EP022: Grade Management

01:00:00:02 - 01:00:13:05
Robbie
Hey everybody, and welcome back to another installment of The Offset podcast. And this week we're talking about grade management. Stay tuned.

01:00:13:07 - 01:00:32:12
Joey
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01:00:32:14 - 01:00:55:05
Robbie
All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Offset podcast. I am Robbie Carman and with me, as always, is my partner in crime, Joey D’Anna. Hey, Joey. How are you, man? Hey. Well, this week we are going to talk about something that I think, if you talk to most pro colorists, they're going to say, oh, yeah, this is like, perhaps more vital than whatever tool I'm using or, you know, any new technique.

01:00:55:05 - 01:01:16:01
Robbie
And that is the concept of grade management. And I want to be clear with a couple things about this. First of all, grade management is kind of like a catch all term. There's not really a better term for it. And we're going to talk about all the various things that go into grade management, from node tree to, still organization to all those kind of things and related.

01:01:16:02 - 01:01:35:17
Robbie
We could probably do, I don't know, probably a half a dozen episodes on the various sort of sub items that we have here on our outline. We're not going to probably do that for all of the things here, but there's definitely a few things like, fixed node trees come to mind, where we'll probably in the future do some dedicated episodes.

01:01:35:19 - 01:01:50:21
Robbie
To some of these specific ones, because they're just juicy enough and they're thick enough and complicated enough where we can probably do some episodes. So if you're watching or listening this back and you go, well, I wish they would go into more depth about that. Don't worry, we probably will on a later date because, there is a lot to chew on here.

01:01:50:23 - 01:02:06:04
Robbie
Also, just to get some housekeeping stuff out of the way. If you're on old social media, on Instagram or Facebook, you can search for us, The Offset Podcast. You can follow us there. That's where we post things about new episodes and stuff. Also on YouTube, of course. And you can go over to theoffset podcast.com

01:02:06:06 - 01:02:22:16
Robbie
if you have an idea for a new episode or want to ask some questions, we have a submission button, over there on, on the site, where you can, you know, send us a message as well. So, Joey, your feelings about grade management, it's an important thing to be efficient and fast, right? I'm not just.

01:02:22:16 - 01:02:25:00
Robbie
I'm not just making that up in my own head. Right?

01:02:25:02 - 01:03:06:09
Joey
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, when I think about grade management, I think about all of the different things you can do, kind of from the planning stage all the way through the execution and the finishing stage of a project to make it so the process is efficient, not just for one shot, but for every shot, and not just for your first pass, but for subsequent passes, for tweaks, for changes, for versions, and for any need that you have to do multiple different shots or multiple changes, you know, basically being able to roll with the flow and roll with the punches of, you know, a complex color grading session without having to reinvent the wheel all

01:03:06:09 - 01:03:15:18
Joey
the time, you know, and that's where, you know, you can really get into some efficiencies or some inefficiencies if you don't plan for this stuff.

01:03:15:19 - 01:03:35:14
Robbie
Totally, totally. And I think, you know, to me, it's because one of those things where when I look at a lot of, you know, new color is entering the field and they're presented with, you know, 1500 shot timelines or whatever. One of the things that I think it's not their talent, it's not their knowledge of the software, etc., but where they really fall down is this kind of general term of grid management, right?

01:03:35:14 - 01:03:56:23
Robbie
You know, they they, you know, you look at one shot and it's got three nodes on it. Another shot's got 38 nodes on it. They're all called different things. They're all different numbers. They're all different, you know, in different places doing different things. And like we've discussed in previous episodes how like that kind of thing can just kind of, you know, be bad in general for kind of, you know, you're adding, adding one, subtracting one, kind of getting back to zero kind of thing.

01:03:57:01 - 01:04:15:13
Robbie
But I think, you know, if you talk to most, you know, pro colorists they'll say, look, you know, the stylistic concerns of a project vary from place to, you know, from show to show or whatever, but the techniques about how I go about managing a project are kind of universal, and there's something that you have to have in your back pocket to work quickly.

01:04:15:13 - 01:04:34:17
Robbie
So, yeah, I think we should dive into that. And I want to be clear about one more thing, and that is that this is not a complete list of great management techniques. Right. If you have something to add again, hit us up, on social media or, the submission form, and, like I said, we can probably add it to a future episode because there is a lot to talk about.

01:04:34:19 - 01:04:57:01
Robbie
Okay. So first thing first, let's talk about a in a kind of a general way, I don't think we need to go into, an amazing amount of depth about this, but fix node trees. Joey, this is something that, I know that you're, you know, like you're an evangelist for. Right? Every everywhere we go, you're talking about the power of fixed node trees for our audience.

01:04:57:02 - 01:05:00:22
Robbie
What? What is a fixed node tree and why is it so powerful?

01:05:01:00 - 01:05:23:05
Joey
Yeah. I mean, anybody that's ever met me knows that I live by the fixed node tree. And I want to be clear when we say a node tree, you know, we're specifically talking about resolve here because that's where Robbie and I work. But this concept of keeping the same structure from shot, the shot really works in any software and any type of color grading.

01:05:23:05 - 01:05:45:11
Joey
So when I say a fixed node three, what we what we mean by this is we make a template that embodies all of the nodes we're going to possibly need for a project. And we set up the node structure. So we can template it out and save it. And every single shot in the project has the exact same node structure.

01:05:45:11 - 01:06:02:20
Joey
There's a few advantages. One, it's muscle memory. You know exactly where everything is all the time. Two you can pre build things that you know you're going to use a lot. If you use a lot of certain shape a power window, make yourself a couple and just leave them blank.

01:06:02:23 - 01:06:03:22
Robbie
For noise reduction.

01:06:03:22 - 01:06:22:20
Joey
Or something like that a circular power window. I've got one ready. You can use tools like ripple where you can copy changes on a node from shot to shot, or you can even do, you know, without using advanced tools like ripple, just regular node copy and paste. Jumping from shot to shot works really well in a fixed node structure.

01:06:22:22 - 01:06:47:09
Joey
But most importantly, I think it just keeps you organized, keeps you fast, keeps you kind of on the focus of grading. You're looking at the monitor, you're not looking at the UI and your node tree constantly, right? You're not. If you build up a complex tree for every single shot that means every time you go to a shot, you're figuring out are you are where the change needs to be made.

01:06:47:12 - 01:07:06:19
Joey
You know you need to navigate each shot individually, whereas with a fixed node structure, you are navigating the same thing, shot to shot. And just again, like I said, this is we're going to talk specifically about resolve. But I know colorists do the exact same thing in base light with a fixed layer stack and new coda, which is also layer based.

01:07:06:19 - 01:07:30:07
Joey
I know colorists that build out a really advanced layer stack that has basically all of their color management built in, and various templates for windows and keys and stuff, and everything's on the same place, on the same layer numbers. Whereas, you know, in resolve we do it with nodes, but this can apply to any grading software, just, you know, change nodes to whatever the UI theme is.

01:07:30:07 - 01:07:53:04
Robbie
Yeah, whatever the paradigm for that. So yeah. And actually I was just going to say too, like, I know a lot of people of audio folks who are in Pro Tools have a similar kind of paradigm with their their session templates. Right. Like they always know this is routed to that. And it's the same concept. I think you hit on a couple of quick things that I think are, for me, the power of the fixed node tree one, that muscle memory thing can't be, misstated.

