Original subtitles

All right.

So real talk nodes sound intimidating at first when you're coming from a layer

based editing software.

But once you get an idea of how things work, you start to see

how much more efficient and fun it is to do collaborating in this way

versus the old methods we would use in Premiere and Final Cut.

Now that I understand how to use nodes, there's really no going back for me.

So in this lesson, let's get a better overall understanding

of how nodes work within Da Vinci's Color tab.

So first thing I want to mention is that nodes within the color

tab are very different from nodes within fusion.

Now, Fusion has a set of very specific rules

that you have to follow as to how you composite things within this space.

There's a lot of very specific things that you need to understand in here before

you can actually start to flow and create whatever is in your mind.

Whereas in Da Vinci's

Color tab, the node based workflow in here is a little bit different.

Each node can do a bunch of different things,

so I can apply a bunch of different changes to each individual node.

Now, just because I can do that doesn't mean I will.

But I want to let you guys know right off the bat that the way we work

within nodes in here is pretty different from fusion.

In my opinion, Fusion has a much greater learning curve

because there's more rules that you need to understand

first before you can start building out your node space.

Whereas in the culture tab, it's a lot more straightforward in my opinion.

So this is the node workspace area over here.

Now, for every clip in our timeline, by default we're given one node.

So if we press any of these clips, we can see that there's one node

already in the node graph over here and any changes that we make to our image

in our viewer over here

with any of the tools down here will be recorded to the selected node.

Now, of course we can use any of these tools available

to us down here to make any modifications that we want to our nodes,

but we're also able to apply open effects to our nodes as well.

So with our open effects window open over here, we can go into all of them

and look for things like grain, for example, film, grain,

and we can apply that to our nodes as well and play with the parameters over here

so we can see

if we zoom in that we've added film grain on top of our image.

Film grain is something I usually like to do at the end of my grading process,

but it's good for you guys to know that we have a bunch of very powerful

open effects within this window over here that we can also apply within our node

graph as well.

So nodes are really just like layers of adjustments

that we're making to our image,

except really instead of calling them layers, we're just calling them nodes

and we use these nodes to record the changes that we make to our image.

Now the node will be using

the most is a serial node, which is just like a standard layer.

Nothing fancy.

Just know that the shortcut for

this is option or alt s because it's one you'll be using a lot in the color tab.

Now you can see if I press option s, I've created a new serial node

and I can create as many of these as I want.

I'm going to undo that.

So what's important to

understand is that the node graph is read from left to right.

So over here is the input and this is the output over here.

So this green dot over here to the left represents our input.

That's our raw image with no color changes at all.

It's what we do with the nodes

between the input and output that's going to affect our image.

So we can make a bunch of changes with nodes in between these two,

but it's important to feed it back into the output

so that you can actually output the changes

that you've made back into your timeline.

So if I was to make a change to this node over here,

let's say I made a change like this in my curves over here

and I disconnected it from the output, then nothing would be outputted

back into my timeline.

I need to make sure that the node structure flows from the endpoint

through all my nodes and then to the output point for me

to actually output the changes that I've made within my node graft.

So I'm going to reset this by right clicking and selecting reset node grade.

So one more shortcut I want to show you guys in this lesson

that we're going to be using all the time is Command D, and this basically

allows you to enable or disable any of your nodes in your timeline.

So let me add another node here

and let me make a correction to the first one over here.

So let's just bring the temperature up.

Now. If at any point I wants to disable this node

so I can see how this one is affecting the whole chain of command over here,

I can just hit Command D and we can see that it's grayed out so it's disabled it.

So we're basically bypassing that node.

So now the second node is basically taking the output

of the original media here and not taking the output of this one.

We're basically disregarding or bypassing this node right here.

And of course, if you ever want to turn it back on,

we just select it and hit command again and it brings it back to life.

Now, unlike the node graph with infusion, the node graph within the colored tab

allows you to make as many changes as you want to each node.

So for example,

with this node selected over here, I can make some temperature adjustments.

So let's say I want to warm this image up.

Let's say I want to change the tint as well.

And let's say that I also want to add some contrast with the curves over here.

