The Critical Importance of Project Settings in DaVinci Resolve

Last week, in my on-going effort to learn, I edited my webinar in DaVinci Resolve. While the experience wasn’t “difficult” – aside from the usual “where the heck did they PUT this?” – there was one issue that tripped me up time and again forcing me to reedit my webinar three times.

Project Settings.

Project settings in Resolve are significantly different from either Premiere or Final Cut. They are the technical foundation upon which an entire edit is built. These settings determine how clips are imported, how timelines are constructed, how images are monitored, how color is determined, and far, far more. Since Premiere and Final Cut don’t behave this way, editors moving to Resolve from other platforms – like me – are going to be surprised.

WHAT MAKES PROJECT SETTINGS DIFFERENT

In Premiere, there are no project settings for a standard Premiere project.

However, Premiere does provide Production settings (above). These settings can be changed at any time and don’t directly affect the edit.

In Final Cut, library settings are a simple choice between SDR and HDR (above).

But in Resolve, Project settings are nine SCREENS of deeply technical settings, several of which determine how media is imported and can’t be changed once media is inside a project.

In other words, while Premiere and Final Cut editors don’t need to think about project and timeline settings until after media is imported and timelines are created, in Resolve you need to think about these before you begin a new project.

WHAT PROJECT SETTINGS COVER

There are nine categories of settings that all directly control how media is imported, processed, edited and displayed. By default, these settings create 1080p/24 fps horizontal timelines.

Which, in my case, never matches the media I’m editing.

When you import media, if the frame rate of the imported media doesn’t match the frame rate in Project Settings, this dialog appears.

NOTE: This notice in Resolve emphasizes that you can’t undo this choice.

In almost all cases, you’ll want to change the frame rate to match the media you are editing. Otherwise, Resolve will automatically conform that media to the default frame rate of 24 fps.

My clips, though, are 30 fps. This meant that Resolve was automatically conforming my media to match the timeline by dropping frames from my master clips. Worse, those frames are dropped at import, not when the clip is added to the timeline.

So, after screwing up my first edit, I started over and clicked the “Change Frame Rate” button.

This changed the timeline format to match my clips (lower red arrow), but Resolve DIDN’T change the frame size to match the clip frame size (top red arrow)!

So, I clicked the correct button, but this didn’t make all the changes that needed to be made.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT?

In my case, the first time I edited my webinar, it was edited at the wrong frame rate, with Resolve dropping one frame out of every six. Copying and pasting existing media into a new timeline with the correct frame rate doesn’t help, because the frames were dropped during import.

The second time I edited my webinar, the frame rate was correct, but the frame size was too large. All my clips were enlarged and blurry. (My webinars are 1600 x 900 to reduce download file size and improve the readability of onscreen menus.)

I couldn’t find a way to adjust this using Project Settings because, since there was already media imported and in a timeline changes were  not allowed.

So, the third time I edited my webinar, I made sure to change project settings for both frame size and frame rate BEFORE importing any media.

After that, there wasn’t any problem – aside from my general learning curve.

WHAT DO PROJECT SETTINGS CONTROL

There are several hundred technical settings controlled by this panel. So, just to give you a flavor, here are three of them – all part of the Master Settings section.

For details on what these do, please refer to the DaVinci Resolve manual.

Note the default settings of 1920 x 1080 at 24 fps (red arrows).

(Click to see larger image.)

(Click to see larger image.)

SUMMARY

As one reader pointed out, DaVinci Resolve was created for professional editors who need to adjust their timelines and media to meet deeply technical specifications. I have no objection to that.

The purpose of this article is simply to alert editors moving from Premiere or Final Cut to Resolve to learn about Project Settings and make SURE they are properly set before importing any media, or they will find themselves re-editing the same material until these settings are correct.