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Color Grading on Mac for free
  • nomadnomad
    From now on Resolve Lite ( the free version of DaVinci Resolve) is not limited to two nodes any more and it works with Avid too.
    Unfortunately Mac only, but a serious grading program for nothing!
  • 29 Replies sorted by
  • danyyyeldanyyyel
    That is super super color grading software for free. This thing use to cost in the tens of thousand two years ago. It is still limited to 1 gpu and HD rez and some other functionality like noise reduction and 3D but the rest is their. So very very powerful tool for grading. The windows version is coming at the start (think January) next year so no problem here. With the windows version you will be able to put more powerful gpu.
  • stefanosstefanos
    Resolve is great. Don't forget Color Finesse 3 though that's free with AE which is incredibly powerful (light years better than stuff like colorista) yet incredibly underrated. I look forward to Resolve for PC to do some juicy comparisons and see which is best.
  • HallvallaHallvalla
    Good news, thanks.

    @stefanos - I'm just starting playing around with Color Finesse 3. Seems pretty good - hard to find tutorials though (more advanced).
  • dkitsovdkitsov
    What Color Finesse is great for are extremely powerful and flexible primary corrections. What it suck at is secondaries and qualifications (granted all of that is done easily enough in the After Effects itself) and the rendering speed. Resolve is unbelievable with it's power windows and qualification controls and the speed of rendering (if you are on a mac made in a last two years at least) is crazy fast!
    One could speculate however that the Color Finesse days are numbered as a part of After Effects distribution, now that Adobe owns Iridas...
  • alcomposeralcomposer
    FCPX comes with colour grading built in- and in typical Apple style is very powerful - but you have to know exactly what you are doing.

    I say this as in Microsoft land there are MILLIONS of users working things out- yet in Mac land- there are not as many- and this leeds to lots of misinformation.

    I am mainly a musician and composer by trade (along with media artist) but I find that Apple Logic is extremely powerful- but only if you know 'exactly' what you are doing. Same with video- for a noob it is very confusing.
  • andresandres
    resolve: I tried it on a 13" macbook pro i5 and didn't work. :(
  • nomadnomad
    No, the minimum is a 15" with 1680 by 1050, the GUI needs the screen 'real estate'. Until yesterday it worked in 1920 by 1080 only. Works on my MBP now.

    But can't you hang a larger screen to your 13" ?

    BTW, I've used CF a lot, but while the quality is great, I've always found the lack of integration very cumbersome. Plus, it's really sloooooow.
    If you change to DaVinci Resolve, it feels like going from a Honda Civic to a Porsche ;-)
  • fatpigfatpig
    ...and in 2012 they'll release it for windoze! :) yay!
  • dkitsovdkitsov
    Actually it worked on 15 inches a few of weeks now. Yesterday's release enabled unlimited nodes.
  • nomadnomad
    And access to the tracker in the "Viewer" – it was not accessible before, just out of reach.
    The tracker in Resolve screams, BTW.
  • bannedindvbannedindv
    Free Davinci Lite basic Setup Tutorial:

  • dkitsovdkitsov
    Access to tracker was available since July release of 8.0
  • nomadnomad
    I was referring to the interface in 1680 by 1050.
  • B3GuyB3Guy
    yes, but I just downloaded it and it is still too big for my 15"MBP screen, with nowhere I can find to set screen res in preferences. Help?
  • MacalincagMacalincag
    @B3Guy

    Close Resolve.
    Type in the Terminal App: defaults write -g AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.85

    This shrinks your monitor's resolution to 85%.

    To revert back to original settings type: defaults write -g AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1

    Of course, if you have an external 1080p monitor or larger, that would would be the better route.
  • nomadnomad
    Not all models of the 15" MBP have the same resolution, you need 1680 by 1050 minimum.

    The scaling trick doesn't work under Lion anymore. And don't expect too much from an MBP anyway, the VRAM is too small and you'd need a serious GPU from NVidia to make real use of Resolve. Check the hardware guide from BM. The software may be free, but the hardware is not…
  • MacalincagMacalincag
    Very true.
  • B3GuyB3Guy
    ok, gotcha. thanks. yes, I am running Lion, that'd be why. I do have an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB . . .
  • kazuokazuo
    @bannedindv

    Thanks for the short tutorial - you the man! Got to learn in 10 min how to work a great great software!
  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn
    Is a 17" late 2011 MBP powerful enough to run Resolve well?
  • dkitsovdkitsov
    I had run it on a friends early 2011 17 inches MBP. It seemed to handle 4 (didn't try more than that) correction nodes of Sony xd cam hd footage in real time. Unbelievable!
  • shianshian
    @Douglashorn You need a CUDA enabled Nvidia card to run it. It runs on my 2007 MBP, just not very well..it's slow and buggy.
  • driftwooddriftwood
    Just build yourself a hackintosh (bigger, better, cheaper than a Mac) CUDA works even on old GTX285/290 with the right kext ;-)
  • kazuokazuo
    Yeah thank God I bought my Mac Pro when it was still Cuda enabled. I can't run the PC version cos i use Radeon, and the irony is my radeon is tons faster
  • nomadnomad
    Resolve works on Macs with a Radeon, but much slower. The GTX285 is still a great option, if you can grab one for a good price – very fast!
    If you want more than one CUDA card for speed, a Hackintosh (aka Frankenmac) is a great option, but needs quite some care. There's a good thread over here:
    http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?54430-DAVINCI-RESOLVE-and-***HACKINTOSH***
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