I love this explanation so much! Straight to the point and without having 10+ nodes that make things so difficult when they are not necessary for beginners!
Love to hear that! Node Trees can definitely seem confusing in the beginning, I think they are to most people but it is quite simple when you get the gist of it!
Very helpful! Two questions: 1. Since you're starting with contrast, is there a reason you don't put it on the left... so the whole tree is a left to right progression? 2. Is there a way to set up your preferred node tree, with labels, as kind of default, or a way to access it easily... so you aren't having to build it for every new project? Thanks again. I'm just getting started and this was very helpful.
1. Yes. Adding the exposure and balance on the node before, essentially means that I'm changing it before the contrast kicks in and leaves me even more room to work with by changing the original footage rather than what's happened after the contrast has been applied. You can also work left to right in the color correction but often it leads to more back and forth between the nodes than going this way - in my experience. 2. You can save your node tree by grabbing a still when you're at the point you want to save. Put that still in your PowerGrade folder and you'll be able to use it across all the projects in that database. Simply right-click on the still in your Gallery and click "apply grade" and there you go :-)
I have a question: I've seen so many color grading videos applying a unique style or look to one clip, but none of them explain how to apply these styles and look to all the clips on the whole video project in order to have a consistent tone. I feel kind of lost there, any help would be awesome!
Im a novest and all i been doing is researching and getting better. I found a simple way to just help me with some basic to get me past just using my regular footage. And mannn this was very detailed. Thank you.
That makes perfect sense thanks for the clarification! I cut the film in FCP so I need to learn how to open an FCP project in Davinci for final color grading. Do you use Davinci cloud feature? Thanks
Thanks Alex! I'm really glad that I've found your channel. This was so helpful. I'm surprised you don't have 7,51 x 100 subscribers. Thank you so much for sharing...
What about a node for saturation? Obviously you're prefering to use the curves here, but in lieu of that where would you place a saturation node in the node tree?
I’ve played around with saturation in different ways since so my current workflow looks like this (from node 1): Balance -> Exposure -> Contrast -> Saturation -> Look / Hue Curves -> Conversion
Another excellent tutorial for us noobs. Quick question, when shooting in log profile, do you recommend exposing it to the right? Most RUclipsrs recommend +1.7. What do you recommend?
I do, depending on what LOG profile you shoot in. For S-LOG 3 I always expose around +1.7. However, shooting on my own Canon R6 in C-LOG 3 I expose using Zebras and expose for the skintones with Zebras 55 to get as accurate skintones as possible or Zebras 35 if it's for something else than skin. This brings me the best results. If I didn't have Zebras I would aim at +1.7 as well for my Canon.
My good friend I have a question. Wouldn't it be the same thing at 7:23 when you say we don't have to move backwards to just start with the contrast then exposure then WB ? could you explain a little bit why this order and not just start in the order your working in , what would be the difference and why not and or what would it do to the workflow that detours you from starting from left to right.
It's a common way to work backwards in the Color Correction. For me the primary reason is that if I adjust the Exposure first, then when I add Contrast I start pulling the exposure apart again as that's essentially what contrast is - pulling the darker and brighter areas closer together or further apart. So by adding the contrast first and then adjusting the exposure I find that I have to go back and forth less. If I had done the exposure first, then contrast, I would most likely have to go back to the exposure node and adjust that again - doing double work. For the Color Balance it doesn't matter as much but it does move around the exposure a bit, so keep it downstream makes sense for me, as I then move backwards till I'm happy and then I start with the Grading, where I want to add to what I've done rather than adjusting backwards. That's the main reason why I do it but you can of course play around with going from left to right and see if that workflow suits you better - in the end there's no right or wrong in these cases, it's all about preference and getting to the best possible result in the best/fastest possible way :-)
Great video! Quick question: if someone sends you a video to edit that wasn’t done in this program…Do you cut the video up by each scene to color grade each scene separately?? Thanks work flow tip
It's rare to Color Grade a final video after it's been exported in my experience, usually you'll get the proxy or original files with an XML from Premiere or another software and import both into DaVinci to get the timeline, then grade and export it. If it's the case that you have to grade a video that's been edited already and exported as one, then yes, your best option is probably to chop it up in DaVinci, grade it and then export it again. Just be aware that there might be a quality dip, since you're grading on something that's exported again, if it's compressed to a smaller size already :-)
I got a short film scene I would love to submit to you for color grading if you’re still doing those blindfolded submissions. It has 4k views on the RUclips page Chee$etown Short Film
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, I'm new at this and just by applying what I learned here helped me to make the videos that I hadn't edited in the past looks awesome.