01:07:53:04 - 01:08:17:06
Robbie
It is so important that you always know whatever node 14 is, your noise reduction. You know, node number six is where you do curves or whatever. And I think that just knowing that serves a couple purposes. One, it's great, as you said, for muscle memory. It's great for things like rippling, which I actually think for me was years ago, you know, decade ago when I made the move to a fixed node tree, rippling was actually the biggest reason I did so.

01:08:17:06 - 01:08:36:20
Robbie
And for those of you not familiar with Rippling and Resolve, it's the idea of making a change on one node and then rippling that change down to other shots in your project. And it's sort of an automated way, and there's various ways that you can do that wholesale fraction of a percentage of, etc. but like the idea is do it once and have it go many.

01:08:36:22 - 01:08:57:04
Robbie
That was the that was the real motivator for me to go to a ripple tree or to a ripple tree, to a big snow tree, because I ripple all the time. Right? But the other thing that it really helped me with is really get an organizational concept or construct, I should say, in my head of different parts of the tree doing different things.

01:08:57:08 - 01:09:17:08
Robbie
Right. And that helped me really get it around in my head. Okay. Like this is my, you know, this is stuff that I do in quote unquote camera space, right? This is stuff that I do after an initial transform. This is the stuff that I do for output. And kind of it's not really germane to the individual shot, but it's more things like, you know, blinking or green or whatever, you know, those, those kind of things.

01:09:17:10 - 01:09:45:14
Robbie
So I think it's really kind of an important thing. And we get a lot of questions about like, hey, can you send me a copy of your tree? And I'm always hesitant about that because it is such a personal thing. And I think part of the thing about a fixed node tree, too, is that like by going through the process of building one, you kind of figure out, oh, these are the things that are the most important to me, and the way that my head works and the way that I work.

01:09:45:16 - 01:10:01:02
Robbie
It's not that I can't take your node tree or vice versa. We can't figure it out. We do that. We, you know, daily during the week, but it's more just like you go through that process. So I would encourage you guys, if you're thinking about moving to fix our tree, to go through that process of building your own.

01:10:01:04 - 01:10:25:12
Robbie
And I would also stress start simple, start expanding out. You can always resave the no tree, but if you start with this, you know, a huge monolith of 78 nodes, you're not going to ever use it because you're never going to remember what's doing. I mean, I want you to know, as soon I probably started out with, I don't know, five, six, seven layer node, and now I'm probably up to about 20 nodes in my node tree, 25 nodes in my node tree.

01:10:25:14 - 01:10:29:20
Robbie
But that was over time because they were like, oh yeah, that's a great idea. Oh, I'm doing that repetitively. That kind of.

01:10:29:20 - 01:10:52:04
Joey
Thing. Yeah, I kind of lost track of how many nodes are in my template at this point, but I can tell you the process of building and exploring this workflow is critical, right? You'll start to figure out, you know, if you're gonna go down this road and you've never done to fix another tree before, I would suggest trying it on a short form project if at all possible.

01:10:52:06 - 01:11:12:18
Joey
Because, you know, because you're committing to the same node tree across the entire project. You know, you don't want to get a thousand shots into a feature film and realize, oh man, I really approach this the wrong way. I need to start over. But if you've got a 32nd spot that has 15 shots in it, build a fixed node structure, try it out, figure it out.

01:11:12:22 - 01:11:35:00
Joey
Okay, find out what worked, what didn't work, and evolve it and evolve it. Keep evolving it as you go and then apply that to your bigger long form projects. But the short form project, your promos, your shorts, those are kind of your workshopping projects where you can really figure out, you know, okay, yeah, if you make a mistake and you have to gut the whole thing and start over.

01:11:35:00 - 01:11:40:08
Joey
Oh no, it was ten shots, right? You know, you have that flexibility.

01:11:40:10 - 01:11:58:13
Robbie
Yeah. And I mean and it does take some practice. I think what you're getting at is that it does take some practice to figure out, you know, what's where the, you know, the order that you have things and what's best for you in terms of navigating between nodes. You know, that kind of stuff or like what's best for initial settings, right?

01:11:58:13 - 01:12:09:19
Robbie
Like, you know, you might have, for example, you have a node that has a power window on it, and let's say it's a circular power node. You might, over time just kind of update that default state of that power window, right? Like, oh.

01:12:09:19 - 01:12:16:23
Joey
Wow. You find yourself every time you go to that node. Oh I know I need a little bit more softness. Well, resave the template with a little bit more saw.

01:12:17:04 - 01:12:39:03
Robbie
Exactly. More like I'm oh, I'm always putting it on somebody's face. So I'm going to make it a little more oval and square, like whatever, whatever those kind of things are. Because that little it sounds minor, but that little level of tweaking of like being prepared for the majority of situations saves you, you know, hundreds of clicks over the course of, a greeting session, right, where you're just not doing those things over and over again.

01:12:39:03 - 01:13:09:03
Joey
Right. You know, a couple more quick tips because like Robbie said, we're going to do whole episodes on fixed node structures. We don't want to go too deep into this, but just a couple of examples of things you might want to try building out when you're exploring this idea. Highlight recovery, shadow recovery, bright nodes for trims and different options where okay, if a client wants to try something, have an available node where you can say, okay, I'm going to try this new change and you can show the client by toggling just that node on and off.

01:13:09:05 - 01:13:34:21
Joey
And one thing that I love doing, it's my favorite thing to do on a fixed node structure is I always have a dedicated keyframe node, so I save the node tree with one node with auto key turned on. That means if I need to ride an exposure change, I know I always just, you know, on line it's the bottom of, the kind of stack of parallel nodes I have.

01:13:34:21 - 01:13:57:21
Joey
I know, I just go to that keyframe node and just start making changes. It automatically makes keyframes. I go back to my primary node and I can change my grade altogether, but that saves me so much time in either making manual keyframes or, oh, I need to keyframe this node. I'm going to go in and click Auto Keyframe in the bottom right for that node, and find it in my scrolling list of 30 some nodes.

01:13:58:01 - 01:14:07:09
Joey
No no no no, that's that's that's too many clicks. That's too much. Looking at the screen, if I need to make a keyframe change, I've got a node for it. I just go to my keyframe node. Do it.

01:14:07:11 - 01:14:27:15
Robbie
I like that one a lot. Actually, I hadn't thought about that one before, and I was just thinking, as you said it, like, I'm so scared of auto keyframing because, you know, if you bump something, the next thing you know, you have a million keyframes. But by having it on its own dedicated node kind of out of the way that you have to navigate to that makes, auto keyframing a little, a little more attractive.

01:14:27:15 - 01:14:33:20
Joey
And then you never accidentally turn on auto keyframe for like your primary node and like, make it go absolutely batty.

01:14:34:01 - 01:14:55:10
Robbie
Yeah, that's a good one. So, a relatively new thing that has come into the lexicon of resolve users is this idea of we now have like node graphs, stacks, right where we can kind of to return to kind of riff on the idea of a fixed node tree. This was this was introduced in, version 19 of DaVinci resolve.

