just don't see how at the moment.

The simple solution is to use same style of transition effect on both logo and video bellow.

But this gives me the issue of the partially transparent logo during the transition as described above. I need the logo to remain opaque above the video, and then the "sum" of that to fade in and out.

If you wanted more than that or have something happening in the middle of the video to logo, say move position but not the video or whatever else you want, you could keyframe it in the edit page, and copy and paste the attributes, including keyframes, with options to mainting timing, or strech to fit. This covers most scenarios. So you can apply it easily across many clips.

Fortunately I don't need to do a lot of that, and it seems it would involve more manual work.

If you wanted just simple fade in and out, use transitions. They offer easiest application with most options for this type of effect.

Yep, but unless I go back to "precomp" thinking, they affect individual clips/tracks, not the whole video.

You can do a lot more than I mentioned, if you apply fusion in the mix. But it seems to me that for your needs, simple features I mentioned are there for that kind of work.

I still think I could probably do everything I need with Fusion (even if I don't know how yet), but it would still be more manual work than I would ideally prefer to stick a Fusion effect on top of the clip and drag it out to match after editing. For instance, the fading issue could be solved by overlaying a black color node on top of the video, and control the opacity at the start and end of the effect.

But the workflow optimizations I am looking for here seem so basic that I would be surprised if they can't be achieved without Fusion as well. Unfortunately I am relatively new to Resolve and know the Adobe stuff much better, and I have not yet adapted my brain to this way of thinking yet...

Thanks for trying to help, anyway, it is appreciated, and I don't want to seem ungrateful. I just want to be as efficient and fast as possible at this, and if I get a huge amount of clips one week... Well, I would rather spend 20 hours getting this automated completely, than 20 hours repeating the same copying and pasting of keyframes, dragging out clips (and then re-dragging them if a clip has to be modified) etc.