Great tutorial, very helpful! Switching from Première to Davinci Resolve here, loving it already. One question: these nodes were applied to each individual clip. Do you need to redo this for every clip in the timeline? Seems so much work. How do you do this for a big project with tons of clips?
You can easily mark a clip you already graded using the "clips" menu in the color page and use Command + C (Ctrl + C on Windows) making sure you've highlighted the clip directly in the clips section and then higlight all or as many of the other clips as you want and use Command + V (Ctrl + V on Windows) to paste it to those clips. You can also save a grade by creating a still and apply the still to the other clips. The first method I explained is was I do. I'll do the grade on one clip and then apply it to the rest and adjust from there :)
You're not the only one who does this, but why put the rec709 conversion at the end? Is it because the log footage retains the most information and the conversion discards some of it?
Because Rec.709 is a smaller color space, so if you convert it at the beginning and start grading after that you lose out of all the extra information you have available right at the start. Now, if you instead do it at the end, what you're essentially grading, is the LOG footage with a lot more information, meaning the adjustments you make are in more color, saturationa and luminance, which are then being converted into Rec.709. The simplest way I can put it is, grading before the conversion you have more nuance to your say blue colours. Let's say you have 1000 shades (this is not factual) whereas when it's been converted it has 250 shades. So grading in the 1000 shades and then converting it down gives you more flexibility than starting with the 250. I hope that makes sense. I tried to make it simple but I'm not sure if I succeeded! I do have a video talking about Rec.709 and color spaces here on my channel as well
I recorded something on cLog3. I tried to edit the video it was not getting better. I don’t know what went wrong. The image is like orange if I try to color grade it, it gets worst.
I don't, there's no way of seeing that if you don't know which camera it's coming from. The best approach is to try the most common ones first (Sony Log and Canon Log) and see what conversion you like better and then go from there. It doesn't have to be perfect it just needs to get you to a good starting point so you can grade from there if you don't know what camera it was from originally 🙌🏻
The quality of the footage will always depend on the settings initially and how 'hard' you go on the grade. I've had amazing results grading the Mini 2 without losing any quality but you definitely have to go a bit easier on it than you would on drone footage shot in LOG. It's a great drone and you can definitely get some great grades without ruining the footage!
Doesn't get much simpler than this when it comes to effective Node Trees :-) But it all takes practise and Nodes can be confusing in the beginning until you get a good hang of it
@@AlexBjorstorp oh yeah. It’s def def confusing. I’m like beginner beginner. Just starting out. Trying to teach myself how to edit vids so I’ll know how to edit my own videos I wish I could afford an editor cause this all seems so damn difficult. Gotta give it to editors.. y’all rock 🪨
I still don't understand why you have to make so many nodes. In premiere you ma make one or two layers at the most and you're done. It's so much quicker. Especially if you have to do this for every clip
You don’t have to do anything. If you prefer you can put all your adjustments in one node. The reason why it makes sense to split it, however, is that you can disable and enable every individual node to see exactly how your adjustments affected the clip and colours to tweak it individually. When you have graded one clip you can copy the grade to the others for a faster workflow and adjust the exposure individually as required. Where using multiple nodes becomes extra powerful is when you use parallel nodes. That’s when it kicks Premiere completely out of the park in my opinion but that was a but much for a beginner node tree, however you’ll see more of that in other tutorials of mine. If you prefer to put everything in one node you can, but if you have a node tree structure set up it doesn’t take longer to grade because of multiple nodes than it does scrolling up and down lumitri colour in Premiere - at least for me 😊
@@AlexBjorstorp thank you for clarifying. This makes much more sense. Generally I don't desire to make a bunch of layers or nodes. But I didn't know that you could copy and paste this over to the next clip as well. Then making it easier to make adjustments on each node
@@GetHardNGoFast yes, essentially the way you can see nodes is just as a visual representation of your grading. You can make your node trees as you want and even better you can save them in your power grade folder if you do the same things every time. That way you can just double click your saved grade and it'll be applied to your clips in one click whereafter you could adjust the exposure if needed :-)
![[4K] Watch SpaceX Catch A Starship Rocket From Space!!! #IFT5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pIKI7y3DTXk/mqdefault.jpg)
I love this explanation so much! Straight to the point and without having 10+ nodes that make things so difficult when they are not necessary for beginners!
