Blackmagic Forum

I shoot a lot of nature video, often in poor lighting. For example, I am currently trying to grade video shot from the surf of falcons nesting on a cliff wall above the beach. The problem is the there is a lot of mist from the surf that is being swept around by the wind and the scene is constantly changing due to the sunlight being reflected by the mist that is in the line of sight.

I am hoping there is some way to "stabilize" the color grade so that the scopes are roughly constant. I doubt that there is anything that will help but I am hoping that Resolve has some capability I don't know about, or some expert can give me some guidance on how to handle this situation.

In case it isn't already obvious, I am still learning Resolve.

did you try the color stabliser OFX ?

When there are big differences in the lighting, such as the subject moving from bright sunlight to deep shadow, or clouds moving in and out blocking the sun, I often split the clip and then grade each section individually, then edit the pieces back together with dissolves in between. This works better for me than trying to find an average for the whole clip.

You know that you can keyframe when grading, do you?

Dermot Shane wrote:did you try the color stabliser OFX ?

I don't know what that is. Can you let me know where I can learn more?

Roger Van Duyn wrote:When there are big differences in the lighting, such as the subject moving from bright sunlight to deep shadow, or clouds moving in and out blocking the sun, I often split the clip and then grade each section individually, then edit the pieces back together with dissolves in between. This works better for me than trying to find an average for the whole clip.

Thanks for the reply Roger. With the wind in this case the lighting is changing pretty much continuously. I may need to try to find shorter clips I can use, or go back and try again when the conditions are better.

Uli Plank wrote:You know that you can keyframe when grading, do you?

Thanks Uli. Yes, keyframes is what I have been trying to use. I may be able to get that to work satisfactorily, but since the lighting is changing almost continuously it is very tedious and only partially successful. As I mentioned in the reply above, I may need to go back when conditions are better and hope the Falcons cooperate.

dclark064 wrote:

Dermot Shane wrote:did you try the color stabliser OFX ?

I don't know what that is. Can you let me know where I can learn more?

Keyframing is very much a "Resolve 101" topic that everybody should know. For anybody new to Resolve Color, be sure read the free textbook "The Colorist Guide to DaVinci Resolve 19," available on Blackmagic's Training website:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... e/training

You'll find this is enormously helpful, as are their free video tutorials. The 4035-page manual is good as well, but the textbook presents the basic material in a much more concise way. (A Resolve 20 update is coming soon.)

It is possible to do keyframes-within-keyframes, which is something I have to frequently do with badly-faded film and weird, unexpected exposure changes. In some cases, I can combine this with OFX DeFlicker, which can reduce the problems even more.

In the case of big sunlight/cloud changes, you can often fix the problems manually, but the shadows are still going to change no matter what you do. So in some cases, the most you can do is just put a bandaid on the problem and accept that it'll never be perfect. If you've made it better, that counts for something. I probably did 30 or 40 National Geographic wildlife documentaries, and they just accepted it by saying, "hey, it's life -- the sun moves, clouds change, it is what it is." They never expected perfection in nature.

Marc Wielage wrote:

dclark064 wrote:

Dermot Shane wrote:did you try the color stabliser OFX ?

I don't know what that is. Can you let me know where I can learn more?

Keyframing is very much a "Resolve 101" topic that everybody should know. For anybody new to Resolve Color, be sure read the free textbook "The Colorist Guide to DaVinci Resolve 19," available on Blackmagic's Training website:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... e/training

You'll find this is enormously helpful, as are their free video tutorials. The 4035-page manual is good as well, but the textbook presents the basic material in a much more concise way. (A Resolve 20 update is coming soon.)

It is possible to do keyframes-within-keyframes, which is something I have to frequently do with badly-faded film and weird, unexpected exposure changes. In some cases, I can combine this with OFX DeFlicker, which can reduce the problems even more.

In the case of big sunlight/cloud changes, you can often fix the problems manually, but the shadows are still going to change no matter what you do. So in some cases, the most you can do is just put a bandaid on the problem and accept that it'll never be perfect. If you've made it better, that counts for something. I probably did 30 or 40 National Geographic wildlife documentaries, and they just accepted it by saying, "hey, it's life -- the sun moves, clouds change, it is what it is." They never expected perfection in nature.

Thanks for your note Marc. I have all the materials you mention and have been through the Colorist Guide a couple of times. I don't recall the term "color stabilizer OFX" that was mentioned by Dermot Shane. I just did a search in the Colorist Guide PDF and don't find those terms. I did find a few links using Google, but what I have found is pretty limited, but it seems the color stabilizer has been in Resolve since version 14. I am leaning a bit but I would like to find more and better training materials.

dclark064 wrote:Thanks for your note Marc. I have all the materials you mention and have been through the Colorist Guide a couple of times. I don't recall the term "color stabilizer OFX" that was mentioned by Dermot Shane. I just did a search in the Colorist Guide PDF and don't find those terms. I did find a few links using Google, but what I have found is pretty limited, but it seems the color stabilizer has been in Resolve since version 14. I am leaning a bit but I would like to find more and better training materials.

Color Stabilizer has been around for a long time in Resolve FX Color and is still in there. My opinion is it's basically an expanded version of DeFlicker that works on several different parameters:



I've rarely had very good luck with Color Stabilizer, but I haven't tried it in Resolve 20 yet, so it's possible it now works better. I have used DeFlicker quite a bit, and when there's not a lot of movement in the frame, it can do some good. One trick I've done on occasion is if you have "flicker" or level problems in one color channel (like Blue), you can confine the node to just Channel 3 (Blue) by right-clicking the node. So that's another sneaky method to qualify how and where the deflicker processing occurs.

Another helpful trick with DeFlicker in some cases is stacking the filter with different settings.