5 DaVinci Resolve Adjustment Clip Tips
Compound Clips are a great way to apply a single effect and simplify a sequence of clips, but they're also a pain in the butt because you have to click and step into them when you need to make a quick trim, rearrange them with my favorite swap clips shortcut (command shift command and period - control on a pc), adjust the scale. And you can't quickly see from a broad, birds-eye view what clips have effects applied to them.
So today, I have five killer creative ways that I use Adjustment Clips instead of nested compound clips, and if you stick around until the end, I'll show you how to re-use the adjustment layers to re-use them in any future project.
What's an Adjustment Clip?
Well, I'm so glad you asked. Adjustment clips are an empty shell of a clip used for applying effects, changing inspector parameters like transforms, and applying color grades. Think of them as a clear clip that's super useful because they affect every video clip underneath it on the timeline, including animations across a whole range of clips.
You can rename them, color them, and store them in your media pool project bins. And they're available from the effects library on the edit page inside the toolbox and under effects.
Punch In
Have you ever shot a talking head interview looking directly into the camera in 4k? You can use an adjustment clip to quickly punch in and give the appearance that you've changed to a tighter lens. Often, this is better than using a 2nd camera because your eyes can stay locked into the lens to connect with your audience.
Just grab a fresh adjustment clip from the effects library - toolbox - effects.
Drag it to a layer above your talking head.
Select it.
And open the inspector in the upper right so you can drag to increase the zoom value up higher than one.
Play before the adjustment clip, and you'll see the punch in effect just like you've cut into a tighter lens. This is perfect for grabbing someone's attention quickly.
Let's take this tip to the next level by adding the grid effect to another adjustment clip to keep our eye line at the same vertical position.
Click on your open FX and search the word grid.
The grid effect is a Resolve FX that will help us keep those eyes in the same position after pushing into the shot. It's DaVinci Resolve's version of having alignment guides and is also an excellent tool you can use to rotate and level out the horizon line of your shots.
Drag your row cells count down to 2
and Column cells down to 1
and finally, I move the tilt parameter to the location where I want the eyes to be positioned and set my guide across both clips to match them up.
Tweak the shots till they're perfect, and,
Turn the switch off once you're aligned so the guide won't render in your final export.
Continuous Push
I do a lot of interview-style videos that get visual support with photos as B-roll. A cool way to build some energy or suspense is to push in slowly across multiple photographs in a sequence. Think of this as a Ken Burns push, but moving continuously across your cuts! It's Ken Burns 2.0.
Step one is to matte the photos to the same size using the transform effect.
Then drag a new adjustment clip on a track above to cover the length of the whole segment of photos.
Use the inspector's video transform to set a start keyframe at the first frame.
And then, move the playhead to the end of the adjustment layer and set a new keyframe by increasing the zoom parameter.
Since you already placed an initial keyframe, DaVinci Resolve is smart enough to create the second keyframe automatically. It's doing the math for us to get from keyframe A to B.
Play the timeline down, and you'll have a nice subtle push that continues to carry the push and size from one clip to the next across cuts. (Which are my favorite type of transition), but I know everyone loves a good whip pan transition, so that's what's up next.
Whip Pans
To do a whip pan that looks realistic, we're gonna use the Fusion page. Start by dropping your adjustment clip above and across a cut of two clips on the edit page.
Select the adjustment clip and right-click to "open in Fusion Page."
To create the whip transition on the adjustment clip, tap shift with the spacebar to pull up the tools list.
Type in transform, and we want the newer plain-Jane transform, not the XF transform because the motion blur behaves how we'd like for this specific transition.
Under the advanced options, choose the edge behavior to wrap around. This is like the offset effect if you're coming from Adobe, and it kind of loops around like a skipping frame in an old projector.
Now set three keyframes.
I'll set one 4 frames before the cut and change the position to negative one.
Then move to the cut point and set the keyframe here to negative point five. This is our mid way point.
And then set the last keyframe 4 frames later and set the value to zero.
So we went, negative 1, to negative .5 on the cut, and landing on zero.
Now open the Spline Editor.
Select the position check box
click the zoom to fit button so you can see every keyframe easily.
and smooth the keyframes by dragging the mouse to select them.
and tapping s to smooth them out.
If you want to finesse it, select the keyframe, tap T for transition, and adjust the curve with the ease in and out numbers right here. And, of course, you can click and drag the handles on the middle keyframe to taste.
If you haven't used the spline editor in fusion, this is one of my favorite reasons for learning the fusion page. It's much more controllable than the edit page splines for smoother animations. And lets the animation start slower, get faster, and then slow down, which is how physics moves in real life.
And then, turn on the motion blur with the slider all the way up to one.
And now check that transition out! Pretty sweet!
It's still not as magical to me as a hard cut, but I can get on board with that. And if possible, try to match the direction the camera is moving to help sell the effect a little better.
The Cutdown Trick
This tip is so simple but powerful that you're going to wonder why you've never used it before. I have a background in assisting and cutting 15 and 30-second commercial TV spots, and a critical aspect of cutting what is called a "Lift" for making a 15 is actually cutting it down to exactly 15 seconds.
And a great way to audition out a few different versions of a 15-second spot is to have each of them on the same timeline at once.
So to see a birdseye view on the time constraint, I'll use an adjustment clip that is exactly 15 seconds long on a track above and disable the autoselect control. You could also lock the video track.
Now you can visualize the time you have left to work with without marking an in and out mark every time you make a quick trim.
Color Grade
Perhaps an obvious creative use for an adjustment layer or clip is to color grade. Heck, I've been doing that for years in photoshop! So let's say you have a series of log encoded clips that require the same base color correction to make them look a little more normal.
Just drop your adjustment clip above
Go to the color page
And start doing your tweaks on the adjustment clip
I'll add a color space transform because it's fast and accurate.
And there you go!
A quick side note here is that I rarely use adjustment clips in DaVinci Resolve for color grades because I prefer to have a cleaner timeline. There are remote grades and group functionality that's so powerful, so that's how I like to work. But that's a tutorial for another day, and I know you are used to this workflow from Premiere or Final Cut Pro, so just know it's possible here in Resolve too.
Oh, and a double side note - another great way to convert log encoded footage to rec 709 and start a color grade is using Resolve Color Management, which is an incredible and unique superpower of Resolve.
Power Bin Adjustment Clips
So now that you've learned five unique ways to use adjustment clips, I bet you'd love to save them, right? Maybe use them in your next project?
I do that by simply dragging the adjustment clip from the timeline up to a power bin.
If Power Bins aren't visible in your media pool, then go up under the view menu and check the box for show power bins.
Now anytime you create a new project in the same project library or even open an older project in that same database, you'll have access to that saved adjustment clip for your next masterpiece.
You can also click on the name to give it something with a little more specific meaning, so you'll understand what it does later on.