No trash talks, no dramatic transitions.
Pure teaching. Thank you. Subscribed
Cheers! Love to hear that, thanks for the sub!
The best and simplest video that explains the subject... Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Awesome! Happy to hear you think that 🙏🏻 Appreciate you watching!
Thank you Alex, Not sure why the node tree has always been confusing, but this just gave me a push to better understand
me too
Love to hear that! Node Trees can definitely seem confusing in the beginning, I think they are to most people but it is quite simple when you get the gist of it!
I probably went through 10 different tutorial, this video was on point for beginners, thanks for posting
Glad to hear it's helping you out! Thanks for your support!
Very helpful!
Two questions:
1. Since you're starting with contrast, is there a reason you don't put it on the left... so the whole tree is a left to right progression?
2. Is there a way to set up your preferred node tree, with labels, as kind of default, or a way to access it easily... so you aren't having to build it for every new project?
Thanks again. I'm just getting started and this was very helpful.
1. Yes. Adding the exposure and balance on the node before, essentially means that I'm changing it before the contrast kicks in and leaves me even more room to work with by changing the original footage rather than what's happened after the contrast has been applied. You can also work left to right in the color correction but often it leads to more back and forth between the nodes than going this way - in my experience.
2. You can save your node tree by grabbing a still when you're at the point you want to save. Put that still in your PowerGrade folder and you'll be able to use it across all the projects in that database. Simply right-click on the still in your Gallery and click "apply grade" and there you go :-)
like the way of teaching. thank you for the great work.
Appreciate it! Thanks for your kind words
I have a question: I've seen so many color grading videos applying a unique style or look to one clip, but none of them explain how to apply these styles and look to all the clips on the whole video project in order to have a consistent tone. I feel kind of lost there, any help would be awesome!
Im a novest and all i been doing is researching and getting better. I found a simple way to just help me with some basic to get me past just using my regular footage. And mannn this was very detailed. Thank you.
You are welcome! I'm stoked it helped you out, that's exactly why I made this video!
That makes perfect sense thanks for the clarification! I cut the film in FCP so I need to learn how to open an FCP project in Davinci for final color grading. Do you use Davinci cloud feature? Thanks
I'm sure there is a way but I've never used FCP, so unfortunately I don't know. And I haven't used DaVinci Cloud much yet, no :-)
Thanks Alex! I'm really glad that I've found your channel. This was so helpful. I'm surprised you don't have 7,51 x 100 subscribers. Thank you so much for sharing...
Ah thanks so much man! I truly appreciate your comment and nice compliments 🙏🏻 I'll get the with the support from all of you!
Thanks for the video, I'm just starting my color grading journey on Davinchi, this is really helpful.
You are welcome Lily! Glad it helps you out!
*THIS IS A COPY COMMENT BUT I MEAN IT "I probably went through 10 different tutorial, this video was on point for beginners, thanks for postin"*
Appreciate it man!
What about a node for saturation? Obviously you're prefering to use the curves here, but in lieu of that where would you place a saturation node in the node tree?
I’ve played around with saturation in different ways since so my current workflow looks like this (from node 1):
Balance -> Exposure -> Contrast -> Saturation -> Look / Hue Curves -> Conversion
Another excellent tutorial for us noobs. Quick question, when shooting in log profile, do you recommend exposing it to the right? Most RUclipsrs recommend +1.7. What do you recommend?