01:14:55:12 - 01:15:19:14
Robbie
And it's kind of this concept of layered node trees, right where we can we can set up, different layers with each layer having its own individual node tree. It's a it's a similar concept in kind of if you're thinking about kind of how it looks, if you're listening to this on an audio podcast, it's kind of a similar, similar concept of like, you know, having different states of the clip, like pre clip group or whatever.

01:15:19:16 - 01:15:46:13
Robbie
But I kind of like this too, because as I've gotten down the path of more complicated node tree setups, it's become a lot to look at. And it's become a lot to kind of navigate around a little bit. Right. And so I've been, you know, I will be completely transparent here. I'm not really using, this, you know, grid sacks or notes actually quite yet in my, my approach.

01:15:46:13 - 01:16:03:15
Robbie
But I'm experimenting with it, but it allows me to kind of take out a huge, bigger node tree and fixed node tree and kind of divide it down into smaller, fixed chunks. And what's great about that is that all the same rules about rippling and all that kind of stuff work on a, you know, kind of, stack to stack level.

01:16:03:15 - 01:16:22:23
Robbie
Right? So you can have this, you know, like maybe, the first layer of the first stack is your initial, you know, transform. Right? Well, great that you can have that ripple out. Have you been using that much? Because I think that's something that I'm trying to get my head around in terms of a fixed node tree grade management kind of process?

01:16:23:01 - 01:16:29:19
Robbie
I think, I think I'm finding some ideas, but I'm curious what you and others out there, kind of how you been approaching that?

01:16:29:21 - 01:16:46:01
Joey
I've got a lot of different ideas for it. And this kind of goes into what we were talking about with, you know, doing the exploration on short form. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been playing with it, but it's not in my, what I consider my production node tree. But to me it's, it's going to be a really good organizational tool.

01:16:46:01 - 01:17:07:02
Joey
Right. Because you can take things that you might not reach for very often and kind of segregate them out to the other stacks and then have your shot to shot grade really focused on one layer. You could use it for color management. You could use it for different versions. If you have an HDR version and an SDR version, maybe you could keep some of those nodes separately.

01:17:07:02 - 01:17:30:04
Joey
So there's a lot of different possibilities with it. But I've actually already kind of been doing what that does with compound nodes. Right. Put a compound node at every stage of my node tree so I can jump in there. And if I have to build something kind of dirty and messy, I don't break the fixed node structure for something shot specific that I might not have anticipated.

01:17:30:05 - 01:17:49:18
Robbie
I agree, and just to be clear, compound nodes. For those of you who aren't, using them, they're just basically a way to nest multiple nodes into one a single appearing node in your main, your main node. Yeah, I, I tend to agree. And I'm thinking of I'm almost thinking of this, this new feature, you know, these these node stack of new layers or whatever you want to call them.

01:17:49:20 - 01:18:07:12
Robbie
I'm almost thinking about it as like, okay, I can have 3 or 4 separate go to trees for different things that I'm now applying to clip. So like you said, something like, we do a lot of shows where we got to do like, you know, license plate blurs or logo blurs or whatever, but it's on every show, right?

01:18:07:14 - 01:18:29:16
Robbie
Well, I could build a node tree that specific to that part of the workflow. And just that's always on this stack, right. Or like I have another part of the stack that's like, you know, I'm always doing, you know, my, my, my, my formatting for different deliverables, whether it's six in my nine, two, three, nine, whatever I get, I have a whole stack that's, you know, germane to output stuff, right, in different, different formats.

01:18:29:16 - 01:18:52:09
Robbie
So there's a lot of ways of thinking about that. But I, I think it's something I want to continue to explore and working off what I, my knowledge, our knowledge of how nodes, you know, node, fixed node trees work. I think this is the next frontier with that kind of the next level of complication. But with that said, there's another kind of related thing in terms of organization, that I am God man.

01:18:52:09 - 01:19:08:13
Robbie
I am always surprised that more people don't use. And I feel like some sort of Luddite for like, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm sorry. I think I look at those people as some sort of Luddites that there's sort of like, what? What is that? I never even know new about that. And that's the idea of groups, right?

01:19:08:15 - 01:19:28:23
Robbie
Groups are something to me that are just so native to the way that I like to work. And they're just so vital to the way that I like to work, and I can't imagine life without them. But let's just dive into that for a second, because I think it's something that, might be new to some people, essentially a group is a way to select a range of shots.

01:19:29:01 - 01:19:50:10
Robbie
You can manually select them, add them into a group manually. And when you add them to a group, you'd get sort of various states, or levels of grades that you can do now on this collection of shots. So we've always had clip level. And that's still germane when you're working to group clip level stuff that just affects this one instance of the shot.

01:19:50:12 - 01:20:13:02
Robbie
But now in a group, you have free clip things you can do before the node, before the the flow of signal hits the clip level. And you can have stuff whose clip things that you do afterwards. But the reason that I use them is that it makes grating similar shots so significantly faster. So we do a lot of doc work where, you know, interviews are key, right?

01:20:13:04 - 01:20:29:11
Robbie
Well, part of our prep just go through the show group all the interviews, call, you know, guy with the red tie as a new group or, you know, woman with the, you know, the, the yellow blouse on whatever make those groups. And now when I do my base grade, I do that on one of the group levels.

01:20:29:11 - 01:20:52:13
Robbie
And guess what? Bam! Everything has been graded right. And now I can go back to a clip level if I need to make any tweaks on an individual shot by shot basis to that group. And it's one of the things for me that it's like when you look at shows that are, you know, 1500 shot shows, 2000 shot, you know, docs or whatever, and you make all these groups and you grade the groups and then you're like, damn, I am a hero.

01:20:52:13 - 01:20:57:16
Robbie
I just created 800 shots in an afternoon because you were using groups.

01:20:57:18 - 01:21:25:20
Joey
Yeah, I, I use groups all the time, but I think I use them slightly differently but not completely differently. And it depends on the project. Right. You know, sometimes we'll do groups for scenes for narrative projects. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times, yeah. We're doing groups for interviews. We're doing groups for different formats. Maybe any kind of thing that you need to organize and bulk shots together is the application of a group.

01:21:26:01 - 01:21:38:18
Joey
A couple really quick tips to give people that you might not have thought about when you're grouping. The light box is your best friend. Because you open up the lightbox, you could just tap on all the shots you want and put them in a group.

01:21:38:20 - 01:21:58:07
Robbie
Let me introduce something real quick. One thing if, any of our friends of Black magic are listening, and I've submitted this about 404 hundred times as an idea, drag and drop in the light box, guys. Drag and drop in the light box would be the best thing ever. Please, think about implementing that, because all this right clicking drives me crazy.

01:21:58:09 - 01:22:19:12
Joey
But barring that, right when you start to make your groups, there's a bunch of things you can do to make that process easy. One Smart filters. You go in your smartphone and say, okay, everything from this camera or everything starting with this name. That's why you can kind of especially in the example of a documentary, you can usually get your interviews kind of laid out that way.

01:22:19:18 - 01:22:39:16
Joey
But the biggest tip I can give you, if you have a lot of shots to group, the worst thing ever is okay, click, click, click click click. And then you scroll down click click click click click. Oh I just missed I just blew my whole selection I know right I know you want to do it in stages. So you click like ten shots add them to your group.

