Transform Horizontal to Vertical Video and Create Captions in DaVinci Resolve 20

Recently, my social media team asked me to create several vertical videos with captions. Since I can only shoot horizontal video, here’s how I did it using DaVinci Resolve 20.

NOTE: Like Adobe Premiere Pro, Resolve extracts the audio from your project and sends it to the cloud for processing. This may, or may not, be an issue for projects that need absolutely security.

There are two types of captions:

• Those stored in a separate file, called a “sidecar file.”
• Those burned into the video like a title.

Sidecar files can be turned on or off by the viewer. However, the video player needs to support sidecar files. As well, you use sidecar files when you want to support multiple languages; one for each language. The most popular format for social media – and the default setting for Premiere – is SRT, though Premiere supports other options.

The big advantage to burned in titles is that they display exactly the way you designed them and cannot be turned off. These are popular on many videos posted to social media.

Record the video using whatever tools you normally use.

NOTE: In my case, I use a Sony a7II DSLR camera for images, an AKG 520c headset microphone, and capture using Telestream ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow allows me to capture video, audio, and my computer screen in one pass.

I export ProRes 4444 media from ScreenFlow so that the recorded colors precisely match those displayed on my computer screen. (In this case, I’m only using the video, but my export workflow remains the same.)

I import that video into Resolve the same as always and create a new timeline that matches the video (i.e. 1920 x 1080 horizontal ProRes 4444) and edit as normal.

NOTE: You don’t need to use ProRes 4444 – any video format will work. But ProRes 4444 is the most color accurate and integrates imperceptibly with screen shots and other computer graphics. However, it also creates some truly large files.

CONVERT VIDEO FROM HORIZONTAL TO VERTICAL

First, for safely, right-click the Timeline name in the Media Pool and select Duplicate Timeline.

Then, rename the timeline. I find it easy to simply add “(9×16)” at the end.

NOTE: I’m working in the Edit page, just so you know. I prefer it to the Cut page.

Double-click the newly-copied timeline to load it into the Edit Page. Right-click the right-click the Timeline name in the Media Pool and select Timelines > Timeline Settings.

In this dialog, make the following changes:

• First, uncheck Use Project Settings
• Check Use vertical resolution
• Select an appropriate Timeline Resolution
• Click OK

NOTE: The larger the vertical frame size you select, the more likely your video will look blurry as the image is scaled to fit the frame. For best results, if you shoot 1920 x 1080, select 720 x 1280. If you shoot 3840 x 2160, choose 1080 x 1920. Feel free to experiment to see what looks best to you.

The aspect ratio is correct, but the framing is not. Easy to fix.

Select all the video clips in your timeline (shortcut: Cmd + A).

Go to Inspector > Video > Transform, twirl down AI Smart Reframe. Click Reframe.

Resolve quickly analyzes all the selected clips and repositions them for the new aspect ratio.

Similar to Premiere, but not the same as Final Cut, Resolve sets keyframes that change the subject’s horizontal position as it moves around the frame. However, unlike Premiere, these keyframes are easy to find and adjust by placing the playhead on the keyframe you want to adjust then change Transform > Position X. (Final Cut sets one position keyframe per clip.)

NOTE: The entire video frame is still there, which means it is easy to reposition a shot, if needed.

ADD CAPTIONS

While you can create transcripts in Resolve, the user manual recommends creating captions directly to improve transcription quality.

Select Timeline > AI Tools > Create subtitles from audio.

Most of the time, I only need to adjust the number of characters in a line in this dialog.

Resolve initializes the system, transcribes the audio, then adds the captions to the timeline.

View and edit captions in Video Inspector > Caption. Editable text is at the top. All captions are displayed below.

Adjust the timing of each caption using the Roll tool.

To delete a caption, select it and press the Delete key.

EXPORT OR BURN-IN CAPTIONS

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are providing a separate caption file, don’t bother formatting captions. Any formats you apply will be overridden by the viewer. However, if you are burning-in captions, which means they are permanently included in the video, you can format these as much as you want.

To export a sidecar file, select File > Export > Subtitle. In this dialog, select either SRT or VTT, whichever is preferred by your distributor. (If you don’t know, select SRT.)

Captions export blindingly quickly.

To burn-in captions, switch to the Deliver page. If subtitles exist for your timeline, they should default to burning in.

If you don’t want to burn in subtitles, switch back to the Edit page, and disable subtitles in the track header.

SUMMARY

I found that, regardless of which NLE you use, captions will always need editing for both content and line breaks. Which takes patience and time. However, the process of creating and exporting captions is really, REALLY fast!