How to Become a DaVinci Resolve Project Preset Ninja

UPDATE: In DaVinci Resolve 12 and later, admin and user accounts have been deprecated. The ‘guest default config’ has become the standard user account. Other than this change, the behavior of Project Presets and the workflow in this Insight remains 100% valid to this day.

Part 2: Upgrade Yourself from Preset Guru to Preset NINJA

If you’ve watched Part 1 in this short series on DaVinci Resolve Project Presets then you know more about managing your Presets than 95% of DaVinci Resolve artists. The thing that confuses most people isn’t how to create Presets, it’s how to modify existing Presets! If you are unsure if you know how to modify an existing Preset then you need to watch Part 1, immediately.

If you know how to view and modify a Preset then you can call yourself a Preset Guru. But I’m here to say, you can do better. If you watch this Insight, you will do better . . . we’ll upgrade you from Preset Guru to Preset Ninja. And what’s the first rule of being a Ninja?

The First Rule of Being A Ninja: Know your weaknesses
Well, ‘wear black’ might be Ninja Rule #1. But close behind: Know your weakness. And the weakness of Project Presets? Go ahead, look at the screenshot of the Project Preset panel and tell me, what’s missing?

What’s missing from the screengrab above? We’ve got Delete, Load, Save and Save As…

The Export Preset / Import Preset commands. DOH!

Remember, DaVinci Resolve is database driven. Everything is contained within a database including Users and Projects. Presets? They belong to the User and will get shared with all the Projects the User creates—but they’re isolated from all other Users and Databases. If you create a new database, Presets are recreated from scratch with the settings that an engineer in DaVinci Resolve HQ prefers. Good for him. Sucks for us. He always gets the starting preferences he wants, the rest of us have to keep recreating our preferred working environment.

The one command that makes presets much more useful
I suspect that Team DaVinci Resolve figured out a year or two ago that this was less than ideal. Sometime in DaVinci Resolve 9 / 10, a new command was added to the Project Manager panel:

The Load config to the current project command is super useful. If I’ve completely customized my Preset in one Project, with a single right-click I can copy the currently active Preset into another Project. But the command is poorly designed for two reasons. First, if both Projects are in the same database, then what’s the point? All I have to do save off the current settings as a Preset in Project A, then open Project B and apply that preset. I can kind’a see the point of the Load config to current project command—but only if you don’t know how to use Presets (which, as a Guru you know is tricky to truly understand). Still, a workflow-oriented colorist can see the possibilities with this Load config to current project command but it has an immediately obvious flaw.

The Load config to current project command’s fatal flaw
What if you tried to use the Project Manager window to navigate to another User in a different database and Copy from THAT project? Grasshopper—now you’re thinking.

Except, as you’ll see in the video, it doesn’t work. There is no Load config command inside the Project Manager’s database browser window. The workaround? What if you use the Project Manager to import a project and then use Load config to import its last saved Project Preferences into your current project?

The Workaround That Really Isn’t a Workaround
IF Resolve retains those preferences without overwriting them on Import… then that’s a workflow we can build an entire system around for managing and sharing our own personal preferences. In this Insight, I’ll first show you my preferred method (as a one-man-shop) for saving and importing my Presets. Then I’ll explain how it’s not what I’d call a ‘bulletproof’ workflow. Luckily, Team MixingLight came to my our rescue for a rock-solid solution.

The Team MixingLight Approach to Creating and Reusing Your Presets
It turns out, my preferred workflow is a bit buggy. And I was bitching about this to Robbie Carman and he shared with me his workflow, which IS bulletproof (in the sense it’s never failed on him for over a year). It’s remarkably similar to my workflow but is a little more… mobile, especially if you’re a freelancer—it just requires an extra step of preparation.

Together, I’m going to call these two workflows Team MixingLight’s Project Preset Kata. Practice this Kata and you’ll soon be a DaVinci Resolve Project Preset Ninja!

– patrick

P.S. – This is a long Insight… I repeat the workflow a few times to be sure it’s clear and understandable. You’ll need to allocate 20 minutes for the whole thing.

Comments

Homepage › Forums › How to Become a DaVinci Resolve Project Preset Ninja

• Creator
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• February 16, 2015 at 6:00 am #33652
  
  Patrick Inhofer

  Keymaster

  This is the discussion thread for the Insight: How to Become a DaVinci Resolve Project Preset Ninja

• Creator
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• 
  Greg Greenhaw

  Member

  February 16, 2015 at 10:47 am

  Thanks Patrick, maybe project presets could be stored on your dongle in the future
• 
  Patrick Inhofer

  Guest

  February 16, 2015 at 1:12 pm

  Except the dongles don’t show up as drives. But it would be a good idea. Also consider this: If you’re a freelancer (where’d you’d bring a dongle or want to carry your presets around), you should probably have a drive filled with all sorts of extra goodies like: A variety of film grains from Cinegrain or Gorilla Grain, your favorite assets from Indie Essentials (think: glows, flares, dust, embers), etc. Included on that drive would be your presets.
• 
  Robbie Carman

  Guest

  February 16, 2015 at 1:38 pm

  I’d love to see BMD implement a sync service like Adobe has or at the very least allow sharing via DropBox/Google drive in a automated way. To your point pat I keep all that extra stuff on Dropbox anyway
• 
  Patrick Inhofer

  Guest

  February 16, 2015 at 1:53 pm

  Agree 100%. Although some shops limit internet access of their rigs, so it’s good to keep a copy on a hard drive if you freelance.
• 
  Marc Wielage

  Member

  February 18, 2015 at 7:01 am

  I generally bring along grain samples, flares, lots of plug-ins, Power grades, various leaders, delivery specs, test signals, and a bunch of other stuff on a thumb drive. And the drive is big enough that I can also save exported DRP files of whatever I’m working on, just in case the client’s drive goes south (which has happened on freelance jobs). The “load config to current project” idea is a good one I hadn’t considered, though I do have an empty project created with all the settings I usually use.
• 
  Patrick Inhofer

  Guest

  February 18, 2015 at 10:09 am

  This topic could easily be an Insight: How to be the most valuable Freelancer in town

  Bringing your own elements? Employers LOVE that. When I was freelancing 15 years ago as an Editor this is what I brought with me everywhere:
  http://www.sound-ideas.com/production-elements/producers-toolbox-production-elements.html

  After I pulled some sound effects or drone bed to use in a couple projects, producers would start requesting me because they knew I brought elements with me they wouldn’t get from anyone else. It’s a great way to keep the work rolling in.
• 
  Marc Wielage

  Member

  February 19, 2015 at 2:54 am

  Oh, yeah, I’ve got 2TB of Sound Ideas and Hollywood Edge effects and tracks. Good for temps. But nowadays, the producers usually grab stuff off the net. I agree with the sentiment, though, and clients do value colorists, editors, and mixers who go a step beyond in trying to get the most out of the project.
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