01:22:39:20 - 01:22:45:07
Joey
And then what I do is I always have a smart filter saved. And this one is weird.

01:22:45:13 - 01:22:50:02
Robbie
People know is it is it is it is it the no group smart filter?

01:22:50:04 - 01:23:10:00
Joey
Yes, yes. You want a smart filter? Yes. For anything that isn't grouped. Yeah. So once you start grouping, then you go to that smart filter and it clears out anything you've already assigned. Yeah. So you're whittling down the show as you're grouping it. And the way to do this there is no grouped or ungrouped smart filter. You go you make a smart folder.

01:23:10:00 - 01:23:28:07
Joey
You say where group is blank and you leave it blank. Yeah. So if the group is blank, it's in the Smart Filter. If the group is not blank, it's not in the Smart Filter. It don't show it to you. So then you can go in and say, okay, I'm going to group these ten shots. Good. They're gone. Refresh the screen with that smart filter.

01:23:28:12 - 01:23:41:19
Joey
Oh here's ten more of that interview. Good. They're gone. Refresh the screen. It saves you from selecting like 200 shots and then a scroll bar with your pen a little bit and then just clicking out of that selection.

01:23:41:19 - 01:24:00:17
Robbie
Yeah, totally. And I think the smart filters in general, we, I like we could do a whole episode on that. Smart filters are just a way of basically taking a set of metadata or criteria about your project timeline and or clips and filtering things down, and I do that. I have so many smart filters that are germane to the types of shows that we work on.

01:24:00:17 - 01:24:18:04
Robbie
So for example, I have one like still images like if you're a Jpeg, Tiff, whatever you're like automatically show me those. I have the same thing for things that have like alpha channels associated with them all. Like there's like the sky's the limit with that, but it lets you just to get out of view really quickly and especially helpful in the white box.

01:24:18:04 - 01:24:36:14
Robbie
So obviously works in filtering your timeline, which is my box, just extension of that. But, it gets you to be able to group that stuff, to real quick. I would also make one other suggestion about groups and that is that, I know you. I know you just call it Group one, group two, group three, group four or whatever.

01:24:36:14 - 01:24:38:05
Joey
No, I name them when I can.

01:24:38:05 - 01:24:54:08
Robbie
When you get I tend to I tend to name them not because like one of the problems, the main embarrassing thing I'm sure people have faced before. Right. You're in a set, you're in a session with a client and they're like, oh, well, let's go to that shot of Bob. And you're like, I have no idea who Bob is because I haven't been listening to the show.

01:24:54:08 - 01:25:28:03
Robbie
I've just been grading it. Right. So I'll name them things like, you know, guy with, you know, tie on or, you know, whatever, you know, kid with a baseball cap on or something like that, that very quickly I can just go, oh, that's what the client is talking about. I'm into that group. The other the other related suggestion is that if you're going to have, I found because I have my, my control surface and the stream decks set up to do this, if you have similar groups, say saying a cam be cam cam, search all of those related cameras out at a time.

01:25:28:03 - 01:25:35:17
Robbie
Because the way I think from an OCD point of view, it's just it's it's easier for me to get my head around when I have these groups in order in a row.

01:25:35:20 - 01:25:42:17
Joey
Yeah, that's that's another feature request. If anybody's listening. I'd love to be able to sort and reorder the groups right now. You can't.

01:25:42:22 - 01:25:56:22
Robbie
Right now. Exactly. Because that just makes it is instead of a oh, here's a camera all the way down here is B camera. It just makes it a little easier, a little easier to get out. So, yeah, groups are groups are an essential thing. I think, you know, again, we probably can do a little more on this at a later date.

01:25:57:00 - 01:26:05:03
Robbie
But generally speaking, once I have things in a group, you know, there's this debate about what you should do in what group level or not.

01:26:05:05 - 01:26:05:11
Joey
Yeah.

01:26:05:11 - 01:26:26:21
Robbie
To me, to me, it really is germane to how your brain works and how you want to work. I tend to, you know, I understand that the math concocting eights from pre clip to clip to post clip. Right. The way that I generally think about it and sometimes it has some implications. But I generally forget that there's two levels.

01:26:26:21 - 01:26:45:03
Robbie
And I usually just use that post clip level as kind of like my main node tree is in that that post clip, and I'm making clip specific changes on the clip level. But if you want it to be even more organized, like we were talking about node sex earlier, you could do like an initial transform in your development of the shot.

01:26:45:03 - 01:27:06:16
Robbie
In pre clip, you have all your shot specific stuff in clip, and then you have all your output or your trim stuff in post clip. There's no right or wrong there. There's some math implications like you might find it. Well you might say oh well it's easier to do something after this processing or whatever. Like that's going to be on a case by case basis I think.

01:27:06:18 - 01:27:14:16
Joey
Yeah. And I'll say this, you know, you don't even have to use pre clip or post clip to get usefulness out of group because it's a sorting.

01:27:14:16 - 01:27:15:14
Robbie
Right? Absolutely.

01:27:15:14 - 01:27:16:18
Joey
It's a sorting method. Right?

01:27:16:18 - 01:27:17:03
Robbie
Absolutely.

01:27:17:04 - 01:27:37:06
Joey
More often than not I don't put anything on the group levels. What I'll do is I'll use my because I'm such a zealot for the fixed node structure, I will use the same fixed node structure across all the shots, including the group shots, but I'll use the groups as a organizational tool for ripple because you can do ripple to group.

01:27:37:08 - 01:27:55:19
Joey
So if I have all my interviews, I'll pick a, you know, I'll get my interviews graded and then assign the same tree to all of them. Then I'll make shot. The shot changes as needed. And then, okay, I need to make all the interviews brighter, make it a little bit brighter. Ripple group that works with scenes, that works with interviews.

01:27:56:00 - 01:28:03:05
Joey
You know, to me it's just a different way of organizing it in my brain, where it's a quick shortcut to do a ripple. Well, it's.

01:28:03:05 - 01:28:12:13
Robbie
Nice, it's nice because you don't have to. Unlike the other option for rippling, which is ripple to selected clips. You don't have to make that selection first. I mean, that's used exactly.

01:28:12:13 - 01:28:13:17
Joey
It's ready for you.

01:28:13:18 - 01:28:19:07
Robbie
It's you can map it to a button. There's a whole. Yeah. That's a really super advantageous to me.

01:28:19:07 - 01:28:38:10
Joey
It's about saving clicks, right. I don't have to click on post clip. You know, that's one click times a thousand shots during the day that I might not want to do. However, again, there's no rules here. I will use post clip or clip as needed. Yeah, but don't think if you're not using it that you're doing it wrong.

01:28:38:12 - 01:28:58:08
Joey
And also groups, you know, they go into other things like filtering. So if you want to filter your timeline by only a group or you can do a split screen of the groups, you know, so there's a lot of stuff in the software that you can use the group as an organizational tool that, you know, even if you're not putting a grade on one of the group levels, it's still really, really valuable.

01:28:58:10 - 01:29:19:04
Robbie
Yeah. And there's things there's a couple of things that are kind of tangentially related to groups. I would put them in the general group category. They operate a little differently. And I think it's important to understand that as any software matures and there's enough people saying, yeah, this is cool, but I'd like it to work this way. There's always going to be multiple similar kind of things to do.

