On the occasion of the movement restrictions due to Covid-19, I am launching another On-Line Course, live, on Color Grading with DaVinci Resolve.
These are not video tutorials, but real online courses, live, and with participation and interaction between students and teacher (using the Zoom platform). The courses are in Spanish.
These courses have a special cost of only 95 Euros, instead of the usual price of 195 Euros.
The next course, lasting 20 hours, will be held on two consecutive weekends: Saturday May 30 and Sunday May 31, Saturday June 6 and Sunday June 7, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
To consult all the information, the operation, and the reservation of places, click on the link:
Color Grading/Grading Course, May 30 and 31, June 6 and 7.
You can read comments/reviews about my courses here .
Today I want to talk to you about the first steps we have to take when creating a project in DaVinci Resolve.
Some of the things that I am going to recommend in these articles are not activated by default in DaVinci Resolve, and they are very important (for example, auto-save).
If you are learning the program on your own, there are other things you may not be aware of. For example, some of my students come to the course knowing how to create projects, but they don't know that projects are actually stored in a database in a certain location.
So, to jump the gun, here's my getting started guide for getting started with DaVinci Resolve 15.
If it is useful to you, I would appreciate it if you shared it.
FIRST STEPS WITH DAVINCI RESOLVE
In my face-to-face DaVinci Resolve courses I always say, right out of the box, that the first two hours are really boring.
It's a joke, of course, but it is true that there are a number of areas that we have to configure before we start working. Something not very exciting, and yet crucial, if we do not want to have problems in the future.
PROJECT MANAGER
The first thing we find when we open DaVinci Resolve is the Project Manager, or Project Manager.
It looks like this:
In this window you can see DaVinci Resolve projects, and folders that contain projects.
At the bottom you can see the button to create a new project: New Project.
It seems that we can now click there and create a project. But no! Patience!
These projects, where are they really being saved?
In other programs, like Premiere Pro, when we create a project, we give it a name, and we choose a location to save it, in some folder on our system.
DaVinci Resolve's approach is different.
DAVINCI RESOLVE DATABASES
In this program, the projects (and something else) are stored in what we call a database (DaVinci Resolve Database), and it is this database that does have a specific location, which we must know.
Everything we do, all the projects we create, are stored in the database.
Let's go step by step.
DaVinci Resolve has by default a database already created. To access the databases, click on the icon indicated by the red arrow:
Now you see on the left side of the Project Manager, the databases that are in my team.
I have a few, and the one marked is the one I have active at the moment:
In your case, if you have not done this before, you will see a single database.
This is the default database. To know its location, you can right-click on it, and click on “Open File Location”.
You will see that the database is located in a system folder, on the main drive of your computer.
From here, and to simplify, you could have just this database, and start creating projects in it. When creating those projects, you no longer have to worry about where to save them. Everything is stored within that database.
What if one day you have to take a project to another team, or pass a copy to a collaborator?
All this will be possible, of course. From a database we can select a project to "export" it, and in any other database, for example on another computer, we can "import" the project, loading it in that other database, and thus be able to work with it . It seems complicated, but it is not, and I will write another article about it in the future.
All this that I have just described is what I recommend to start with.
Now you know that your DaVinci Resolve has a database, and when you create projects they are stored in it.
That said: it is possible to create other databases.
For example: instead of working with the default database, we could create our own database, in a location that interests us. For example, on an external drive. This would allow us to easily go with that disk from one computer to another, taking with us the database, and all the projects that we have created in it.
HOW TO CREATE A DAVINCI RESOLVE DATABASE?
To add a database to the system, click on the button at the bottom “New Database”:
Next:
- Click on the Create option.
- We make sure we have the Disk option activated. That creates the database in a folder on a disk. More on the other type of databases, PostgreSQL, in the future.
- We give a name to the database. Capital letters and spaces are not allowed.
- We choose a folder on a disk to create the database. You cannot choose the root of a disk. You need to create a folder, and choose a folder.
- We click on Create.
This generates a new database, which you will see in the list of databases.
When you have more than one database in the list, you have to choose one to load and work with, simply by double clicking on it.
It is important to understand that when you are in a certain database, you cannot see the projects that you have created in the other databases.
The active database is now "monday". With this database active, I can't see the other projects I had created in the other database, “resolve_projects_database”.
Because all of this?
If you work for several clients, you could, for example, create a different database for each client, within which you would create the different projects for each of them. In this way, no client will accidentally see projects or material from other clients.
In my system, for example, I use at least two different databases: one for my courses, and one for my personal projects. Thus, when I am creating projects in one of my courses, I make sure that my personal projects are protected, as they are not accessible from the database of my courses.
On the other hand, a single database with hundreds and hundreds of projects in it is never a good idea. Better to work in smaller units.
Once we select a database to work with, we can go to the right side of the Project Manager, and with the lower buttons, create a project, New Project, or a folder, New Folder.
If you decide to work with the default DaVinci Resolve database, then you could create folders, one for each client, and within each one create the corresponding projects.
To create a project, click on New Project, and name it.
This creates the project and brings us to the DaVinci Resolve interface:
To return to the Project Manager, for example to create another project, or to change the database, click on the button at the bottom right:
DISPLAY OPTIONS IN THE PROJECT MANAGER
The Project has two forms of visualization: icons, and list.
Icon mode is the default mode:
We can activate the list mode, which also offers us columns with useful information, such as the date of creation:
SUMMARIZING
To start with, you can work with the default DaVinci Resolve database, and create projects in it. In this way, all the projects you create will be saved in said database.
If in the future you need to move a project from one computer to another, it can be done in several ways. I will write an article about this soon.
When you have more experience, you can also create your own databases, in the locations and disks that you need.
For now, you have enough to start tinkering!
If you have any questions, write a comment. I'll be happy to throw a cable.
DAVINCI RESOLVE FACE-TO-FACE COURSES
If you are interested in attending any of my DaVinci Resolve, Editing or Color Grading courses , you can check the next dates and register here .
And if you have any questions, write a comment below.
IN NEXT ARTICLES
- How to move an entire database from one computer to another.
- How to transfer a project from one database to another, on the same computer or on another computer.
- How to disable a database.
- How to re-activate a database.
- How to create a backup of a database.
- Configuring the properties of a DaVinci Resolve project (settings).
- Setting DaVinci Resolve preferences (preferences).
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