DaVinci Resolve 18.6 Per Timeline Color Management ACES

I'm use resolve mainly as an export program to convert raw footage to ACES, one clip at a time. My old workflow was to set resolve to ACES and then in settings set ACES Output Transform to 'Rec709' whilst I worked on the colour for multiple comps. I'd then set this back to 'No Output Transform' before export.

The new Timeline Color Management pane seems to have changed all this. Now I need to go into each comp, set it to 'rec709' to work on colour and then back to 'No Output Transform' one comp at a time. I can't tick the use project setting option as many of the comps are different resolutions.

I'm far from an expert in resolve, just wanted to check if there is a better workflow?

That's really a design oversight to per timeline settings. It would be nice to be able to decide per tab on the timeline settings whether those are taken from project or overridden by user rather than a global switch. Perhaps you feel like making that a feature request on the request section.

Additionally, it has also been requested to have the ODT be part of the deliver page settings so a similar workflows can be acheived without the need to switch the project/timeline settings to it. Because who monitors in ACES 2065-1?.... It's current methodology is suboptimal to say the least, regardless of this timeline settings update or not.

Haven't used that feature yet, but if custom aspect ratio also means custom color management, that is a bad design.

+1 for a "Use project setting" for each tab or at least for the color management.

Haven't used that feature yet, but if custom aspect ratio also means custom color management, that is a bad design.

+1 for a "Use project setting" for each tab or at least for the color management.

Absolutely agree. I have run into this as a workflow issue several times. Cheers.

I'm use resolve mainly as an export program to convert raw footage to ACES, one clip at a time. My old workflow was to set resolve to ACES and then in settings set ACES Output Transform to 'Rec709' whilst I worked on the colour for multiple comps. I'd then set this back to 'No Output Transform' before export.

The new Timeline Color Management pane seems to have changed all this. Now I need to go into each comp, set it to 'rec709' to work on colour and then back to 'No Output Transform' one comp at a time. I can't tick the use project setting option as many of the comps are different resolutions.

I'm far from an expert in resolve, just wanted to check if there is a better workflow?

as a matter of helping you with your original problem.. am I right, that you are basically using Resolve to pull plates for VFX? Are you exporting linear EXR in ACES2065-1? Because then you could do a workaround with the saver node inside of fusion. Also if you render at source resolution you don't have to use custom timelines.

What exactly are you doing?

Pretty much yes only i use After Effects. The workflow is to use resolve to grade and convert to ACES2065-1 then work with those files in AE. I export a mixture of EXR and prores depending on the project.

For that you can just place all your clips in one timeline and export them in the source resolution with individual clip renders. Disable input sizing and output blanking and render to whatever codec you desire. for ACES2065-1 that should be exr.

you don't really need multiple timelines for that

Thanks for the workflow suggestion. It could work. My hesitation is the process isn't as clean as export everything from resolve in one go then do after effects stuff. There is lots of back and forth, tweaking grades and swapping out clips. I also would assume the filenames would be lost which would also get confusing pretty quick.

Use render timeline as individual as above.

Keep subfolder structure if needs be.


Need to regrade a clip ?

goto Colour tab - version up >regrade > delivery > right click thumbnail >render this clip

use same settings and overwrite.

Or get flashy with custom wildcard filename = source+gradeversioname
Just choose custom name then input % and choose away.

The Alt swap in AE