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So long as remote versions are enabled, there are other ways that linked clip relationships are formed. If, after conforming an AAF, XML, or EDL, you used the Split Clips button in the Color page to split one conformed clip into many, each of the clips you split would be linked, since they too would share the same source media in the Media Pool.
NOTE: Media management or media consolidation operations that split large source media files into many individual media files will defeat automatic linking within the same timeline, since each clip will be conformed to its own individual media file.
NOTE: Media management or media consolidation operations that split large source media files into many individual media files will defeat automatic linking within the same timeline, since each clip will be conformed to its own individual media file.
NOTE: Media management or media consolidation operations that split large source media files into many individual media files will defeat automatic linking within the same timeline, since each clip will be conformed to its own individual media file.
Finally, automated linking also occurs for clips that appear in multiple timelines that also use remote versions. As a result, the grade you apply to one linked clip is automatically rippled to every other clip it’s linked to.
Starting with Remote Versions, Then Switching to Local Versions
It’s possible to combine the best aspects of remote and local versions into a single workflow, taking advantage of your ability to freely switch from one to the other. Since remote versions make it easy to copy grades among clips that are similar, you can switch to using remote versions first, and then grade your way through the Timeline until you get to the point where you need to start making much more specific changes to individual clips. Then, it’s easy to either switch each linked clip that needs individual adjustment to use a local version, or to use the Copy Remote Grades To Local command (described later) to copy the current remote version of each and every clip to a local version, at which point you can make all the specific tweaks you need to without worrying about changes being accidentally copied.
Starting with Remote Versions, Then Switching to Local Versions
It’s possible to combine the best aspects of remote and local versions into a single workflow, taking advantage of your ability to freely switch from one to the other. Since remote versions make it easy to copy grades among clips that are similar, you can switch to using remote versions first, and then grade your way through the Timeline until you get to the point where you need to start making much more specific changes to individual clips. Then, it’s easy to either switch each linked clip that needs individual adjustment to use a local version, or to use the Copy Remote Grades To Local command (described later) to copy the current remote version of each and every clip to a local version, at which point you can make all the specific tweaks you need to without worrying about changes being accidentally copied.
Starting with Remote Versions, Then Switching to Local Versions
It’s possible to combine the best aspects of remote and local versions into a single workflow, taking advantage of your ability to freely switch from one to the other. Since remote versions make it easy to copy grades among clips that are similar, you can switch to using remote versions first, and then grade your way through the Timeline until you get to the point where you need to start making much more specific changes to individual clips. Then, it’s easy to either switch each linked clip that needs individual adjustment to use a local version, or to use the Copy Remote Grades To Local command (described later) to copy the current remote version of each and every clip to a local version, at which point you can make all the specific tweaks you need to without worrying about changes being accidentally copied.
Creating a Master Timeline
DaVinci Resolve version 9 and earlier would automatically create a Master Timeline whenever you added clips to the Media Pool. This changed in versions 10 and later, which by default have no Master Timeline. However, if you want to create a Master Timeline in order to use it as you would have before, this is easy to do.
If you want a Master Timeline to have a single timeline that always contains all clips currently in the Media Pool, there’s a way you can create one. However, you need to do it immediately upon creating a new project, before adding any media to the Media Pool. Once you’ve added one or more clips to the Media Pool, the option you need to do so will be disabled.
1 Create a new project, open the General Options panel of the Project Settings, and turn on the “Automatically match master timeline with media pool” checkbox in the Color section. If you also want all clips to use Remote versions as you grade by default as in previous versions of DaVinci Resolve, you can turn off the “Use local version for new clips in timeline” checkbox.
2 Click Save.
3 Open the Edit page, and choose File > New Timeline (Command-N).
4 When the New Timeline Properties window appears, turn the Empty Timeline checkbox off, and click Create New Timeline.
Now, in addition to the new Timeline, a Master Timeline appears in the Timeline list.
Once created, the Master Timeline contains every clip in the Media Pool of the current project. If you color correct the clips in the Master Timeline, you’ll find there’s only one set of versions available, found underneath the Local submenu of the Color Page timeline’s contextual menu. It’s important to understand that local versions within the Master Timeline are in fact the remote versions found in every other timeline of that project.
In fact, it would be fair to say that the remote versions found in other timelines are actually the Master Timeline’s versions. When you grade a clip in the Master Timeline, those grades ripple out to every other instance of that clip, in every other timeline within that project, via remote versions.
Sharing of remote versions among the Master Timeline and newly conformed timelines is why you can grade a collection of clips that you import into DaVinci Resolve without any editorial structure, grade and output offline media, and then reimport a project file that relinks to the original clips along with their grades. It’s also why you can grade clips in one timeline, and then import additional re-edited timelines via AAF, XML, or EDL, which automatically inherit all remote versions of grades that were created in previous timelines.
