Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/462877
55 WINTER 2015 / CINEMONTAGE 55 WINTER 2015 / CINEMONTAGE TECH TIPS whopping $29,995. However, there are less expensive control surfaces that work with Resolve from companies such as Tangent, Avid and JL Cooper. While a control surface will give you a tactile feel to the grading process and increases your productivity, Resolve also works with a good ol' mouse and keyboard (with lots of keyboard shortcuts as well). NOW COMES EDITING In traditional workflows, color grading is usually the final step in a production, after the editor and the director have sat for many hours in an edit suite locking picture. When they were done, the editor would export the movie's timeline and send it over to the colorist, who would then go about altering the color of the footage — either due to problems (too dark, too orange) or to create an artistic look. When the colorist's work was done, the picture is rendered with the final color in place. Naturally, there are some limitations to this way of working. For example, it's not so easy to alter the editing timeline since it would mean going back and forth between the edit suite and the color suite. Here's a better idea: What if world-class color grading and editing were combined into one application that did both? With it, you could freely go back and forth between editing and color grading instantaneously without waiting until the edit was done. Color grading and editing could be one organic process, with no penalty for moving between the two worlds — edit a little, grade a little. Repeat. This is the major innovation and importance of Resolve 11, which adds advanced editing capabilities to one of the industry's pre-eminent color- correction applications. The result is a single package that allows you to edit, mix audio, color grade, finish and deliver a production (see Figure 2). In fact, editing was introduced in Resolve 10, but lacked the sophistication found in mature NLEs. That has changed in release 11. The editing functions have been much improved and now include over 70 new editing features based on input from professional editors: multiple video and audio tracks, extensive trimming functions, titling tools, Bezier key frames and transitions. In addition, there are important new collaborative workflow tools that are not found in other editing platforms. These new collaboration features allow an editor and multiple colorists to work at different desks while sharing the same timeline. Thus, a team of people can all work together at the same time, on the same production, to get the job done. What's really nice about Resolve's collaborative tools is that each colorist working on the project can see the timeline updated immediately as the editor edits. COLOR ENHANCEMENTS In addition to the editing functions, Resolve 11 also contains improvements to its color-correction toolset, such as new RAW image and color-grading controls that are designed to make new users — especially photographers who are moving into cinematography — feel at home. The new camera RAW palette features controls for highlight and shadow recovery, mid-tone detail, color boost, saturation, lift, gain and contrast adjustment. Also new in Version 11 is the new Color Match feature, an automatic chart color-balancing tool which works by doing a primary base grade by analyzing shots containing standard color-chip charts (see Figure 3). These shots may have been lit differently or with various exposures and color temperatures. It's a great way to quickly get all of your clips to a common start-off point before you start fine-tuning your grades. Resolve is also used on set to quickly add looks to shots, manage media or prepare dailies. And version 11 has new features that allow you to securely back up and save digital camera files. This includes a new Clone tool that copies media drives, memory cards and camera packs to multiple places at the same time, which is useful for on-set work. EDITING IMPRESSIONS I was eager to try out the new editing features in Resolve 11, so I imported some footage from a recent project and got to work. While Resolve contains a lot of the editing features that you would expect in a pro-level editor, I won't go into tremendous detail about each and every one of them (you can download Resolve Lite for free and see for yourself ). However, I will touch on some of the more important ones. Note that the editing functionality in Resolve Lite is no different from the full version. The first thing I noticed is the slick editing interface. I've always liked Resolve's color-grading UI, and the same goes for the NLE. I find it to be thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing. This has an effect on the way you think about your work. Figure 2: Full- featured nonlinear editing functionality is now included in Resolve 11. The Edit page is where all the editing happens. Figure 3: You'll find DaVinci Resolve's world-class color- grading features on the Color Page.