01:29:19:04 - 01:29:42:17
Robbie
And like the next thing I'm about to say is, is similar in general idea to groups. And that is the idea of shared nodes. Shared nodes came in, I think resolve 1314 somewhere in that range maybe and they function in a, in a not exactly the same but in a similar fashion. So for example, if you had a shared you added a node.

01:29:42:17 - 01:30:04:01
Robbie
And let's just say you put grain on it, grains and grains, an easy one to think about. You put grain on that, you right click on it, you make it a shared node. And now any time that you add that shared node, it could be in your fixed node tree already, for example. But any time that you make changes on it, it will it will change all of the clips that have that shared node, whether they're grouped or not.

01:30:04:01 - 01:30:09:20
Robbie
Right. So it's kind of like it's kind of like a just an alternate version grouping light if you will, something like that.

01:30:09:22 - 01:30:17:11
Joey
Yeah. And a lot of people have asked for groups of groups like multilayered grouping as a feature. Shared nodes is a way to achieve that.

01:30:17:16 - 01:30:25:17
Robbie
Yeah, because you could group and have a shared node within the group. Right, exactly. That's a that's a that's an interesting. I never even thought about that. That's a pretty good way.

01:30:25:17 - 01:30:30:11
Joey
You can have one shared node across multiple groups. Now you've got a group of groups.

01:30:30:13 - 01:30:51:02
Robbie
It takes a look I especially with with shared nodes like that one is a little it's a little dangerous to me because there's not really any indication that you've just all of a sudden made this wholesale change that's affecting everything. And there's not really you don't really have to force it. You don't have to, a groups, you have to say, okay, ripple this to the whole group.

01:30:51:06 - 01:30:54:11
Robbie
You make a change to that shared node, doesn't matter.

01:30:54:11 - 01:30:56:11
Joey
And you think you're changing just one shot.

01:30:56:16 - 01:31:12:03
Robbie
And it's everywhere now, right? So you got to be. Yeah. You got to be totally careful. Careful with that. All right, so joint groups, shared nodes, all that kind of stuff is related. There's one last kind of thing that I don't. I didn't quite know where to put it. And that one, it's because it's group sort of group ish.

01:31:12:03 - 01:31:33:01
Robbie
It's sort of, I don't know, smart filter is kind of thing. And that is the idea of sort modes. Now, you already spoke about just a second ago about the idea of smart filters, which basically allow you to sort the timeline in different ways by different metadata parameters. Right. But this the specific thing I'm talking about here is actually a pretty old school, thing.

01:31:33:03 - 01:31:54:09
Robbie
And that is the idea between, of sort modes. And we have to different sort modes. Right. There are essentially a source, sort mode and a record sort mode. Right. What your timeline, chronology is like versus your clip. Chronology to explain these sort modes and what, what the different names of them are and how you use them.

01:31:54:10 - 01:32:21:09
Joey
Yeah. So the sort modes are basically called A and C. This goes back to the old floppy disk edit decision list. Online editing techniques. A mode sort is your normal timeline. It's first shot. Second shot, third shot and so forth. A C mode sort is reordering all of that to be all of the sources from the same tape or file, one after the other, after the other.

01:32:21:15 - 01:32:39:16
Joey
So if you have a conform or even if you're working from a baked file, but you've brought in an EDL to do a pre conforming EDL, this is a one of the cool things about actually going through that process of bringing in an EDL versus just doing a scene cut detect, because you get the clip names with the EDL.

01:32:39:16 - 01:32:53:22
Joey
If the editor exported it that way and the C mode sort will still work. So even if you're on a baked timeline, you can click over to see Mode Sort, and then all of your interviews will probably be pretty near each other. They all have similar.

01:32:54:01 - 01:33:11:21
Robbie
It's funny. It's funny because I had a conversation recently with a colleague and I was talking about like I was like, why don't you just use groups? And he's like, well, we conform every show. I get the same functionality just basically by using C mode sort, because all my clips are right in a row and I can just go pace, pace, space, pace and I'm done.

01:33:11:23 - 01:33:17:05
Joey
That's for you. C mode sort primarily as a way to get my grouping done quickly. Yeah.

01:33:17:07 - 01:33:23:20
Robbie
No that's a that's a good one. It's a little old school, but it has some caveats with the EDL and the names and stuff like that. But it's definitely definitely.

01:33:23:23 - 01:33:46:12
Joey
One thing is, you know, it can get to a point where if you flip over to C mode sort and you start going previous the next clip, it's very easy to lose track of where you were in your timeline. Yeah. And then you're out of the realm of saving time, and you're making more work for yourself. As you go back to a mode sort, you're like, oh, great, now I'm 50 minutes into the timeline when I should be ten minutes on the timeline.

01:33:46:12 - 01:34:14:03
Joey
You got to kind of reset and find yourself. And that kind of reminds me of another great management thing that I love, love, massively love. And that's multiple play outs. I use multiple play heads almost constantly because basically the lets you go, you know, you have four play heads. You can select A, B, C or D, and you can leave one at one point in your timeline and then go off anywhere else.

01:34:14:03 - 01:34:38:15
Joey
Another point on your timeline. So I have three shots I need to match. I'll go one, two, three on my play heads and just bounce between them randomly. If I'm using C mode sort and I know I'm about to go on a wild expedition across the timeline looking at these different interview clips, I'll drop a playhead, jump to the B playhead, go while on my timeline, then go back to a mode sort.

01:34:38:16 - 01:34:44:14
Joey
Guess what? I just jump back to exactly where I started with that playhead, and I never lose track of where I am.

01:34:44:16 - 01:35:07:21
Robbie
So it took me some convincing to get into play heads, but net once because like they have, there are two parts of them that you kind of have to realize that one, they're location based, right? So you're kind of like a, some more sophisticated marker, right? To be a to go to and then be they have the ability as, like a navigational tool to be able to quickly jump between them.

01:35:07:23 - 01:35:31:21
Robbie
And so like you're comparing shot to shot. That's one because you can also compare and something we'll talk about later in split screens. But I actually and this is really dorky, Joey, I actually have one of those Elgato pedals, under my Oh yeah, my, my desk. And I have a, I have a mode for it where it's playhead where I can just quickly left and right, go between different play heads on the timeline to make quick comparisons.

01:35:31:23 - 01:35:52:17
Robbie
Now, I don't do that all the time. Sometimes I'll go and use stills, but that is another way of quickly jumping around and to for comparison purposes. Another related one to kind of the idea of groups and shared nodes, is the idea of remote grids. Now I'm just going to put on a little history lesson for people, because this is something that people are going to go, what is he talking about?

01:35:52:17 - 01:36:20:07
Robbie
I have no idea. I've never seen this before. Now I can understand why this has been super hidden. Slash, for all intents and purposes, removed from software. But let me just say it this way. It used to be back in the good old days, we had this idea of a master timeline. It was something that you could enable and have a master timeline and what essentially it operated was like is that you had one timeline that had a string out of all of your media in the project, right?