Differentiating Clips with Individual Versions
If you’ve enabled DaVinci Resolve to add clips with remote versions, there are times when you may want to suspend automatic linking. As convenient as automatic grade rippling among linked remote versions is, there are many instances where you may need to stop it. For example, if the Media Pool contains a source media file with the entire content of an interview, then every clip that has been conformed to that source media will be linked, which is ordinarily good since you’d expect they’d all share the same grade. However, if the DP fiddled with the exposure of the camera in the middle of the interview, such that some clips are lighter and others are darker, you may find yourself needing to make different adjustments to clips from different parts of the interview.
One way of doing this, which can be useful in timelines where you only need to make a few of these kinds of changes, is to create a new remote version for every clip to which you need to make an individual adjustment. Since each version is its own grade, and differently named versions don’t link to one another, this is a simple solution.
1 Move the playhead to the clip you need to alter individually.
2 Do one of the following:
— Choose Color > Grade Version > Add (Command-Y).
— Right-click the thumbnail in the Timeline, and choose Remote Versions > Create New Version.
— Using the DaVinci control panel, press ADD VERSION on the T-bar panel.
3 Grade the new version that’s appeared.
While this method works well, keep in mind that multiple linked clips using the same version number will always be linked with one another. In other words, suppose Clip 1, Clip 3, and Clip 5 are linked using the default Version 1, which has a strong blue grade applied.
Three clips automatically linked, sharing a blue grade
Then, you set Clip 3 to use Version 2 with a different grade, tinted red. Clip 3 is now unlinked from Clips 1 and 5.
Setting the second of the three clips to use another version with a different remote grade sets it apart
However, switching Clip 5 to also use the red-tinted Version 2 means that Clip 3 and Clip 5 are now linked together, but Clip 1 is no longer linked.
Setting the third of these clips to share the same remote version as the second clip now links those two together, omitting the first clip
Every new remote version you create, and every change you make, becomes available to all other clips in all other timelines that comes from the same source Media Pool clip as the shot you’re working on. However, any clip can use any version, and which version is used by a linked clip is not rippled.
For example, Timeline 1 contains a clip named Max CU, which has three remote versions. Timeline 5 also contains Max CU, which is currently set to use Version 2. If you open Timeline 1 and add one more remote version to Max CU, that new version will also be available to Max CU in Timeline 5, but it will still be set to use Version 2.
Switching Clips Between Local and Remote Versions
You can also suspend remote version grade linking by switching individual clips to use local versions.
This makes it easy to create a situation where some clips are linked, and other clips are not. Keep in mind that each clip has both local and remote versions, so you can switch from one to the other without losing anything.
— Right-click a clip thumbnail, choose the submenu of the corresponding remote version you want to copy, and choose Copy to Local. The remote version is copied to a local version, which now appears as the current version that’s used.
You can also set every clip in the entire timeline to use local versions. If you switch an entire timeline to local versions, then no clip in that timeline will be linked to any other unless you create a group (covered later in this chapter). This is the default state, but it’s useful even when you’ve switched to using remote versions when you want to grade one timeline differently from the others in a project, for example when doing a trim pass for another video or stereo 3D format, or when grading another cut, such as a trailer, that uses the same media but requires a different look.
— Right-click any clip thumbnail, and choose one of the following commands;
— Use Local Grades: Switches all clips to their local versions. If there are already local versions defined for each clip, those will appear. If there are no local versions yet defined, each
clip will be ungraded.
— Copy Remote Grades to Local: Copies the currently assigned remote version of each clip to a local version.
Because Undo is used only for individual clip operations, the Use Local Grades and Copy Remote Grades To Local commands cannot be undone. However, switching a timeline from remote to local versions is not a one-way trip. You can select Use Remote Grades to switch every clip in a timeline back to the remote versions at any time.
— Right-click any clip thumbnail, and choose Use Remote Grades.
Furthermore, you can also copy the local grades you made to be remote grades, for instances where you started grading with local grades, and you want to switch to remote grading using your local grades as a starting point. Be aware that when you do this in a timeline with many clips that share the same source media, the grade of the very last shared clip in the Timeline will be the only remote grade that’s used for those auto-linked clips.
— Right-click any clip thumbnail, and choose Copy Local Grades to Remote.
If you’re switching back and forth between local and remote versions, keep the following rules in mind:
— If you select Use Remote Grades, change your remote grades, and then Copy Remote Grades
To Local on that timeline again, you’ll overwrite all of your previously graded local versions. This is a good workflow if you don’t like what you’ve done with your local versions, and you want to start over by recopying the remote versions.
— If you select Use Remote Grades, change your remote grades, and then select Use Local Grades, you’ll return to your previously graded local versions, as they were before you selected Use Remote Grades. This is a good workflow if you just want to switch back to your remote versions in order to copy the remote versions of specific clips to local versions.