Blackmagic Forum

After getting caught last year as a former Premiere user creating training materials in powerpoint, I've now sorted all my slides so they fade through black making it easier to adjust the order later without some really complex editing. I'm also making sure not to speak over the transition.

Is there any way in Resolve to automatically generate clips or split the timeline based on the black frames? I know there is a cut detector colourists use when they have a single source file but not sure if it's the most appropriate for the task

The best option would be to export the slides out of PowerPoint as image files and bring those into Resolve.

Jim Simon wrote:The best option would be to export the slides out of PowerPoint as image files and bring those into Resolve.

Being careful of the import options. If the slides are numbered, the default option in Resolve is to interpret them as a still sequence which will result in a video clip with one slide per frame. You can change this so they're imported as individual stills.

I'd normally consider importing as image files but there are some quite complex animations on the slides, hence the thought of automatically splitting them as clips.

My route here is using OBS Studio to screen record with audio from a MixPre II and also timecode sync audio and a GH5 camera for greenscreen. The intent is the slides run with the voiceover and there is space on the layout for me to be cutout and superimposed in a corner.

In the future, I'm more tempted to build in Resolve/Fusion from the start. I've done a little of that before in Premiere with titles setup for text and pulling in images directly although doing this in PowerPoint can be a little quicker, especially if I also need to produce handouts.

My other thought was to record the timings of mouse clicks for advancing slides. That would be incredibly useful to have all the queue points

There is a Scene Cut Detect feature. I don't use it myself, so I can't vouch for it's usefulness in your situation.

But that's really your only shot here. If that doesn't produce the desired results, you'll have to do the work manually. But that's not likely to take more than a few minutes anyway.

(Would actually take less time than getting answer here in the forums. )

tkerby wrote:I'd normally consider importing as image files but there are some quite complex animations on the slides, hence the thought of automatically splitting them as clips.

The scene detector should be able to do this as long as there is something it can latch onto to see that things have changed. Of course, it's oriented towards actual film-like footage where there are cuts that change the viewpoint and may not be as helpful for slides that pretty much look alike if you squint a little. Not sure if your drop-to-black will be perceived as a shot change or not. Please report back on how that works for future folks.

tkerby wrote:In the future, I'm more tempted to build in Resolve/Fusion from the start. I've done a little of that before in Premiere with titles setup for text and pulling in images directly although doing this in PowerPoint can be a little quicker, especially if I also need to produce handouts.

Also, if you've not used Fusion before it's quite different from layer-based approaches (Premiere, After Effects) so a learning curve will be involved.

tkerby wrote:My other thought was to record the timings of mouse clicks for advancing slides. That would be incredibly useful to have all the queue points

It's conceivable that if you have everything sync'd properly and then convert your mouse clicks into an EDL, you could have it chop up your video precisely. So some cleverness and perhaps programming will be required, but if it works it'll be less prone to error than a cut detector.

The cut detector has a sensitivity control that should work fine in your scenario.

Went with the following in the end

• Didnt bother with a fade to black, though I'm better to do this with a dissolve in Resolve as I can better handle my green screen video
• Recorded with audio into the camera and also into OBSStudio to record the slides
• Generated optimised clips - for some reason they weren't keyframed well and skipping to a point seemed almost impossible, likewise time syncing them
• Adjusted timecodes on the OBSStudio data roughly (Timecode was synced over HDMI from the Panasonic GH5 and Mixpre 6 II) then synced based on audio track
• Pulled all the video into a single timeline, using the Slides as a master video track then overwrite source and the multicam options to grab the audio and video
• Setup my green screen Ultra Keyer in fusion. Also muted audio on all but the Mixpre track (strangely, the mute buttons by the tracks weren't working in Resolve 17 so I had to right click and mute the clips). Better to do this first as the settings then transfer over all the cute
• In the cut window, used the Timeline -> Detect Scene Cuts option. This amazingly got every slide transition correct. I think its looking for a complete change in pixel data or close to it. It's very slow to run though - took about 50% of the clip length and you had to apply to the whole timeline. No thresholds available either and it automatically splits the clips
• Manually split the audio and video tracks at the same transition points (must be a way to automate this!)

In general, this worked pretty well. Could have perhaps done it manually in the same time but it allowed me to work on some other things while this ran in the background