01:36:20:09 - 01:36:55:11
Robbie
So think about a situation where you have a 62nd spot, a 32nd spot, a 15, and maybe a six, right? And they're all just cut down of that 60. So there's shared media for everything. So what you would do in that situation for efficiency so you don't have to copy and paste or anything like that or group or any of these other new thematic thing or things we talked about is that you would just go through the master timeline, you would grade all the shots, and because you have remote grading enabled, those grades that you did on the master timeline would ripple to all the individual spot timelines with that grade already in place.

01:36:55:11 - 01:37:24:15
Robbie
So grade once and it's done multiple places, right? Okay. The problem with that, or the confusing nature of what people got into that, is that they would go cool. Well, this grade seemed perfect for me when I was on the master timeline, not looking at it in context of the shots that were around it in the shot flow, they would make changes on the individual timeline, not still in remote grading, right?

01:37:24:19 - 01:37:42:19
Robbie
They would make changes to that, not realizing how remote grades really worked. And the next thing you know, the other timelines picked up that change. And now you're doubling up on your problem. Right. And the fix to it, by the way, was just that when you had places where you're like, oh, that's gonna be a little different for the spot was to flip over into local grades.

01:37:42:19 - 01:38:01:17
Robbie
Local meaning that's affecting only that timeline. And make those changes. Now I can understand then, Joey, because of that nature, it's a little confusing. Local versus remote. I can understand why that behavior is a little hidden now, because I think it was getting a lot of people in trouble. Right? But it is still something that you remote versus local.

01:38:01:17 - 01:38:22:07
Robbie
The master timeline is still something that you can turn on. But I'm just going to put that Asterix by there, turn it on with the little warning that this. If you don't realize what's going on with remote and local, you can be literally banging your head against the wall trying to figure out I just changed it here. Why is it changing there and not understanding what that connection is?

01:38:22:09 - 01:38:46:00
Joey
Yeah. And I you know, I very rarely use the master timeline or remote grades, but I coincidentally I did just last week I had the perfect, perfect project for it, where it was a series of 62nd spots with 30 and 15 cut downs of each. All of them were relative. Lee the same context. The shots were in pretty much the same order.

01:38:46:00 - 01:39:05:23
Joey
They were just cut down and they were all using the same media. So I started the project. If you do want to explore this workflow, you've got to start the project and enable the master timeline and project settings first for a timeline. You can't go back to that setting. So again, if you want to play with this short form is the great, great time to do it.

01:39:05:23 - 01:39:25:02
Joey
Because if you don't like it, you can throw it out and start fresh. But it was actually for for this one use case, for this one project. Absolutely perfect. Because I did my master timeline, graded all the shots, and then I literally just imported the AFS for a dozen spots and they were all graded already. And it was all perfect.

01:39:25:04 - 01:39:30:16
Joey
Yeah, but monster that one is, is one of those real advanced use cases. They hit it for a reason.

01:39:30:22 - 01:39:58:01
Robbie
Yeah. And spots are like probably the classical example of that. But I've also had that, you know, like that situation where it's you know, the edit is still in play, but like, it's really important that we have, you know, the president of the company graded. But we just don't know how we're using them yet. Right. So like you could get a head start and just grade the master clip, the 40 minute long shot, do like a base look and then conform and XML, you know, and if the long as you had it turned on to begin with and have that apply.

01:39:58:01 - 01:40:23:18
Robbie
So there's a lot of cool things about remote grades. But I would just again caution people into really understanding how it works, because for a while there it was. It caused a lot of pain and agony for a lot of people who didn't quite know how it works. Okay. A related, thing to this and I think, I don't know, I don't know if I'm the only person that uses this feature, but I love it.

01:40:23:18 - 01:40:50:16
Robbie
I absolutely love it. And I get a lot of strange looks. But for me, from a grade management point of view, it's indispensable. And that is the idea of versions. And let me explain my why I love it so much. So versions has been around for In Resolve Forever. It basically allows you to make a duplicate of your current state of your grade, do something different on that, grade, on that, on that version, and then have, the ability to toggle between those versions.

01:40:50:18 - 01:41:16:09
Robbie
The argument against versions for I'll start there is. Well, yeah. Cool. You can just do that with, you know, an extra node at the end of the tree. And that's why you have this trim nodes and all kind of stuff. Right. I have found that, if I start with kind of my principal look or my principal thing, create a version of that I don't have to keep track of what's different if I change the node tree or I change multiple things, it literally lets me just go.

01:41:16:09 - 01:41:35:18
Robbie
Robby's version. DPP's version. Director's version, and I can toggle back and forth of those without having to disable a lot of individual nodes, toggle those on and off. I just love it. And in fact, there's actually a preference in resolve where you can actually pre name your versions. And I have names for those things that I do all the time.

01:41:35:18 - 01:41:52:23
Robbie
Right. So I have like first pass version and then I might create a second pass or whatever or you might think about it where like you have version one is what you've done before you presented the client and then you just select the entire timeline, make version, right click and make a version two, and then you're addressing the client notes.

01:41:53:04 - 01:42:16:05
Robbie
So you always have that original grade to go back to to look at. And I just found that when I tried to do that on individual nodes, I just got really confused pretty quickly. I did I have it on originally. No. Okay. You know, it just got a little harder to keep track of where versions for me are kind of just snapshots that I can keep iterating, and have a record of, you know, be able to go back.

01:42:16:05 - 01:42:20:11
Robbie
Most importantly, if something was better from one in the other.

01:42:20:13 - 01:42:36:16
Joey
Yeah. I think that is it's one of those things where it might seem like a bit more effort at the start, but once you kind of have it mapped to shortcut keys and you actually think about it, you're like, okay, I know I'm about to try some crazy stuff on this shot.

01:42:36:16 - 01:42:38:08
Robbie
I don't want to screw this up.

01:42:38:10 - 01:43:04:13
Joey
New version. Yeah. My my crazy stuff. Well, no. Go back. Okay. I'm going to try some more crazy stuff. New version. Okay. Great. I like this one. Right. It allows you to create that snapshot that you can always go back. And again, what we're doing here is we're setting up our grade management for success. We're basically saying, you know, we're going to be organized and we're going to manage our changes in such a way that we don't have to think about it.

01:43:04:19 - 01:43:22:19
Joey
Well, you don't have to keep track of I changed node one and two to get this look where I want it. So now I want to, you know, adjust that. You know, you don't have to remember what you did. You just new version. I'm going to try something. Maybe I like it maybe I don't. Yeah I'm going to go back to what I had.

01:43:22:19 - 01:43:38:04
Joey
It saves you from making mistakes. It saves you from breaks in your timeline. If you do something crazy and accidental, it gives you an extra layer of security. So all of those things together kind of add up to these session efficiencies that we're talking about.

01:43:38:08 - 01:44:03:15
Robbie
All right, Joey, as we get towards the end of the show, I have a couple more things I want to talk about. Some of them are related to the general idea of like comparative tools, skills and that kind of thing. We had mentioned, play heads earlier, but one of the things that I love, like you love playhead, I'm in that same passionate, man crush on this and that is split screens.

01:44:03:17 - 01:44:23:20
Robbie
Split screens to me are just they're invaluable for the way that my brain works. And the split screens, essentially have different ways of comparing shots, two shots or multiple shots next to each other with a different set of criteria. So the easiest one to bring up a split screen is just selected shot. So you can just compare those two shots together.

