This article is an absolute guide on How To Export In Davinci Resolve.
At the end of a grade or the edit, we, and this is a surprise to no one, have to export our final video or film from Davinci Resolve and deliver the graded media back to our client.
Overview of Delivery Panel In Davinci Resolve
We do this in the delivery panel, which we accessed by clicking the little rocket icon below. Now, you will get a few crucial things in front of you. We’re going to go through them. First, we have another viewer, obviously, but this lets us see the final graded and edited timeline that we’ve produced.
It will show us all the active nodes on the frame under the playhead. It’s important to note that if we render our projects inactive nodes, they will not be rendered into the final export.
We only get the color adjustment from the active nodes in our Project before we move on to the delivery panel. At the end of the grade, we always watch our Project through at least twice, just like delivering an offline edit.
I used to rush this when I started out and embarrassed myself in front of a feature film client. I’ve never made that mistake again. Next to the left, we have all of our delivery settings. This is where we decide the containers, codecs, and naming conventions to be used.
Up at the top, we have a selection of presets, and we can take a look at those in the next section of this article.
At the bottom, we have our timeline. We can view things in this timeline, but we must return to the edit panel to make any changes. And to the top right, we have our render queue. This shows us the jobs we have queued up and the jobs we have already exported. Now, this is a basic overview of the delivery panel. Let’s discuss this thoroughly.
How To Export In Davinci Resolve
There’s no use in delivering a project if it’s in the wrong codec, resolution, or has the wrong color space entirely.
We’re going to go through the project delivery settings in this section. Now, we’ve finished our color grade, and we’re happy. We need to spit our footage back out. And there are two approaches to doing this.
We can provide a single clip, a bit like our baked master file, and then the client needs to line it up with their final sound mix back in their choice of NLE. Or we can export our graded clip separately, a bit like the rushes we used, to begin with, and then provide an XML.
Our client or we will then use that XML to reconform our graded media back in their NLE and then place the final sound mix under the conformed timeline, and there you go. A project is ready for the online edit.
Exporting Single Project From Davinci Resolve
First, we’ll do our single file delivery. This is most appropriate for short films, corporate videos, and ads meant for the Web. in the settings, We have a few things to take care of first.
First, we will make sure that we have the render single clip option checked. This means that when we export this job, it will produce a single file containing our entire timeline.
Now onto our codec settings. Make sure you have the video tab highlighted in and active if selected. I deliver a QuickTime container for most short-form work and use the DNxHR 444 for the codec.
To me, this strikes the best balance between file size and image quality, and I make this sound like a compromise. But there’s no visible degradation of image quality when you export like this.
If you’re on a Mac, feel free to use the ProRes 4444 codec. I have an old Mac Tower, and I typically transcode my delivery files into ProRes after this step.
But if you’re on Mac, then you can cut the middleman out entirely. To set our codec and format. We use the dropdown menus. The format will allow us to choose things like QuickTime or EXR. I usually choose QuickTime. The Codec option will let us choose the base codec.
Most of the time, on Windows, I use DNxHD or DNxHR. So basically, when you are on a Full HD timeline, DNxHD is the way to go. That’s what HD stands for in “DNxHD .”I typically use DNxHR now anyway as it supports Full HD and all the other higher resolutions.
Now we have the “Type” option, which allows us to choose the correct settings for the codec we’ve chosen. I tend to go DNxHR 444 10-bit.
For this kind of delivery, these codecs are fine. Higher-end projects and more advanced deliverables will require a different kind of export, in some cases a TIFF sequence or, in odd cases, uncompressed RGB or YUV.
You need to talk to your client at the start of the Project and discover what you need to deliver. In doing this, you’ll be handed something called a delivery specification sheet, and then it’s your job to hit that specification.
When you deliver your media, you should have a delivery specification in place at the start of your grade. If not, the director should have a delivery specification at the start of their Project.
It’s very important to know what you have to deliver. I once had a client who wanted an entire feature film on a 200-gigabyte drive in uncompressed RGB, and that didn’t happen. So it’s very, very important to find out what you’re delivering.
So once we’ve got these settings done with, I’m going to move on to Our resolution, which is 1920×1080 by default, and our frame rate is 60 (depends on what you set in your project settings at the start of the color grade or the edit).
If you’re going to use ProRes, make sure that you are at 1920×1080 resolution. Sometimes it does default to 720p.
Advanced Settings In Davinci Resolve
Now we’re going to go on to the advanced settings. And these are important because they can hold the key to several technical issues that might be quite irritating.
First, we have a “pixel aspect ratio,” In most cases, you should be working with square pixels. If you’ve got a CinemaScope project, then you’ve probably set your pixel aspect ratio in the Project Master Settings window by now. But it always helps to be sure.
We then have data and video levels. We have entirely a different article on what settings to choose in Data Levels which I’d recommend is a must-read. The article walks you through every technical aspect and what Data Levels you should choose while exporting from Davinci Resolve.
The next setting we have is “enable flat press .”Now, if you render out with the flat pass enabled, it will render the raw clips and have no grade whatsoever.
It’s very useful when you’re dealing with VFX artists who require specific plates from your timeline or without any color grades on them. That’s the main use I found for it. A client likes to show a before and after wipe to their client. But the application is pretty limited. I typically use it when working on a VFX project.
Now the next three checkboxes are quite important. “Disable edit and input sizing” basically removes all the pans and sizings you have done and puts everything back at its default magnification and position. You may want to do this if you’re delivering 4K files and the client wants to freely change the online edit framing.