I do, depending on what LOG profile you shoot in. For S-LOG 3 I always expose around +1.7. However, shooting on my own Canon R6 in C-LOG 3 I expose using Zebras and expose for the skintones with Zebras 55 to get as accurate skintones as possible or Zebras 35 if it's for something else than skin. This brings me the best results. If I didn't have Zebras I would aim at +1.7 as well for my Canon.
My good friend I have a question. Wouldn't it be the same thing at 7:23 when you say we don't have to move backwards to just start with the contrast then exposure then WB ? could you explain a little bit why this order and not just start in the order your working in , what would be the difference and why not and or what would it do to the workflow that detours you from starting from left to right.
It's a common way to work backwards in the Color Correction. For me the primary reason is that if I adjust the Exposure first, then when I add Contrast I start pulling the exposure apart again as that's essentially what contrast is - pulling the darker and brighter areas closer together or further apart. So by adding the contrast first and then adjusting the exposure I find that I have to go back and forth less.
If I had done the exposure first, then contrast, I would most likely have to go back to the exposure node and adjust that again - doing double work. For the Color Balance it doesn't matter as much but it does move around the exposure a bit, so keep it downstream makes sense for me, as I then move backwards till I'm happy and then I start with the Grading, where I want to add to what I've done rather than adjusting backwards.
That's the main reason why I do it but you can of course play around with going from left to right and see if that workflow suits you better - in the end there's no right or wrong in these cases, it's all about preference and getting to the best possible result in the best/fastest possible way :-)
Great video! Quick question: if someone sends you a video to edit that wasn’t done in this program…Do you cut the video up by each scene to color grade each scene separately?? Thanks work flow tip
It's rare to Color Grade a final video after it's been exported in my experience, usually you'll get the proxy or original files with an XML from Premiere or another software and import both into DaVinci to get the timeline, then grade and export it.
If it's the case that you have to grade a video that's been edited already and exported as one, then yes, your best option is probably to chop it up in DaVinci, grade it and then export it again.
Just be aware that there might be a quality dip, since you're grading on something that's exported again, if it's compressed to a smaller size already :-)
I got a short film scene I would love to submit to you for color grading if you’re still doing those blindfolded submissions. It has 4k views on the RUclips page Chee$etown Short Film
Great vid u answered many questions thanks loads
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, I'm new at this and just by applying what I learned here helped me to make the videos that I hadn't edited in the past looks awesome.
Love to hear that! Happy that it helped you!
thank you, really helpful how u are making bridges between photoshop/lightroom, for us adobe kids is so helpful.
I once was an Adobe kid myself, so I think I'm even doing it subconsciously but I'm super stoked to hear it helps! 🙌🏻
WHy Contrast first? Wont it be affected (and need to be readjusted)when you do your White Balance?
love this kind of content
Cheers man! Love to hear that!
good tutorial mate, you saved me
Thanks Alex. I needed this.Keep up the great work ❤
Appreciate it! Glad it helped you out!
Great tutorial, very helpful! Switching from Première to Davinci Resolve here, loving it already. One question: these nodes were applied to each individual clip. Do you need to redo this for every clip in the timeline? Seems so much work. How do you do this for a big project with tons of clips?
You can easily mark a clip you already graded using the "clips" menu in the color page and use Command + C (Ctrl + C on Windows) making sure you've highlighted the clip directly in the clips section and then higlight all or as many of the other clips as you want and use Command + V (Ctrl + V on Windows) to paste it to those clips.
You can also save a grade by creating a still and apply the still to the other clips. The first method I explained is was I do. I'll do the grade on one clip and then apply it to the rest and adjust from there :)
@@AlexBjorstorp many thanks for the reply!
You're not the only one who does this, but why put the rec709 conversion at the end? Is it because the log footage retains the most information and the conversion discards some of it?
Because Rec.709 is a smaller color space, so if you convert it at the beginning and start grading after that you lose out of all the extra information you have available right at the start.
Now, if you instead do it at the end, what you're essentially grading, is the LOG footage with a lot more information, meaning the adjustments you make are in more color, saturationa and luminance, which are then being converted into Rec.709.