01:44:23:22 - 01:44:42:15
Robbie
But then you can do things like, hey, show me all the shots in a group just for the visual consistency and the cool thing is, is that split screens are outputted over the SDI stream. So if you have, you know, you know, monitor, you like, show me everything in a group and very easily you can just go through the group, make sure everything is the same versions.

01:44:42:15 - 01:45:01:09
Robbie
There's another split screen option, right. So I mentioned how much I love versions earlier. You're maybe you're working on a heavy duty commercial session where like it's an agency client. They're like, show me this, show me that, show me this, show me that. Well, if you did it as versions, split screen versions, bring those all up on a big monitor, on the client monitor and literally just have the client point to, oh, I like that one the best.

01:45:01:14 - 01:45:22:21
Robbie
Cool. That's what we're going with, right? So split screens are a way in various criteria of comparing shots next to one another. And I just like them a little bit better than, what a lot of people I think use but you stills and still wipes for, because it just allows me to look at them on the same screen at the same time.

01:45:22:21 - 01:45:48:10
Robbie
Now, there is one really important thing that you should note about split screens, and that is screen uniformity. I know people are going to like, what? What are you talking about? I have had this situation before where if I have a bunch of split screens up, maybe the left side of the screen is a little slightly more warm or whatever than the right side of the screen, and they're like, well, your your continuity is all screwed here because this is more red over here.

01:45:48:11 - 01:45:55:07
Robbie
Like you didn't see it when it's just a single shot up, but you see it in that context. So just a little Asterix on split screen.

01:45:55:09 - 01:46:25:07
Joey
Yeah. And it's funny because we've talked about using all of these different things as kind of ways of, you know, how do you adapt your workflow to be efficient? Yeah, it's going to be different for everybody because I kind of feel the exact opposite. I almost never reach for the split screen for me. I reached for play heads a thousand times more than split screens, because I would rather those things be full screen and I just jump between them because I'm thinking, okay, ABC basically, and I'm kind of comparing in my head quickly.

01:46:25:07 - 01:46:34:05
Joey
That's just kind of how I work. Don't let me let you have these options, but, you know, find the things that work best for you. For me, it's not split screen.

01:46:34:06 - 01:46:56:09
Robbie
So let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, sort of give a little bit of a differentiation thing here too. So like, I tend to use split screens for general shot comparisons, where I tend to use still and still wiping for detailed comparison. Right? So like if I'm trying to get this idea of like, do these shots flow in from one another, right?

01:46:56:11 - 01:47:21:13
Robbie
And I look at them side by side or whatever, you know, I'm on a four up or five up or whatever. I go, okay, cool. The general tone of these shots is flowing, but oh, his jackets or his face or whatever is a little different in shot to shot. Then I'll flip over to using splits. I'm sorry to using stills and still wipes where I have a single thing up and I can wipe in it in different ways to then compare on those details.

01:47:21:15 - 01:47:37:01
Robbie
So I kind of use them both, but for different reasons. Where a split screen is kind of like the macro feel. And then I dive down a little bit closer on stills and to do some more detailed comparison. So related is one thing I think that a lot of people are not aware of when it comes to stills.

01:47:37:01 - 01:47:56:17
Robbie
Everybody's saved is still there's multiple ways of organizing we don't have to get into. We can have been, different bins and power bins and, target bins and stuff like that. One of the things that I don't think a lot of people realize about stills is that number one is that there's a whole plethora of ways to not have default naming for those stills.

01:47:56:17 - 01:48:15:03
Robbie
Right. And I think this is really one of those things that's gotten me a lot faster because you're in a big show, you're saving still save until the next thing you know, your your bin has 400 stills on it and you're trying to find the right one. There is an odd preference and resolve for default naming. I have recently gotten into the idea of using variables in my cell naming.

01:48:15:08 - 01:48:37:01
Robbie
Right? So now. Now I name by. It always gives you like the the shot number. You know, 117 or whatever. But I name by timecode and then I name by like I think I do timecode and version as my default way of naming stills. Now. So I can very easily go to it and go, oh yeah, that's the cell I pulled from.

01:48:37:03 - 01:48:47:04
Robbie
When it comes to stills, I'm curious about, I don't think we've ever actually talked about this. Are you a wiper or are you a quick flash between stills.

01:48:47:06 - 01:49:03:12
Joey
100,000,000% quick flick. I do the wipe to the very edge and then I just play still on and off. It's the same thing is how I like to compare with play heads versus split screen. I think my brain is just like, I like that AB, because I can focus on one thing and see where that's changing.

01:49:03:17 - 01:49:26:16
Robbie
Yeah, I, I have come around a little bit to the flash it up real quick like to compare thing. I think what I try to do sometimes is I do this like if a matching skin tone for example, I'll bring them up in a and some sort of wipe, get the mare and then I do the flash thing to see if that works, and then if that works, I'll go back up to the, to the split screen thing and select a whole bunch of them and see if that works.

01:49:26:16 - 01:49:41:07
Robbie
Right. And if I got it working on all three of those comparison tools, then I know, and then I know that it's, that it's working. Also, I don't think a lot of people realize this one. You can wipe to another clip on the timeline, too, which is very. Yeah. Which is very handy. You don't have.

01:49:41:08 - 01:49:44:21
Joey
Right click the thumbnail wipe to timeline clip. Very useful.

01:49:44:21 - 01:50:00:17
Robbie
Which you don't have to make your life complicated by saving a still and then organizing it that way. You know, if you're not, it's not something you're going to keep for later. Why make it just compare to a shot on a timeline, which is, which is pretty handy. Okay. Last few, last two things before 2 or 3 things before we wrap up.

01:50:00:19 - 01:50:31:04
Robbie
And that is the idea of, what I'm generically going to call layers. But that's a little confusing to people because we already talked about layers and stacks earlier. What I mean specifically is how you organize the edit timeline in terms of your overall approach to management of clips. Right. And I see this really, you know, we we talk about in Wagoner old man fingers I about editors use 827 layers and nothing's in the same space.

01:50:31:06 - 01:50:57:23
Robbie
But one of the things I think is really useful, is organizing your timeline for, hey, this is my base layer. Base layer. This is, you know, whatever inset stuff. This is my text. These are my subtitles. Because this is what I'm getting. That is that you might want to be organized on your edit timeline for things like text or whatever, but you might not want all of that stuff to be visible on your color timeline.

01:50:58:01 - 01:51:19:12
Robbie
And this is a little hidden thing that I think more and more people are hip to. But it's really important to mention is that, the color page timeline at the the track headers where it says v1, v2, v3 and so on, you can actually click on with some modifiers, click on those track headers to disable entirely or just to disable from view right.

01:51:19:12 - 01:51:37:14
Robbie
So an option click or an all click on those headers is going to turn them off from view in the color page. Because I'm sure you faced this situation before. You're going along your grading your grading grading. And then you're like why does the control not doing anything? And then you realize that you're actually on a lower.

01:51:37:14 - 01:51:38:20
Joey
Third reading a subtitle.

01:51:38:20 - 01:51:58:09
Robbie
You're grading the subtitle, or something like that, rather than on that, cause you don't need that on your timeline. You want it on for context, but you don't want it on on the timeline to grade. So it's a little quick tip about that too. Is being able to temporarily disable things from view on your color page timeline. So they're still there and still be able to look at them.