In most cases, they’re pretty happy with what they’ve got when they reach picture lock. So this tends to be left off. Please don’t leave it ON by accident, or you’ll get a very angry client asking why they have to redo all their pans and zooms. That’s not nice.
The next is “force sizing to highest quality” this makes sure that when you have done any pans or reframing, it renders out at the best possible quality.
The next check box is very important if we’re working with RED RAW or any RAW footage for that matter; this is “forced debayer to highest quality,” and this makes sure that all of our footage is properly debayered and rendered out at the maximum quality.
The tone mapping sections will be greyed out if you are working on an SDR project.
Visiting the File Tab
OK, so now we’re going to go into the file tab. We prepare our File for export here. The first thing we want to do is choose an exporting location and name your final export. Now, in most simple projects, this very basic naming convention is going to be enough. You can, if you want, also put the date on. That’s a very good way of keeping track of a file. And that’s very important for things like feature films where you’re going to want to keep your deliverables quite rigorously organized.
Once we’ve set all of this going, we’re going to hit “add to Render Queue”, And now in the top right in the render queue; we will have a job that is active but not rendered.
What we need to do is click on that and make sure it has a white border around it that shows us that the job is active. If we hit “Start Render,” or “Render All” when no job is active, nothing will happen.
Then we click on “Start Render,” or “Render All” and we watch as everything renders out.
So this is a good overview of exporting a single project. When you’re finished with the grade in the next section, we’re going to go over how to export multiple timelines at once.
- Also Read- How To Nest In Davinci Resolve (Compound Clips)
- Also Read- Are Rokinon Lenses Worth Buying for Photography (Answered)
- Also Read- 7 Tips For Making The Best Colorist Showreel
Exporting Multiple Projects From Davinci Resolve
This one’s going to be shorter, but we’re going to cover something that’s quite important, setting up multiple jobs to export from Davinci Resolve.
There are a number of reasons why you might need to do this. The two most common are that a single project contains a number of timelines that have been graded are getting delivered, or that you need to provide certain parts of the edit for VFX artists in need of plates to work with.
On longer-form projects, a client might also request to spot-check scenes from a feature film as well. To deliver multiple jobs, You need to set multiple jobs up in the delivery tab of Davinci Resolve.
On a timeline, you can make In (I) and Out (O) points by dragging the playhead to the areas which you want to export individually.
Now, when you render, you can see a little dialogue above the timeline and below the viewer named as “render,” which will have two options,” In/Out Range” and “entire timeline,” Select the “In/Out Range” option and go ahead and name and specify a location where you want it to be exported.
Then you can go ahead and add it to Render Queue; you can add multiple jobs like repeating the steps in the same manner from different sections of the timeline.
If you click “Start Render,” or “Render All” only the jobs with a white box highlighting it will be rendered out so you can either Ctrl+Click or Shift+Cick to select multiple jobs, and then you need to hit the “Start Render,” or “Render All” button, and sure enough, all the jobs you specified will all then render out in succession.
If we have multiple timelines in our edit, all we need to do is go back to the edit panel, navigate to that timeline, and then set the render job up in that timeline, using the delivery panel. Doing that, we can then render multiple jobs from different timelines out like this as well. Now, this covers rendering out multiple jobs from resolve in the most efficient way possible.
Exporting clips from Davinci Resolve is a straightforward way. Rendering multiple jobs can also be used in transcoding footage.
How To Export XML and Individual Clips From Davinci Resolve
In this section, we will learn How To Export XML and Individual Clips from Davinci Resolve. This approach gives our client and the online editor much greater control at the end of the post-production process.
So it’s the preferred way to deliver our projects. The first thing we’re going to do is render all of our graded clips out. But this time, we’re going to check the “individual clips” checkbox in the delivery tab of Davinci Resolve.
Now, resolve only renders out the cuts present on the timeline using their respective in and out points. This is a lot like media managing a project in the final cut or using the project manager in Premiere Pro.
So the first thing we do is set our delivery settings before going ahead and rendering out the Project. Just choose the codec and format you want to deliver in. We’re going to make sure we have a folder.
Now, before you jump ahead and render this out, we’re going to have to take care of the file naming conventions.
If we don’t tell resolve to use unique file names, it’s going to overwrite every clip continually it’s rendered with the next one, and in the end, we’re only going to end up with a single clip, which is obviously no use to us. To avoid that, we check the “use unique file names” checkbox.
This gives a completely unique file name to every single clip that’s rendered out of resolve and makes sure that it doesn’t accidentally overwrite anything that it’s produced.
After that, you can go ahead to add a custom name, and then we can add this to our render queue, and we can hit “Start Render,” or “Render All”.
Now we’ve got our graded clips exported, but no XML to use back in our editing software to conform to the timeline. We need to export an XML.
Don’t forget to save your projects in between randomly so that you don’t have an unexpected crash resulting in doing the same thing again.
We need to go back to the edit panel of Davinci Resolve and then choose File>Export>Timeline, from the menu above to export an XML file. Now, if you’re using Premiere Pro, FCP 7 XML V5 is what you want. If you’re using Final Cut Pro X, FCPXML is what you want.
Give it a name, and then we hit Save; this will now export an XML file, which we can use to reconform in Premiere Pro.
Your client can now go ahead in Premiere Pro or their preferred editing software and import this XML and locate the individual clips in the drive to reconform the timeline and add their final audio mix and post-credits.
I hope this article was Super Helpful. I have tried to roundabout every instance on how to export in Davinci Resolve.
Happy Editing!
