Blackmagicdesign DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel User Guide

Blackmagicdesign DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel

Product Information

Specifications :

• Product Name: DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel
• Connectivity: USB-C, Bluetooth
• Compatibility: Mac, PC, iPad
• Charging: USB-C

Product Usage Instructions

Setting up the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel
To set up the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel, follow these steps:

1. Connect the panel via USB-C to charge the internal battery.
2. Check the battery level in System Preferences.
3. The panel will automatically show up in DaVinci Resolve for use.

Connecting to Your Computer via Bluetooth
To connect the panel wirelessly via Bluetooth:

1. Ensure the battery is charged via USB-C.
2. Press the Bluetooth button on the panel to pair.
3. Connect in the computer’s Bluetooth settings.
4. Open DaVinci Resolve to confirm connection.

Connecting to Your Computer via USB-C
To connect via USB-C:

1. Simply connect the panel to a USB type C port using a USB-C cable.
2. No additional configuration is required.

Charging the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel
The panel can be charged by connecting it via USB-C to a compatible device or charger.

FAQ

• Q: How do I check the battery level of the Micro Color Panel?
  A: You can check the current battery level by going to the Control Panels section of the System Preferences.

• Q: What devices are compatible with the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel?
  A: The panel is compatible with Mac, PC, and iPad.

April 2024
Quick Start Guide

DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel

Getting Started with DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel

The Micro Panel features a row of direct control knobs at the top of the panel, three trackballs with rings for color grading, and to the left and right, transport and commonly used keys to speed up your grading session. Above the trackballs are reset buttons and also selection buttons for working with Stills, Power Windows, and the Viewer selector. At the top of the unit is a tablet slot designed to hold an Apple iPad running DaVinci Resolve, giving you the smallest and most compact color grading station available.

Setting up the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel

Charging the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel
Connecting the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel via USB-C to your Mac, PC, or iPad will also charge the unit’s internal battery, allowing it to be used wirelessly via Bluetooth. You can check the current battery level of the Micro Color Panel by going to the Control Panels section of the System Preferences.

Connecting to Your Computer via USB-C
Connecting the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel directly via USB-C is the simplest and most reliable way to use the Micro Color Panel on your Windows or Mac computer. Simply connect the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel to your computer’s USB type C port, using a USB-C cable. No additional configuration is required. The Micro Color Panel will show up automatically in DaVinci Resolve, along with the DaVinci Control Panels Setup applications, ready for use.

Connecting to Your Computer via Bluetooth
You can also connect the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel wirelessly via Bluetooth for more flexible installation options.

To Connect the Micro Color Panel to MacOS via Bluetooth:

1. Ensure that your Micro Color Panel’s battery is ready  by first connecting it via USB-C, as described above, and allowing it to charge.
2. Press the Bluetooth button on the back of the Micro Color Panel; a blue light will flash letting you know it’s trying to pair.
3. Open the Bluetooth Preference pane in the MacOS System Settings. Find the device named Micro Color Panel, and press the Connect key.
4. If MacOS asks you if you would like to pair the device, click the Connect button.
5. Once the Micro Color Panel is connected, open DaVinci Resolve. The LEDs on the keys will illuminate to confirm that the Micro Color Panel is connected properly.

To Connect the Micro Color Panel to Windows via Bluetooth:

1. Ensure that your Micro Color Panel’s battery is ready by first connecting it via USB-C, as described above, and allowing it to charge.
2. In the Windows Settings, select Devices > Bluetooth & devices. Make sure the Bluetooth slider is set to On.
3. Click on Add device, and select Bluetooth from the Add a device window.
4. Select Micro Color Panel from the list of devices, and press the Done key once connected.
5. If Windows asks you if you would like to pair the device, click the Allow button.
6. Once the Micro Color Panel is connected in the Bluetooth & devices window, open DaVinci Resolve. The LEDs on the keys will illuminate to confirm that the Micro Color Panel is connected properly.