01:51:58:09 - 01:52:00:15
Robbie
But they're not. They're not going to accidentally grade them. Right.

01:52:00:15 - 01:52:31:16
Joey
Which is yeah. And this is something I talk about all the time, like ad nauseum, which is, you know. Rep. Rep. Rep. The more organized your timeline is on the edit page, the more organized you're going to be on the color page. When you're focused on the reference monitor and just trying to grade the images. So if you sort that timeline on the edit page really nicely, where, yeah, you can toggle on and off the things you don't need to focus on and then get into the task of grading.

01:52:31:19 - 01:52:34:12
Joey
It's going to save you so much time.

01:52:34:14 - 01:52:57:02
Robbie
All right. The last thing that we'll talk about and then we'll wrap up for today is I do think it's interesting when we get to the back side of a project that grade management still comes into play. Right. And there's a couple of things that I want to talk about that and that is one, when you're viewing in context with a client, I think there are several grade management things that you can do.

01:52:57:02 - 01:53:14:09
Robbie
And the first one is a no brainer. It's just simply bringing up a timecode burn in with the data burning options when you're viewing something, right? Because a lot of clients still have that busy, you know, burned in time code was what that acronym means burning time, kind of busy. They it's just easier for them to look at, looking at something like that.

01:53:14:13 - 01:53:32:16
Robbie
Also just with difference of player, especially if you're in a remote workflow difference with how like counter time code versus simply time code or whatever. If you're in the feedback thing, do yourself a favor and just bring up that that, that burning time code that can be there. Another thing with burn, with burning options. I don't know how you feel about this.

01:53:32:16 - 01:53:56:23
Robbie
I think you're probably in the negative. But I have found situations where some of those other burning options, specifically clip name and things of that nature, can be useful to have on the timeline. So clients can go, oh, it's that one. It's that shot. It's that shot I'm talking about. But a lot of variants there. But explore the burning options because I think that they are they are important.

01:53:57:01 - 01:54:18:08
Robbie
And then lastly with rendering okay, I was today years old when I realized that in resolved 19 there is a new feature that I'm like this. Who asked for this? I need to buy them a beer because it's awesome. And that is, we do a lot of rendering with like Texas rendering and not Texas rendering or whatever. New and resolved.

01:54:18:08 - 01:54:26:20
Robbie
19 there's actually an option to, to ask, include certain tracks on the render without having to go back to the edit page.

01:54:27:02 - 01:54:40:13
Joey
And I love it. I love it so much. It's great because going back to what we were just talking about, if you've done the prep work and your timeline is organized now, your text version is one month work.

01:54:40:15 - 01:54:43:15
Robbie
Yes, totally. And there's other things like.

01:54:43:15 - 01:55:05:08
Joey
All comes together at the end in the deliver page. Everything else is organized. And that is such a killer feature of 90. It's the simplest thing know, but I love it because the other thing you can do is I'm going to turn on, I'm going to make a render job for my texted, then I'm going to make a render job for my text list, and I'm going to click render both.

01:55:05:12 - 01:55:07:15
Joey
I don't need to come back to the box.

01:55:07:15 - 01:55:08:11
Robbie
Totally.

01:55:08:13 - 01:55:09:06
Joey
Unchecked.

01:55:09:06 - 01:55:11:02
Robbie
And that was always that. That was always the problem.

01:55:11:02 - 01:55:12:00
Joey
I had a new render job.

01:55:12:00 - 01:55:20:18
Robbie
That was always the problem with. The other way of doing it is that you couldn't you had to do one render at a time because you had to. It was based on what was ever enabled in the editor.

01:55:20:20 - 01:55:37:20
Joey
You duplicate your timeline, which has all kinds of other implications for things like render cache or messing up version. You know, you could you could do it that way, but it was messy. Right now it is beautiful and clean. If you were organized at the beginning.

01:55:37:22 - 01:55:55:01
Robbie
Yeah. And there's two last things I'll mention on the render page that are important. Then we'll wrap this conversation up. One, you do have the ability to render versions on the render page, which is great. So remember if you want to direct the director's cut and they're all their crappy grade that you hate, right. Sure you've made that a version.

01:55:55:01 - 01:56:21:05
Robbie
Just turn that on and you're done with that. Similarly, there is a way like if you're in a, if you're in a workflow where maybe you have an online editor doing things after the fact, or there's, you know, for a visual effect workflow. This doesn't get talked about very much, but there is this idea of what's called flat pass render where you can if you've ever had the situation where you've done all this work and then you're having a panic attack, that all your renders don't have your grade on it, that's probably because flat pass is turned on.

01:56:21:07 - 01:56:40:10
Robbie
So that is another little minor grade management thing to worry about. And then lastly, in terms of grade management, I this is definitely this part of it is definitely a future episode getting more into the render page. But I don't think a lot of people actually realize the power of switching between single clip and individual clip renders.

01:56:40:10 - 01:57:03:05
Robbie
And what I mean by that is that individual clip renders actually have a whole lot more great management possible than rendering out a single clip of your timeline. Some things that come to mind are render at source resolution rather than a timeline resolution. Right. The option to turn on and use timeline effects or not use timeline effects on those individual clips.

01:57:03:07 - 01:57:20:11
Robbie
Things like, you know, naming in sort of a commercial workflow, like or alpha channels, like there's a lot there's just a plethora of stuff that come into mind, which again, I think we can talk about in a future episode, but grade management is not something in resolve. I think that happens just at the grading stage.

01:57:20:13 - 01:57:27:06
Robbie
And there's a lot of these little buttons everywhere that are kind of workflow grade management kind of techniques.

01:57:27:07 - 01:57:50:19
Joey
Yeah. And, you know, I'll just close on one last thing related to rendering individual clips. It doesn't have to be individual clips. You can kind of think fourth dimensionally. Here's something that I do all the time. If I have 50 spots in a in a project, I'll just select them all in the bin. New timeline from selected clips I make sure I turn off the use mark in and out so I get the whole timeline.

01:57:51:01 - 01:58:01:18
Joey
Now I have a string out of nested timelines of all my timelines and those are deliver page clips, render individual clips, I just batch render and 50 timelines. One click.

01:58:01:20 - 01:58:16:16
Robbie
That's a great that's a great technique actually. Very cool. All right guys, so lot of a lot of we bounce around with a million different things here. Hopefully you followed some of some of it as we said, a lot of these subjects, we can go into more depth if there's a particular subject that you did.

01:58:16:21 - 01:58:20:16
Joey
Yeah. Leave us a comment. Let us know which parts of these you want us to dive deeper into.

01:58:20:17 - 01:58:39:09
Robbie
Totally. Because there's a there's a lot to a lot to break down here. But hopefully in the hour or so we've been talking, you've gotten some, some little nuggets out of here that you can work into your own projects and into your own workflows. So as always, thanks for, for checking out this episode and hope it was helpful until our next episode.

01:58:39:13 - 01:58:41:07
Robbie
I am Robbie Carman.

01:58:41:09 - 01:58:43:04
Joey
And I'm Joey D’Anna. Thanks for listening.