The simplest way I can put it is, grading before the conversion you have more nuance to your say blue colours. Let's say you have 1000 shades (this is not factual) whereas when it's been converted it has 250 shades. So grading in the 1000 shades and then converting it down gives you more flexibility than starting with the 250.
I hope that makes sense. I tried to make it simple but I'm not sure if I succeeded! I do have a video talking about Rec.709 and color spaces here on my channel as well
What camera you for that video you’re editing, did you record it in raw?
I recorded something on cLog3. I tried to edit the video it was not getting better. I don’t know what went wrong. The image is like orange if I try to color grade it, it gets worst.
Canon R6, not shot in RAW but in Canon Log 3 😊
@@AlexBjorstorp
Okay, I have R5C.
I love it ❤❤❤
Thank you!
I definitely needed this one ☝
Awesome man! Hope it made sense and helped you out 🙌🏻
Best tutorial ever✨️
Huge words, thanks so much mate! 🙏🏻
thank you !
You're welcome!
Quick question, if you don't know which camera the material was shot with, how do you know which color space to use?
I don't, there's no way of seeing that if you don't know which camera it's coming from. The best approach is to try the most common ones first (Sony Log and Canon Log) and see what conversion you like better and then go from there. It doesn't have to be perfect it just needs to get you to a good starting point so you can grade from there if you don't know what camera it was from originally 🙌🏻
May I know what camera did you use for the first footage, is that Canon R6?
Yes, the first one was from my own Canon R6 😊
good job!! what about the quality of mini 2 footage after the grade?
The quality of the footage will always depend on the settings initially and how 'hard' you go on the grade. I've had amazing results grading the Mini 2 without losing any quality but you definitely have to go a bit easier on it than you would on drone footage shot in LOG. It's a great drone and you can definitely get some great grades without ruining the footage!
@@AlexBjorstorp thank you very much!!
thanks
you are a great Man thanks
Appreciate it man! You're welcome!
Good job, i need this tutorial 👍
Thank you! Glad it helped! Let me know if you got any questions I should cover in other videos! 🙌🏻
Awesome
Glad you liked it! 🙌🏻
cool man
Thank you!
great
Thank you!
Tip: Show your final Color grading in the beginning of the video!
Noted 🙌🏻 Thanks!
def not for beginners.. maybe someday I'll get it.
Doesn't get much simpler than this when it comes to effective Node Trees :-) But it all takes practise and Nodes can be confusing in the beginning until you get a good hang of it
@@AlexBjorstorp oh yeah. It’s def def confusing. I’m like beginner beginner. Just starting out. Trying to teach myself how to edit vids so I’ll know how to edit my own videos I wish I could afford an editor cause this all seems so damn difficult. Gotta give it to editors.. y’all rock 🪨
I still don't understand why you have to make so many nodes. In premiere you ma make one or two layers at the most and you're done. It's so much quicker. Especially if you have to do this for every clip
You don’t have to do anything. If you prefer you can put all your adjustments in one node.
The reason why it makes sense to split it, however, is that you can disable and enable every individual node to see exactly how your adjustments affected the clip and colours to tweak it individually.
When you have graded one clip you can copy the grade to the others for a faster workflow and adjust the exposure individually as required.
Where using multiple nodes becomes extra powerful is when you use parallel nodes. That’s when it kicks Premiere completely out of the park in my opinion but that was a but much for a beginner node tree, however you’ll see more of that in other tutorials of mine.
If you prefer to put everything in one node you can, but if you have a node tree structure set up it doesn’t take longer to grade because of multiple nodes than it does scrolling up and down lumitri colour in Premiere - at least for me 😊
@@AlexBjorstorp thank you for clarifying. This makes much more sense. Generally I don't desire to make a bunch of layers or nodes. But I didn't know that you could copy and paste this over to the next clip as well. Then making it easier to make adjustments on each node
@@GetHardNGoFast yes, essentially the way you can see nodes is just as a visual representation of your grading. You can make your node trees as you want and even better you can save them in your power grade folder if you do the same things every time. That way you can just double click your saved grade and it'll be applied to your clips in one click whereafter you could adjust the exposure if needed :-)