And then let's say that I also wanted to

add a lot to this as well, just for fun,

just for demonstration purposes, let's add something.

So I've made a bunch of different changes to one node,

so it's good to know that you can do that.

But just because you can do that doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

And in a professional workflow, this is not how you should work.

So the purpose of a node graph is so that you can get a broad

look at all the different changes that you're making to your image.

And if you have a bunch of changes in one node, how am I supposed to know?

Just by looking at the snow graph what is going on within this one node?

So that's why it's important to create separate

nodes for separate changes that you're making to your image.

So in this case, if I wanted to make all three

of those changes, what I could do is reset this node.

So what I could do in this first node is make my temperature adjustment

so I can go to my primaries over here, make things warmer,

and then once I like that, I can hit option s, create a new node

which acts as another layer on top of this node,

and I can make my contrast adjustment in here.

And then finally I can hit option s again and then add my left over here.

Now, looking at this, I can get a better idea of the flow of things.

Now, of course, the only way that we can tell

what changes are being made in each node is through this little thumbnail,

and that's not the best way to go about understanding

what's going on in your node graph over here.

What you want to do is rename your nodes.

So the shortcut for this is AHS.

So with any node selected, you can hit R, and in this case we can call this temp

now because we're doing a temperature change over here

or primaries, it's really up to you what you want to call it.

And later on in this module, you guys will see how I create my base

node tree structure and how I label everything.

But for now we can just label it whatever we want.

So this one over here would be our curves.

So we're going to hit our we're going to call it Curves.

And this last one, we can call it look or you can call it whatever you want.

So now I can get a much better visual representation

of what's happening to my image over here in my node graph.

Also, really good to separate each one of your adjustments like this,

because now I can very quickly go into any one of these adjustments.

So let's see the temperature and I can change just the temperature in this node.

And let's say that, you know, I like this, but I would like to change the

opacity of the node.

So just the overall transparency of the node, I can go in here

into the key output and change that and bring it down.

Same with my left or my curves.

I can go into the key output, change it,

change the opacity just like this, and manipulate

each adjustment that I'm making with more flexibility

by isolating the adjustments into their own nodes.

Now obviously the image in this example does not look good.

We'll be doing some actual color grading later on, but this was

just a representation to show you guys how nodes work in the node graph.

So these are all serial nodes.

And what's important to understand about serial nodes is they take the output

from the previous node and treat that as though it's the base layers.

So this first clip over here, it's

taking the actual base clip over here and making adjustments to that.

Now, this second serial node is taking the output

from this first one and making adjustments to that.

So I'm going to reset the node graph so I can give you guys a better example

of what's going on.

So with this first node, let's say we did some pretty dramatic changes

to our image, So let's say we brought the saturation down all the way to zero

and then we created a new node afterwards.

Now this second node is taking whatever this first node is giving us.

So if we want to revive the saturation in the second node

by bringing the saturation up, we could bring it all the way up to 100.

And we can't bring back any of those colors because the colors are gone.

We've eliminated them from this first node,

so there's nothing to bring back in this second node.

So this is a really important concept to understand that when you're working

with serial nodes, the output of the previous node

is what you're going to be working with in the current serial node.

So this is always something

that we want to take into consideration when color grading.

Typically there's an order of operation that we follow as professionals.

First, you want to start off with your noise reduction.

If you need any, then you want to color correct your image

Using primaries to create a neutral, correctly exposed look.

Then you can add additional contrast with tools like the curves.

Afterwards you can apply a LUT, then you can go into things like

cell curves to manipulate individual colors,

and then only at the end of your node graph do you want to add things like glow

sharpening or film grain.

So something we'll be doing later on in this module is creating a base node tree

structure that we can incorporate this exact order of operations in

and be able to quickly reuse that node tree for any project

so you won't have to recreate it every single time.

Now, in this lesson, we really only talked about the serial node,

and although this is the one you'll probably be using most of the time,

especially when you're just starting out,

there are six other types of nodes that we should learn about as well.

But before we dive into any of those, first I want to go

over the tools we're going to be using most throughout this module

so that I can better explain the other types of nodes later on.

I'll see you guys in the next one.