View Vertical Social Media in DaVinci Resolve 19
In Davinci Resolve, the only way to bypass your computer GPU and see a frame-accurate, unaltered color signal out to a calibrated display… is using an external Ultrastudio Monitor. But the cost-effective, popular Ultrastudio 3G is 1080p, and we often work on timelines larger than 1080, especially with vertical social videos.
So, how can we work at a resolution like 1080x1920 for TikTok, Snapchat, IG, or YouTube shorts and still see the full image top to bottom on our displays? Well, it’s as simple as a quick setting in a box you wouldn’t think to use.
Vertical Video Versioning
The first step to creating your 9x16 or 1080x1920 video is to create a timeline at that specific resolution. If you are repurposing from a 16x9 version, I would cut that first and lock it with the client. Then, you duplicate the timeline. Right-click to change the timeline settings and click the box to flop the 1920x1080 resolution to 1080x1920. There is a vertical resolution checkbox for your convenience, so use it to save some extra seconds.
To view the vertical video on an external display that is limited to an HD playback monitor card, like I use the Blackmagic Ultrastudio 3G to a calibrated reference monitor - you will get a cropped off top and bottom of the image because the card can only display 1080 pixels tall. It just can’t show it all.
Timeline Settings - Output
So, the easy fix for this is actually under the timeline settings Output tab. You’d think it's under the monitor tab, but no—you want to use the Output settings in the timeline settings and disable the checkbox to use timeline settings for output scaling. This is the key here.
DISABLE “USE TIMELINE SETTINGS FOR OUTPUT SCALING”
Now, you can choose the output resolution to match your UltraStudio or Decklink card's pixel aspect ratio of 1920x1080. After clicking OK, you should see the full image top to bottom on the trusted Flanders Scientific or calibrated display of your choice.
Render Settings
When it comes time to render, pay attention to the resolution on the video tab of the deliver page in DaVinci Resolve 19. It will default back to the output setting you had modified, which we don’t want. Instead, make sure to check the box to “use vertical resolution” so that you can export a 1080x1920 vertical video for social media platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, or YouTube shorts.
Alternatively, you can revert your timeline settings in the edit page to use timeline settings for output scaling before the final deliver page render. That’s up to you. Either way, it should give you the full pixel quality at the correct native vertical resolution.
DaVinci Resolve Full-Screen Mode
I fully understand you might not have a need or use for a calibrated display for your social media content. If that’s the case, you don’t even need one of these Blackmagic Ultrastudio Monitor devices, and you can use the Full Screen or Presentation mode to watch your video full screen on the main GUI display. And if you have the paid Studio version of Davinci Resolve, you can go full screen using the clean feed option to see the video on a 2nd GUI computer monitor that could be attached.
As always, there are several ways to get the results you need. But for me, being able to watch down or present 9x16 social media videos on a proper display eluded me with the HD monitor devices until I learned about this output timeline setting box. Moving forward, this is my preferred method to QC final deliverables.
