Tags: guitar

DaVinci Resolve + iPhone — Video Master Workflow

Status: A separate track is now documented alongside the QuickTime → iMovie honest-mirror practice workflow in video-audio-workflow-updated.md.

Purpose of this track: This track is for higher-polish session recordings. It captures natural, warm-looking video and clean, controlled audio at 1080p. This is for material you want to look and sound finished, not raw practice-monitoring footage. Since the goal here is a finished product, grading that would work against the practice workflow is appropriate.

Capture chain: The iPhone (using the Blackmagic Camera app) is connected directly to the iPhone via the Apple Lightning-to-USB adapter. This creates a combined ProRes file with audio and video already muxed together. This replaced an earlier OBS + built-in-camera plan after testing revealed a real problem: QuickTime’s built-in-camera recording had unreliable, variable frame rates and a measured 96ms audio/video offset. The iPhone + Blackmagic Camera chain was tested directly against both issues and confirmed to be clean. See the “What Was Tested” section below for details.

Reusability goal: Set up once, duplicate per session, and touch as few controls as possible each time.

1. Capture Setup — iPhone + Blackmagic Camera + Yeti

Physical Chain

• Yeti → Apple Lightning-to-USB adapter → iPhone. Blackmagic Camera app detects the Yeti as its audio input directly — no separate audio recorder, no dual-system sync step.
• Cable run: the Yeti sits at its normal 4–5” amp position; the USB cable needs to reach from there to wherever the iPhone is mounted for a good frame. Confirm this reach works for your actual room layout — a powered USB extension may be needed if the iPhone ends up further from the amp than the Yeti’s cable alone can cover.
• Mount: any stable iPhone tripod mount. Frame the amp + your hands consistently (tape marks on the tripod position, same as your iMovie/OBS-era approach) — this is still what makes “minimal adjustment per session” achievable on the color side later.

Blackmagic Camera App Settings (set once)

What Was Tested (and why this replaced OBS)

This table is worth keeping in the doc rather than deleting once things are running smoothly — it’s the record of why this chain was trusted, useful if something seems off in six months and you’re trying to remember whether a given quirk is expected or new.

One-time setup, not per-session: all of the above. Once Blackmagic Camera’s settings are locked, your only per-session touch should be confirming the Yeti shows as the audio input, then hitting Record.

Getting Footage to Whichever Mac You’re Editing On

Since Neo and Studio are essentially editing tools (the iPhone capture device remains the same regardless of which software you use), the multi-Mac question has shifted from “which camera does each machine use?” to “how does footage transfer from the iPhone to your editing location?”

• Transfer via AirDrop, Photos sync, or Files app import — whichever is fastest for you.
• Land the file in the same Raw_Footage folder location either way (see naming convention below) so the Resolve project template behaves identically regardless of which Mac opened it.
• Keep .drp project files and the PowerGrade album on the shared external SSD (same reasoning as your iMovie library setup) so either machine can pick up an in-progress session without a manual copy step.

2. Folder & Naming Convention

Keep this parallel to your existing convention so the two tracks don’t collide:

/Guitar Video Projects/
  /Raw_Footage/                 ← iPhone/Blackmagic Camera output lands here
    Guitar_Session_[Date]_[Focus].mov
  /Resolve_Projects/           ← .drp project files (or Resolve's own project manager)
  /Delivered/                  ← final 1080p exports
    Guitar_Session_[Date]_[Focus]_Final.mp4

Keep Raw_Footage on your internal drive during editing (same I/O reasoning as your iMovie notes — avoid exFAT/external drive bottlenecks mid-edit), then archive raw files to the external SSD once the project is delivered.

3. DaVinci Resolve — Master Project Template

Build this once as Guitar_Practice_MASTER.drp, then duplicate the project per session (Resolve’s Project Manager → right-click → Duplicate Project) rather than starting fresh each time. This is the direct equivalent of your iMovie “template → duplicate” model.

Project Settings (set once in the master)

Media Pool Structure

01_Raw_Footage      ← drag session .mov here first
02_Audio (if separate)
03_Graded_Stills    ← saved grade stills for reuse

Edit Page — Template Timeline

• One video track, one audio track — resist adding more unless a session genuinely needs a second camera angle or a separate room mic.
• Pre-place a title card (session date/focus) at the head of the timeline as a Fusion Title or Text+ clip you just retype each session — same role as your iMovie title templates.

Color Page — “Natural, Warm” Look (build once, save as PowerGrade)

This is the deliberate stylistic layer that’s appropriate here but not on the practice track — the goal is a pleasant, natural-looking finished video, not diagnostic accuracy.

Because the capture device is now the iPhone regardless of which Mac you edit on, a single grade is the right call here — unlike the earlier built-in-camera plan, there’s no per-machine camera difference to account for anymore. Neo vs. Studio is now purely an editing-machine choice, not a capture-source one.

