I'm gonna make an assumption chances are if you came across this video you've probably watched
at least a handful of DaVinci Resolve color grading videos am I right me too and one thing
that I've noticed with a lot of those videos is because they're often focusing on a single idea
or concept they also often only take you through the process of grading one or two different shots
and don't get me wrong I have videos like that too because sometimes that's just the best way to get
the information across but in reality we're almost always grading a whole pile of Clips in an entire
sequence scene short film whatever it may be and it's not usually just one shot so in this video
I'm going to give you a color grading shortcut that will not only speed up your whole color
grading process 10 times for most of your projects but it will also give you a bunch of flexibility
in the way that you grade if you know the ins and outs of it so secure the cup and let's learn about
groups all right I'm going to break this down into three sections for you what the groups actually
do in the color grading process when you want to use the groups for grading and then I'll walk you
through how to use the groups with some little tips to make things easier for you first let's
figure out what groups do grouping Clips together in the color grading process allows you to apply
the grading tools and techniques that you have to multiple clips at the same time which also
means that if you decide later in the process that you want to change something in the color grading
process to an entire group of Clips you can make that change once rather than having to change it
on every single clip or copy and paste the change a hundred times but one of the best parts is that
because the way that groups are set up in DaVinci Resolve you still have the ability to make clip
level grading decisions while a clip is inside of a group this works because the group grading
process is split into three Parts Group pre-clip clip and group post clip the group pre-clip nodes
will apply any grading that you do to all of the Clips in the group very first so this is probably
where you would want to do an input color space transform if that's part of your workflow for
example I like to put a color space transform from whatever log image I'm using to DaVinci wide gamut
in this spot the next section is called clip and this is actually only happening on the selected
clip so if you need to make specific clip level exposure changes masks tracking anything like that
this is where you want to make that happen this is super important because this is what allows you to
still have that individual clip control when a clip is inside a group it's also very important
to note that the clip grading is happening after the group pre-clip in the order of operations so
anything that you did in that group pre-clip area is now being fed into this grading area and the
third section is group post clip this also applies any grading to the entire group but it applies it
after the clip grading so anything that you do at the clip level will affect the input of whatever
you do here this is typically where you could apply your main look or your creative Lut as well
as where you may want to apply your final output color space transform so in a nutshell that's what
groups do and what they allow you to do so next we need to know when you would want to use groups
there are a number of times when using groups can save you time and make your life easier
one of those is simply for color management by grouping all the clips from any specific
camera or color profile you can put an input color space transform on the group pre-clip and then you
can put an output color space transform on the group post clip and then do your whole grade in
the clip area if you want and some of you might be saying why don't you just use the timeline option
timeline can be great but it also applies to titles Fusion comps graphics and everything that's
on there so if you do a color space transform on the timeline it literally applies to everything
using groups gives you a little bit more control another time that you might want to use groups is
to group different scenes sequences or types of shots together if you have a project that cuts
back and forth between shots from one location to another one time of day to another then using
groups for each of these different properties can definitely speed things up thirdly you can
use groups for different cameras this kind of goes back to the the color management thing
but if you group different cameras then you can apply whatever camera matching techniques
that you have to the entire group rather than having to individually match clips and lastly
in combination with what I mentioned before you can use groups to more easily apply an overall
look to a group of Clips rather than having to create that look for every individual clip so now
that you know what groups do and when to use them let's take a look at how you can actually do it
this is a project I recently shot if you haven't already seen my complete video breakdown I'll
leave a link in the description where you can check it out for this video I made two different
color grading groups one for each camera that we shot on so let's recreate that the first thing we
need to do to create a clip group is to head to the color page and make sure that our Clips are
visible then we can select Clips a number of ways you can click on a clip and shift-click
another clip to select all the clips between the two or you can click on one and command or
control click another one to select multiple that are out of order or you can use different sorting
features within DaVinci Resolve to show only the clips that you're looking for one of my favorites
is to flag Clips in my media bin and then sort by certain color flag then I just highlight all the
clips that are showing with command or control a once we've got those clips selected that we
want to go in our group we can right click on any of them and choose to add into new group in this
project I flagged all the DJI Ronin 4D footage as blue and all the the Sony fx3 footage as yellow
and if you want a different view of the whole selection process you can also choose lightbox
and then use the filtering tools on the left hand side as well once you've created a group you can
see all the other clips that are in the group with the clip you have selected with the little green
chain link that's next to all of them if you want to add or remove a clip from a group you can right
click it go to groups find the group that you want to choose and hit assign to group or alternatively
remove from group if that's what you're looking to do in the process my next step would be to apply
my input and output color space transform on the group pre-clip and group post clip respectively
you can get to the group pre-clip node by clicking on the down arrow beside the word clip or by
clicking on the dots for each page and just like this was a cooking show I have this already cooked
up to show you the delicious results in this case the input color space transform is going
from either DJI d-log or Sony s-log 3 to DaVinci wide gamut intermediate and then the output color
space transform in the last node of the group post clip is going from DaVinci wide gamut to rec 709a
then in between the two color space transforms everything could technically be considered part of
the overall look in the group pre-clip there's a bit of color balance work a little bit of overall
exposure going on and a reduction of contrast and then in the group post clip there's a lot
of color changes some masking to protect the skin tones and a film look as well so the question is
why did I do some of these in the group pre-clip and some of them in the group post clip and the
honest answer is because that's what I felt called to do at the time I do try my best to
be organized and do things in the quote-unquote proper order but in the end there's usually a
little bit of mess under the hood but as long as the image looks good I'm happy the most important
thing to remember about that though is that the nodes are sequential so anything that you do on
that first one affects everything down the line in the clip level node graph I would do any specific
work needed for that clip that was is different from the rest of the group so usually this just
means touching up individual exposure or adding shapes or masks where needed for that clip but
that's not all that you can do with groups quite yet there's a couple little bonus things if you
want to take it to the next level let's say you dig your groups up and now you've actually decided
you didn't want that group workflow you'd like to keep all the work that you've got but move to an
individual clip workflow now right click on the clip that you want to pull out of the group and
choose collapse group grades you can also hit command or control a to highlight all the clips
and do this all at once resolve will essentially move the group pre-clip clip and group post clip
nodes in the same order that they were before but it'll put them all onto the clip itself
and it will also remove that clip from the group so now you can deal with it individually without
having to start over the other little bonus about groups is that they work across timelines in the
same project so if you have a secondary edit or a new timeline that you want the same grades you
applied in the groups on the first one you can still right click the clips on the new timeline
and add them into the groups that you created from that other timeline then you just have to
make clip level changes just like you did before now I'm interested to know if you can think of
any other ways we're using groups in your color grading would be helpful or speed up your process
if you can think of something make sure to leave a comment down below to share with everyone and
if you found this video helpful make sure to hit the like And subscribe button make sure to check
out this video next I think you'll really like it thank you for watching and I'll see you next time