Choosing the CORRECT Frame Rate in DaVinci Resolve

hello again in this episode I'm going to be looking at a small but really important part of your D Vinci resolve project settings and that is the timeline frame [Music] rate inin resolve each project has its own settings whenever you create a new project these are set automatically you can view the settings of the current project by choosing project settings from the file menu pressing shift 9 or clicking the Cog button in the lower right corner of the interface either option will open the project settings window okay so there are loads of settings here in lots of different categories but for this episode I'm just going to concentrate on timeline format because this contains a setting that can go horribly wrong if you don't get it right you'll find the timeline format in the master settings of the project settings window there are two basic settings here timeline resolution and timeline frame rate by default your Project's timeline resolution is likely to be set to full HD or 1920 x 1080 with a square pixel aspect ratio this can be changed to various common video resolutions including Ultra HD currently up to 8K and standard definition resolutions which use the same frame size but different pixel aspect ratios depending if they're 4x3 or 16x9 there are more detailed resolutions below these common formats or you can set the timeline format to a completely custom resolution depending on your needs but when it comes to your timelines frame rates things aren't quite so flexible instead resolve presents you with a series of set frame ratees so what should this value be set to well that depends of course invariably resolves default frame rate is set to 24 frames per second this is unsurprising because 24 frames is generally the frame rate most feature films use and reflect resolves widespread use in the film industry other standard frame rates include 25 frames per second which is commonly used in TV and video production in many countries including the UK Europe Africa China Russia Asia Australia New Zealand basically if you're in a country that enjoys playing Cricket then you're probably working at 25 frames per second and if you're in North and South America or Japan then 30 frames per second is the frame rate predominantly used in your TV and video production industries or $ 2997 if you're working drop frame which is a subject for another time there are other frame rates though that provide flexibility when working with different sorts of projects for instance I've used 16 frames per second when editing footage scanned from standard 8 mm cine films and 18 frames per second when using Super 8 cine film of course higher frame rates can also be used typically these are multiples of the standard frame rates 48 50 59.94 and 60 frames per second this is currently where the free version tops out but you can go all the way up to 120 frames per second in the studio version now although places like YouTube support 60 frames per second video you're best using this setting if you need to preserve the smooth movement of your video and ideally your footage needs to be recorded or shot at that frame rate as well so if I was doing a project let's say for a video games company and the content had been recorded at 60 frames per second then I might choose that for my project setting and this is the important bit it's all about the destination where are you going to deliver that video to because if you get it wrong then it's not so easy to put right in this project for example there is already a timeline now if I look at the project settings you'll see that the timeline frame rate is grayed out and I can no longer change it if it had been set wrong and imagine how embarrassing that would have been I've seen this so many times over the years to know that it's a common problem that's so easily avoided so trust me take a moment check your project because it can save so much hassle later on if you find yourself often working with a set of project settings that aren't resolved default or you need to work on many projects with different settings then click the options menu where you can save your project settings as a preset that's easily loaded into any new project or can be set as a default for all new projects created for the current project Library you can also export project presets which can then be imported for use in other projects in other libraries or on other resolve systems there is one feature though that can be quite helpful although it also gives you a full sense of security and that's when you import your first clip I'll leave the frame rate for this project set to 24 frames per second for now and in the media page I'll use the media storage browser to navigate to a folder where I've got a few example Clips as you can see these clips in this folder have a frame rate of 25 frames per second whereas the Clips in this folder have a frame rate of 50 frames per second so it's likely that this footage was intended to be edited at 25 frames per second recording footage at a higher frame rate than you intend to edit at is actually quite a common technique these days because it allows you to slow the footage down for nice smooth slow motion shots however if you are thinking of doing this then I always advise people to try and shoot at multiples of the standard frame rate that you're working at and also remember the more video frames the Lar the files that you're going to be creating okay back to these clips let me grab these guys and import them directly into my project now as you can see resolve asks if I should change the project frame rate notice that this dialogue is specifically referring to frame rate not resolution and has a warning that it cannot be undone Well it can't be undone by by pressing command Zed but I can still change the setting provided I haven't created a timeline so I'll just go ahead and click change and the clips are imported however if I open the project settings again you'll see that the timeline frame rate has actually been changed to 50 totally inappropriate for this project I'm sure you can see how confusing this could be thankfully that warning only appears for the first clip that you import into your project subsequent Clips are just imported directly however I'll just take this opportunity to switch the frame rate for the project back to 25 so now we come to the reason why this is so important and to show you that I'll need a timeline to create a timeline you'll need to be in either the cut edit or Fair light Pages I'll just hop over to the edit page for this but no matter which of the pages you're on the process for creating a new timeline is pretty much the same you can choose new timeline from the file menu use the keyboard shortcut Command orrn right click in the media pool and choose timelines create new timeline choosing any of these options opens the new timeline dialogue this window lets you adjust some common settings for the new timeline such as the starting time code the name and how many tracks it initially has but notice this important check box use project settings I'll just leave all these options alone for the moment and click create in list view in the media pool I can see that this timeline has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a frame rate of 25 frames per second all as per the project settings so now I can edit my footage with confidence knowing the 25 frames per second footage will play happily in this time timeline as they are both the same frame rate the 50 frames per second footage will also play fine but will only play every other frame of the original file unless I slow the footage down in the timeline this also applies if you create your timeline in a number of other ways as well such as dragging and dropping a clip into an empty timeline window to show you I'll close this open timeline so my timeline window is now empty and I'll drag this clip directly into that empty timeline window this automatically creates a new timeline in the selected bin and as you can see it's also a 1920 x 1080 timeline at 25 frames per second even though the clip I just used to create it was 50 frames per second now this is very different to how something like Final Cut Pro or Premier Pro operate where you can actually set the timeline based on the first clip that you add now resolve simply doesn't work like that instead the project settings are used when creating any new timelines by default this has several advantages to demonstrate this I'll reopen the project settings to make a change obviously we can't change the frame rate of these timelines as I mentioned once you've got a timeline in your project you won't be able to change this at the project level so instead let me change the resolution to 384 40 by 2160 or UHD and click save nothing appears to have changed however if I check out my timelines in the media pool you can see that they are now both UHD not HD visually nothing appears different because resolve automatically conforms the footage to fit the new timeline resolution this means that you can work with confid stents however you may need to create a timeline with its own custom settings in which case you'll need to override the project settings at the individual timeline level in My Demo project I'll press command n to create a new timeline but this time I'll uncheck the use project settings option I've now made this timeline independent from the main project settings and I can see the other options I can now adjust for this and only this timeline including the format the resolution and frame rate the monitoring and output options as well as the color management when I create this new timeline you'll see an icon next to it in the media pool indicating that it has its own custom settings and if I reopen the project settings you'll see a warning telling me that changes here won't affect the currently selected timel line so now if I do need to change the settings for this particular timeline I'll need to rightclick it and choose timeline settings where I'll be able to change any of the settings except the frame rate if there are any clips that have been edited into this timeline in the meantime or I can revert the settings for this timeline back to those of the project oh [Music]

Channel: Chris Roberts Video Production & Training

Views: 4,212

Keywords: DaVinci Resolve, Editing

Id: 8Yu5a7oFHpE

Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2024