1. Node 1 — Primary correction (exposure/white balance):
   • Set your black point and white point off a neutral reference in frame if you haveone (a white amp knob or light-colored surface works). If not, correct by eye — skin tones and amp finish are your reference. With the Film picture profile, expect to pull more out of this node than you would from a standard-profile clip — flat footage needs a real contrast/exposure pass before it looks “normal,” let alone warm.
2. Node 2 — Warmth:
   • Color Wheels → Offset: nudge slightly toward orange/yellow (a small push is enough — this should read as “warm room light,” not a sepia filter).
   • Optional: raise Color Boost / Saturation by 3–5% if the source reads flat.
3. Node 3 — Soft contrast:
   • Gentle S-curve on the Curves panel — lift shadows very slightly (keeps it warm, not crushed/moody), light rolloff on highlights to avoid clipping on a bright amp grille or window light.
4. Node 4 (optional) — Vignette:
   • Very subtle, Power Window or built-in vignette tool, low enough that it’s felt more than seen — keeps eye on the hands/amp.

Grab a still (right-click the node graph → Grabs → Grab Still) and save it into a PowerGrade album named Guitar Practice — Warm Natural. If lighting conditions vary meaningfully session to session (different time of day, different room light), that’s still a legitimate reason to build a second grade — but the default assumption is now one grade, one iPhone, one consistent source.

Fairlight Page — Skipped by Design

No Fairlight processing chain in this version of the workflow — no EQ, no noise reduction, no compressor. The Blue Yeti recording goes into the timeline as captured, and the only audio operation in the entire project is the loudness normalization applied at render time (Delivery page, below). This keeps the audio side genuinely minimal: one setting, set once, applied automatically on every render — no per-clip plugin work, no chain to maintain or re-tune per session.

If a specific take has an actual problem (audible clipping, a loud spike, a dropout), handle it as a one-off fix on that clip rather than building it into the reusable template — the template stays clean for the normal case.

Delivery Page — 1080p Export Preset

Save this once as a custom preset named Guitar_Practice_1080p_Delivery:

This is the only audio processing step in the whole project — normalization applied once, at render time, on the Delivery page. Since there’s no Fairlight chain upstream, this setting is doing all the work: it takes the Blue Yeti recording as captured and brings the overall render to −12 LUFS integrated with a −1 dBTP ceiling. Set it once when building the master project; it then applies automatically to every duplicated session without you touching it again.

Worth knowing going in: −12 LUFS integrated is on the loud side for solo acoustic/ electric guitar with real dynamic range (quiet fingerstyle passages next to tremolo swells) — most streaming platforms target closer to −14 to −16 LUFS for music. Since there’s no compressor ahead of the normalizer in this version, hitting −12 LUFS purely through normalization means the normalizer is doing more gain-riding work on its own to get there. Listen to a full render against your baseline Yeti gain-staging (−12 to −6 dB peaks) before treating −12 LUFS as locked in — if quiet passages sound pushed or the dynamic contrast feels flattened, that’s the normalizer working harder than a compressed signal would need it to, not a bug in the setting itself.

4. Per-Session Checklist (the whole point of “minimal adjustment”)

1. Confirm Blackmagic Camera settings are still correct (24fps, Film profile, Yeti selected as audio input, manual gain) → Record.
2. Transfer the finished .mov to whichever Mac you’re editing on, into Raw_Footage.
3. In Resolve: Duplicate Guitar_Practice_MASTER.drp → rename with session date/focus.
4. Drag the new clip into the timeline, retitle the title card.
5. Drag the Warm Natural PowerGrade still onto the clip.
6. Trim in/out points only — no new node work.
7. Render using the saved Guitar_Practice_1080p_Delivery preset — loudness normalization to −12 LUFS / −1 dBTP happens automatically at this step.
8. Move the delivered .mp4 to /Delivered/; archive the raw .mov to external SSD.

If a session’s lighting or amp position genuinely changes, that’s the one legitimate reason to re-touch the color grade — otherwise the drag-a-still step should be the only colour decision you make per session.

5. Where This Sits Relative to Your Other Docs

• Practice monitoring (unprocessed, “honest mirror”): still QuickTime → iMovie, per video-audio-workflow-updated.md. Unchanged.
• Polished session videos (this doc): iPhone (Blackmagic Camera) + Yeti → DaVinci Resolve, new track, used when you specifically want a finished-looking/sounding video rather than a diagnostic one.
• Tone/amp/pedal settings: unaffected either way — this document is about capture and post, not the signal chain. Continue using baseline_settings.md and the patch files for the actual guitar tone regardless of which video pipeline you’re recording into.