If we only had 50% of Resolve options (Colorgrade)

Hey, anyone and everyone feels a bit lost at times. At NAB I get to spend some time with noted awesome people at the craft, and they always have so many things to talk about that are puzzling them ... in any app!

At an SMPTE event class, I was kind of amazed that the teacher kept deferring to me for many of the color management/grading questions, and even some workflow "design" things. As was a team of editors attending, from one of the world's biggest companies. Until one of the three of them pointed out to the others, that "that guy is rNeil off the Adobe forums!" ... and the others went "oh! Wow!" .. and you know something?

Every one of them was a better, more knowledgeable and faster "cutter" of content on a timeline than me. Easily.

But I knew one or two specific things in more detail ... and the instructor talked with me afterwards that as he goes around the world teaching, it's been very clear that everyone works in their own little "silo" ... so we all have a lot to learn from anyone else no matter if they're "known" or not. 

Never apologize nor feel bad for what you don't know, just ask away! (And anyone snooty about their knowledge may not actually know that much anyway ... ha.)

Premiere's Lumetri has limitations, but if approached right, is actually quite capable and not all that slow to use. But you have to think it through first.

Creating Lumetri presets for each camera that you 'normally' have on a sequence ... from working with a chip-chart of that camera, and getting it's hue/tonal sensitivity closer to the 'norm' ... is one huge thing to do. Do that once for say the five or six cameras you normally see, and anytime you get one of those, the first thing you do is drop the correct preset for that camera on its clips in the bin.

Creating preset for several different but common things you do is another time-saver. Then when needed, just drag/drop them on a clip in the sequence. Or group of clips in a sequence.

Do "bulk" operations to numerous clips whenever possible. Premiere currently doesn't have an easy copy/paste of grades from/to clips like SpeedGrade used to, and Resolve does now. So select a clip's Lumetri effect/s and copy/paste to other selected groups of clips.

It's that sort of thing that is needed to get the job done quicker.

Thank you for the read!

I always wanna learn new stuff. And for me I have only been using PP and AE for the most part, on my proffesional side is been more on content and SoMe work both editing, graphich, transitions and effects, But I been steadily getting bigger projects like music videos, few brand commercials etc. So I really wanna learn and focus more on the colorgrade than before. 

And I am often using dynamic links with my effects and composing. And there is many times where I need to make changes on the colorgrade and go back. So I have never exported a full timeline and "chop it up" in Resolve. So for me that is a one man band for all my projects its a big mess going back and forth. And also having a transition or a effects with 2 grade is a big mess.

Thats why I am also asking professional colorgrade artist what PP is "missing" to make it the "number one choice" for everything. Why not create some noise and make Adobe listen.

Because I myself have not found a workflow where I dont mess up dynamic links and colorgrade and transitions etc.

Right now I just feel a bit lost 🙂

I've been a daily user of both Premiere and Resolve for over a decade, color being a definite specialty. I work for/with/teach pro colorists (yes, for pay) in both apps. I work with a lot of well known colorists. I'm certainly not in their league but do understand their workflows.

Some of them, especially in the US and Asia, use Resolve. Many especially in the UK and EU regions, use Baselight. None of them use the freebie Resolve due to the many limitations therein.

Maybe you don't know the history, but Resolve started as a grading-only tool, at around $250,000/seat for a license. When BlackMagic bought it and dumped the massive price and started adding tools outside of grading, they changed the basic function of the app.

It still had good grading options, if not as hot as Baselight, but good enough for most even broadcast/theatrical release for many users.

But what did BlackMagic want with Resolve? Simple. BlackMagic makes their profit on sales of ... hardware. Question that? Why is a Resolve Studio license a "gift" in most any BM kit over around $600? And yes, I've got enough BM kit I've got a few extra licenses in a drawer. Might use 'em someday.

But that's why Resolve has more grading stuff ... a large part of their user base is still specifically and nearly only doing professional grading.

Their additions of editing and sound and graphics 'pages' is ... well, not nearly as complete as either Avid or Premiere for the other video post workflows. It's complete enough for some, not nearly so for others. So depending on your needs, Resolve may work.

However, as someone who's also on the BM forums daily, every major version ... and some of their point updates ... comes with more issues for more users. It's not nearly as 'rock-stable' as it used to be.

I think that comes with trying to be one app across all OS/hardware/media/workflows. That's a freaking hard thing to do without having major issues here and there on something.

And Resolve limits both the UI and all exterior hardware dramatically compared to Premiere. Specifics?

I've got nine custom workspaces in Premiere, everything is where it looks 'right' for me.

In Resolve? Nope, just the Resolve UI, which to me is backside-ugly and just wrong. After a decade, I still have to hunt at times for where they've hidden the blame context menus.

Hardware use?

You cannot use any other display-out breakout device other than a BM one. So if you have an Aja box? Sorry ... have a Decklink also.

And you can only use some outside-made control surfaces, and then, only with the heavily limited, totally locked down control set BM allows you to use.

My Tangent Elements panel, for instance. In Premiere I've mapped Hades out of that thing. Not just color, but audio mixing, graphics/text/image screen sizing rotation and placement ... all sorts of things.

In Resolve, they created the 'map' for it back about R12, and have not updated it since, so there's two main problems. Past that of course, what limited options they allow for it are only working on the color page.

First, most of the tools on that large panel are 'black' ... unused ... at any one time. You can't change that ... and it's never gonna change.

Second, the mapping they created has an internal 'menu' design that is bizarre, and takes a lot of studio to figure out how you get to where the tools that can be available are actually available.

Past that, none of the new tools including all the HDR and color warp/slice things, are mapped to that panel. And from talking with BM staffers, they will never ever under any circumstances give more tools to that panel.

Because, of course, they want you to buy an Edit panel, a Cut panel, a color panel, and a Fairlight panel.

You can't use any BM panel on another 'page' in Resolve. That won't sell panels, will it?

Oh, boy...