Fix Washed Out Text+ Color Managed Titles in DaVinci Resolve 17
Use "Render in Place" to fix any washed out and dull colors from a Fusion title including text+ when using a Color Managed workflow like DaVinci YRGB Wide Gamut in Resolve 17. Also, check out some of the super slick new plugins for DaVinci resolve from MotionVFX in today's tutorial!
Render in Place
Render in Place helps get you real-time playback in your timeline with any clips that have intensive effects.
After you right-click and choose to render in place, Resolve swaps the original clip with the rendered file.
Two ways this method beats using the good ‘ole render cache are:
You can trim and move clips without needing to re-cache, so no more red bars at the top of your timeline.
You can use it in any other project or timeline because it’s just a new video clip
Render in Place files still have the flexibility to revert to the original clip to make changes using “decompose to original”
And you can pick your storage location and media pool bins for each iteration of the graphic. Just select the bin you want it to end up in before performing “render in place.”
Resolve keeps every version you render, which is great when clients decide they’d rather use the version you sent over two weeks ago. I’m not saying any names here, but this might have just happened to me on a recent project. Haha.
Now, If you’re unsure about working with a DaVinci YRGB color-managed workflow, there’s an easy-to-follow tutorial linked on screen, which is perfect for beginners to pros.
The Problem
You can see my project is using DaVinci Wide Gamut, which normalizes my Blackmagic raw clips, so they look nice auto-magically, without using a LUT, but if I drag fusion title, like text plus, above a clip, the white title becomes grey.
You might think the solution is to right-click and bypass color management for the fusion title, but unfortunately, that doesn’t work. Maybe that’s how it’ll work in version 18, but here’s how to currently fix the problem.
The Solution
Open your project settings in the lower right corner, or use the keyboard shortcut - Shift F9.
Go to Color Management and change the Color Science from DaVinci YRGB Color Managed back to the default of DaVinci YRGB and hit option on a Mac, alt on a PC, and save. Using option is a little tip that lets you keep the project settings open and make more changes.
Also, make sure you set your time resolution to whatever your final output needs are. For instance, if you are editing at 1920 by 1080 for better editing performance, but want to deliver in 4K, change this to 3840 by 2160 and save the new settings.
The render will end up being the size of your current timeline settings.
Rendering in place is simple.
First, select the bin where you want your clips to end up.
Right-click, choose render in place.
I like to choose format set to QuickTime, codec type set to ProRes, and the flavor will be ProRes 4444, which has transparency included. That’s the alpha channel, the clear see-through area channel.
If you’re on a Windows machine, I would choose a 444 DNxHR codec instead.
Now select Render and choose an organized folder location to save the file.
You can even select and render multiple clips at once.
Then revert to your original project settings with Shift 9 to change your timeline back to 1920 by 1080 for easier editing.
And set the color management back to DaVinci YRGB Color Managed with the DaVinci Wide Gamut preset. And save it.
Client Notes? No Problem
It’s easy to make changes. Right-click and choose “decompose to original.”
Open the inspector in the upper right
And here you can customize this fusion graphic from motion VFX with a new photo using dropzones or
Easily change your font size using this excellent precision tip…
Click the field you want to change and use your left and right keyboard arrows to navigate the different digits, and then you can use the up and down keyboard arrows to make small incremental changes which each keypress.
This keyboard arrow tip works across all of Resolve and is really handy.
Then open up project settings again and change the project back out of YRGB color managed, adjust your timeline resolution if needed, and you’re good to go.
