Premiere Pro to Resolve Workflow

Before we export anything, let’s prepare your edit for color grade – apologies for making this basic, and please do call if there are any questions or problems at all:

1. In Premiere, make a copy of the sequence – save it with FOR-COLOR at the end of the project name. Close down any other sequences.
2. Before you do anything else, export a Prores or H264 copy of the entire timeline with audio, add REF at the end of the project name – this will be the file the Resolve assembly is checked against for errors.
3. Make sure that all of your clips are linked to the original camera footage, not proxies. You can do this by selecting all of the master media in your project folder, going to Proxy in the drop down menu, and then Detach Proxies.
4. If you have any clips with complex effects on, supers, stabilization or the like that might not transfer, render them out as Prores HQ clips and put these into the timeline instead – keep your grade or LUTs on these if you have think it best, as anything that we do will affect the whole clip.
5. Remove any color, LUTs, effects and speed ramps (constant speed changes are fine and can stay). Keep your dissolves and wipes as they should be fine. Be certain to break open any nested sequences and remove any adjustment layers. Leave one master audio track as a reference for sync – ideally a stereo mix out.
6. Flatten the project, reduce your timeline to one or two video tracks, put any graphics or animations on a third track, and any text titles on the fourth track. Remove any empty tracks.
7. If you have any titles or graphics that are supered Resolve might read them correctly or it might not – to be sure you can always render just the text or graphic clip out as a Prores 4:4:4:4 file with alpha channel and put this back into the timeline instead.
8. Right-click your scaled footage and click Set to Frame Size, not Scale to Frame Size, so it can translate accurately.

Now you can consolidate the project files – bringing everything we need to one location. You only want to copy the files actually used in the project using Premiere’s Project Management Tool. Keep the reference video file in a separate folder, and any notes, project files and the like in another folder.

1. Check the new sequence you want to export for color grading.
2. Check “Exclude Unused Clips”.
3. Uncheck “Include Audio Conform Files”.
4. Uncheck “Include Preview Files”.
5. Uncheck “Rename Media Files to Match Clip Names”.
6. Check “Collect Files and Copy to New Location”.
7. Choose a destination path – to the drive you are sending to the colorist or to the cloud.
8. Select Okay and let it run.
9. Then open the new consolidated project file and check it is all working fine.
10. Save the project file for this new consolidated version onto the For-Color hard drive.
11. Make a text file with any notes about shots that might need attention – like advanced stabilization, noise reduction, cropping or the like, along with a timecode so they can be found. If you know what cameras were used, please add this information. As an alternative to a note you can use Vimeo Notes or Frame.io to collaborate.
12. Add a note about what delivery media you want, we usually output the master files for you in whatever codec and sizes you need, or we can just export a new XML file and a set of Prores 4:4:4:4 or DNG media files for you to bring back into Premiere and render out yourself.

Now that you’ve prepared your edit, you’re ready to export your file from Premiere Pro.

1. Place IN and OUT marks on your sequence.
2. Go to File > Export > Final Cut Pro XML.
3. Select your location, and that’s it!
4. At the end of the day you should include the XML file and the Premiere Project file for this timeline for us to work from, along with media, notes and the reference video.

Note: If there’s an issue with the export, you will receive a report in a popup window that explains why. When in doubt export an AAF file as well and include both.

That’s all you have to do to prepare and export your Premiere Pro project timeline into Resolve, and everything should be happy – especially if you have made some good notes about anything you have done or problem areas that are in the edit.  We now go ahead and analyze the timeline and check it against the reference video, then start into our part of the work.

Generally we’ll initially color correct the entire project to be “technically correct” and get it all to broadcast technical standards.  The next step is to pick out a few key frames and work on color grading to get a look for each of these that meets your brief – ideally from sample shots that you send over to give us a hint at where you want to go.  Once we have agreed these with you we go ahead and grade the whole project to match these looks and tune each shot to work with the next. We also correct any hiccups that we might find in the edit and make sure that the audio levels are right for outputting.

This is something that we talk about at length before starting – because we can do everything from tidying up a project, making changes where appropriate and doing the master edit, then the grading, or just do the grading and not touch anything else.

Finally we master the whole project to give you a reference and then either turn the project back into individual clip files with a new XML to import into Premiere with them so you can do the final mastering, or we do the final master outputs of the project for you. If you would like to know the next steps in Resolve these sections in red tell part of that story…

Now that we have our files, let’s open them up in DaVinci.

1. Create a new project.
2. Give it the same name as your main Premiere project.
3. Click on the Settings icon in the bottom right corner.
4. Click Image Scaling on the left-hand side (under Master Settings).
5. Go to the section Input Scaling.
6. Choose Center crop with no resizing from the dropdown menu. This will help to keep the right resized footage from Premiere Pro.
7. Click Save.
8. Go to File > Import > Timeline. From here you can import the XML file.
9. In the popup window, make sure to change the name of the DaVinci Resolve timeline.
10. Check the option Automatically set project settings.
11. Check Automatically import source clips into media pool.
12. Check Use sizing information.
13. Click Ok. Now you can see your Premiere timeline in DaVinci Resolve:
14. Import the export reference .mov from Premiere Pro into DaVinci so you can make sure everything is in order.
15. If everything looks good, you can do the color grading. Click the Color tab at the bottom of the program to get started.

Once you’re done, you’re ready to export your files from DaVinci Resolve.

3. Go to the Deliver tab at the bottom of the screen.
4. In Render Settings, scroll to the right and click Premiere XML.
5. Click the Browse button next to Location.
6. Select a location.
7. Click Open.
8. Click the Add to Render Queue button at the bottom of the Render Settings pane.
9. Click the Render All button in the Render Queue.

Again, if you think there may be problems you can also export an AAF version.

If you choose to get individual clips and roundtrip the project back to Premiere Pro this is the last step…

Bringing everything back to Premiere Pro

1. Go back to Premiere Pro.
2. Go to File > Import.
3. Select the XML file to import your color-graded project from DaVinci to Premiere. Keep in mind that when you import any of these, they will bring a lot of new footage to the project bin so be ready to put them in a folder.
4. The new XML opens up a new timeline in your existing project. Save this and then Check the master source files reconnected properly and the sequence runs correctly.
5. If you chose not to have Resolve replace your graphics and audio with the rendered submaster files, you can now add any of these elements back in as a super – line up the project starts and everything will be in sync.
6. Master.

And you’re all done! Get yourself a drink and settle back for a snooze…