DaVinci Resolve quick tips #2

Power Bins and Power Grades are one of these DaVinci Resolve options, which make both editors and colorist life easier on a daily basis. What is their purpose an how to use them?

First Power Bins, which is an option to create a special bin in Media Pool, shared across all projects within one database. Although as default it is hidden, it can be simply enabled via menu: View -> Show Power Bins. Then in Media Pool a Power Bins section with Master bin will appear. Of course you can create your own folder structure within and rename bins according to personal preferences. It is a great option for all these elements, that are often reused in the following projects, like intro and outro clips, titles or Adjustment Clips, which in Power Bins are ready to use in a very simple and quick way.

Power Bins section is always available there, where Media Pool is, whereas Power Grades is reserved only for Color Tab. So, after clicking Gallery icon on the left upper corner, two more icons appear below. The left one opens additional menu including, among other things, PowerGrade1 album. And again the most important – this album is shared across all project within this database. Right clicking you can add another albums, change their names or draging and dropping move stills between albums. Power Grades obviously is a great option to quick apply the grading from another clips, but not only. Colorist ofter use so called Fixed Node Tree, applying their own standard node structure to a clip, but making no corrections at the same time. Another example is applying nodes, or node groups prepared for some certain purpose, like Color Space Transform in case of manual color management.

According to the research, humans have much bigger tollerance for worse image, than sound, hence you should care about it in particular. This is of course very broad subject, but this time I will take up only one problem, which is removing any kind of clicks from the soundtrack. Anyone editing footage, especially interviews, sooner or later will experience one with appearing in the background, very short, but distractive and unwanted sounds. How to fix this?

In DaVinci Resolve on the Edit page the smallest unit is one frame, but this is still relatively long time distance and making changes referring even one frame will be noticeable. Fortunately on the Fairlight page you can zoom in the soundtrack up to the samples level, and there are many of them within one frame! In addition it turns out, that manipulating them is very easy. Just click and hold left mouse key and then move left/right changing their position, which reflects loudness level. Of course if the track is stereo, you have to repeat it on the second channel. The characteristic of the cracks is usually the same – high loudness within very short period of time, therefore this method works here perfectly.

This subject is referring not exclusively to DaVinci Resolve, but Blackmagic Design has recently released new models – DeckLink Mini Monitor HD and DeckLink Mini Recorder HD, so maybe it is worth to explain what are they capable of, and for who it would be a good idea to purchase one.

So, in a shortcut Decklink is a series of PCI Express cards offering either displaying, or grabbing tv signal. The available models differ from each other in number and sort of connections, their function and signal specification, including resolution. Their possibilities shall be interested mostly for Color tab users. We all know, that both Windows and macOS are not perfect in dealing with color management of the displayed picture, whereas colorists prefer to work with a “clean” picture. And here’s where Decklink card, like DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K comes in handy; it can deliver clean signal from DaVinci Resolve directly to the monitor, surpassing operational system. There is a dedicated software, where you can make some settings, another ones are also available in DaVinci Resolve: Project Settings -> Master Settings -> Video Monitoring.

In addition it is worth to mention, that with a limited budget by using free DisplayCAL software, above mentioned card, calibration tool and at least a basic knowledge, you can calibrate your monitor by yourself for possibly most accurate work with color in DaVinci Resolve, although services of external companies specialized in this process will give even more accurate results.

To add a simple title or caption to a video clip in the Edit window, you can of course use Text from the Effects tab, but Text + gives you much more fun. So, after dropping it on the Timeline, right-click -> Open in Fusion Page and go to Fusion. Here’s a few useful options that are available there:

• On the right side in the Inspector window and the Tools tab we have, of course, a text input field and various other options, including the ability to change the font, color, size, position, add a border or a shadow, but they all affect the text as a whole. However, by right-clicking in the mentioned input field a new window appears with various functions, among them Character Level Styling. Well, thanks to it, in the new Modifiers tab (next to Tools), you can separately change the character of individual letters or parts of text, of course, after selecting them in the preview window.
• Other interesting option, in some way similar to the previous one, is Follower, which allows you to differentiate the text animation used, e.g. change the position or fade out, in such a way, that again not the whole text is animated at once, but individual letters one after another, in an orderly or random manner, and with an appropriate delay, according to the settings from the Modifiers -> Timing tab.
• Another useful function, especially for various types of more complex inscriptions, is the possibility of using tabs; just press Tab in the text input field before a given section, and then conveniently control the position and alignment of a given tab, either from the preview window or from the Tab Spacing tab.
• And finally, the above-mentioned window with functions can be called not only in the text input field, but also near other values in the Inspector window, and Expression will appear at the bottom (it can also be called by entering the “=” sign in the value field). It may seem to be an inconspicuous option, but it gives enormous possibilities. Well, after “=” you can specify the appropriate function (e.g. time is the number of the composition frame) or by clicking on the little plus sign below and dragging with the mouse to connect to another field for entering values (e.g. when we connect the X axis with the Y, changing the values on the X axis, automatically they are also changed on the Y axis). Expressions is a topic with great potential for a separate discussion, it is worth reading about it in the DaVinci Resolve manual.