Default Workbench choice

I wouldn't be surprised if some variant of this has been requested by others in the past, but could we please get a preference option to choose what workbench a new Resolve project opens to? In the past when Resolve was a single purpose application, aka color grading, it opened in a logical spot; however, now that DaVinci is a multipurpose application, and particularly now that there are two editing workbenches (cut & editing) that being forced into the cut page is a frustrating annoyance 99% of the time. Now I know one can disable workbenches to force DaVinci into another workbench, but it still isn't the users choice, it's whatever the next thing DaVinci deems to be important, and one looses the workbench tab icons in the process. While that might sound good to a typical user, when one works in a community access center where some people are not daily users, and are forced onto another system, missing the cabs can cause confusion for people, and while the goal s to make zones of system that are set up to a specific primary task (aka different workbenches by default) we don't want to disable the tabs. Thus the conundrum, and why I feel an actual user choosable start workbench is a much better option that the current implementation.

Those are called Pages. And you're correct, there is already a request on this subject.

I wouldn't be surprised if some variant of this has been requested by others in the past, but could we please get a preference option to choose what workbench a new Resolve project opens to? In the past when Resolve was a single purpose application, aka color grading, it opened in a logical spot; however, now that DaVinci is a multipurpose application, and particularly now that there are two editing workbenches (cut & editing) that being forced into the cut page is a frustrating annoyance 99% of the time.

What I do to make my life simpler is I create several empty "template" session files that essentially have nothing in them. Each is set up for specific clients and types of projects so that Live Save, backups, cache locations, Media bins, config settings, color management, playback settings, user settings, timelines, frame rates, data burn-ins, PowerGrades, track names, track sizes, scaling, bin layout, and export presets are already set up in advance. In some cases, the timelines already have test signals and slates, everything except media. I also have head format media like color bars, slates, countdowns, all that stuff for specific clients who I know will want them.

The templates look like this:

2398_HD_template.drp
2400_HD_template.drp
2997_HD_template.drp
2398_4K_template.drp
2400_4K_template.drp

and so on. (You could further refine these to specific aspect ratios and even for specific clients that want you to work in a specific way, or a specific color space, like 9x16 social media and so on.) In general, they save the "state" of the color controls in terms of Primaries, Secondaries, Curves, and so on.

When I start a new session, I determine what the framerate/resolution/aspect ratio will be, choose the appropriate template file, and open that up. Then I do a Save-As and save it with the Client's name and Project Name (and date) as the name of the new session file. Now, I'm completely ready to work and don't have to worry about the drudgery of setting it all up from scratch and leaving out a crucial step.

We generally save the Template projects so that it's open in the Media page, so it's all set to have us bring in the source files, jump to the edit page, conform the project, then move to the Color page to begin color-correction. This works well for our particular style and methodology.