Scene cut detection and dissolves

[Nicolas Hanson]

Sometimes clients only deliver a submaster like a ProRes with dissolves. I run it through the scene cut detection tool inside of DaVinci Resolve but I always struggle a bit when I need to color clips before and after a dissolve. What would be yours approach on that?

[Dylan R. Hopkin]

For dissolves, find the midpoint of the dissolve, add a cut. Then when you get back to Edit, add a dissolve that has the same duration as the pre-rendered dissolve. Fades to / from black, just add fades with the same length inside edit. But fades to / from black tend to get messy if the grade is strong. Sometimes adding a black solid on the track above, and fade that in / out helps.

 

[Joshua Bennett]

Depending on the workflow, one way is to have the client send a cut without any transitions, then send the cut as individual files (with handles) and they add transitions.

An additional option that I occasionally use if the client sends everything baked in is to not add any cuts and instead keyframe the grade around the transition. 

[Bruno Mansi]

This was always a problem in the days of linear tape onlines which went for external grades.

The approach we used was to leave the dissolves as they were in the main programme, but include all the clips that were used in dissolves as separate elements at the end of the tape (with appropriate handles).

The Colourist would grade the show as normal, including the dissolves (the best they could) but would also apply the same grades to the separate elements. Once we had returned to our online suite, we could review the graded dissolves. If it was decided that the grade transitions were visible, we always had the graded elements to rebuild the effect.

This technique was also used where there were composites in the show. It's all so much easier now where you can simply send a multi-layed AAF to a Colourist where you want control over all layers.