To Connect the Micro Color Panel to iPadOS via Bluetooth:

1. Ensure that your Micro Color Panel’s battery is ready by first connecting it via USB-C to another computer, an iPad, or USB-C charger and allowing it to charge. You cannot connect the Micro Color Panel directly to the iPad via USB-C; the USB-C connection only supports charging. You can only connect the panel via Bluetooth.
2. Press the Bluetooth button on the back of the Micro Color Panel; a blue light will flash letting you know it’s trying to pair.
3. Open the Bluetooth Preference pane in the iPadOS Settings. Find the device named Micro Color Panel, and tap on it.
4. If iPadOS asks you if you would like to pair the device, tap the Pair button.
5. Once the Micro Color Panel is connected, open the DaVinci Resolve app. The LEDs on the keys will illuminate to confirm that the Micro Color Panel is connected properly.

Using the Micro Color Panel Keys
Each key on the Micro Color Panel maps to individual DaVinci Resolve commands. This document only describes the operation of the panel, for more information about the specifics of each command, please see the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel Manual.
To maximize the functionality of all the keys on this reduced-sized color panel, there are three different actions used to modify a key’s commands:

Press: A short tap to the key and release, as if you were typing.

Shift Up: Tap and hold the key with the triangle in the upper left. It will light up green to let you know the modifier is active. Then press another key.| Shift Down: Tap and hold the key with the triangle in the lower right. It will light up green to let you know the modifier is active. Then press another key.

Trackball Modes

You can set up the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel’s physical rings and trackballs to mirror the on-screen Primaries Wheels, Log, and Offset controls. This lets you select an intuitive tactile interface for each mode.

Primary Trackball Mode
This is the default mode for the panel with Offset, Viewer, Wipe Still, and Cursor keys off (unlit). The three trackballs, from left to right, are in the traditional DaVinci format of Lift, Gamma, and Gain when DaVinci Resolve is set for Primary grading. Rotating the trackball performs a color balance adjustment for the range, changing its RGB parameters. The colors are set by moving the trackball in the direction corresponding to the color rings in the Primaries Wheels interface. Rotating the ring around each trackball adjusts the range’s Master Wheel, which allows you to control the contrast via YRGB adjustments.
When any of the Offset, Viewer, Wipe Still, and Cursor keys are lit, some or all of the trackballs and rings will change their state to control different functions. Those functions are described below under their respective key descriptions.

Log Trackball Mode
Log Trackball mode can be toggled by press and holding the Shift Up and Offset buttons on the panel. When in Log grading, the trackballs shift to the Log Control’s Shadow, Midtone, and Highlights parameters. Rotating the trackball performs a color balance adjustment for the range, changing its RGB parameters. The colors are set by moving the trackball in the direction corresponding to the color rings in the Primaries Log interface. Rotating the ring around each trackball adjusts the range’s Master Wheel, which allows you to control the contrast via RGB adjustments.

Offset Trackball Mode
You can also select the Offset button whether in Primary or Log modes. The Offset button will illuminate green to remind you that this mode is active. This is a toggle operation, and when selected, the left-hand side ring surrounding the trackball controls the color temperature of the image, the center trackball ring controls the color tint, and the right-hand side trackball controls the image offset balance and master exposure with the ring.

Shifted Trackball Modes
By press and holding the Shift keys, you can use the trackballs and rings to make control adjustments to the Windows and Sizing palettes, depending on which one is active.

Shift Up: Windows Palette Trackball Controls
When the Windows Palette is active, and the Shift Up key is pressed and held, the following functions can be controlled by the trackballs:

• Gain Trackball : Adjusts pan/tilt for window position.
• Gain Ring: Adjusts window size.
• Gamma Trackball: Adjusts window aspect ratio.
• Gamma Ring: Adjusts window rotation.
• Lift Trackball: No effect.
• Lift Ring: Adjusts window softness 1.

Shift Down: Sizing Palette Trackball Controls
When the Sizing Palette is active, and the Shift Down key is pressed and held, the following functions can be controlled by the trackballs:

• Gain Trackball: Adjusts image input sizing position pan/tilt.
• Gain Ring: Adjusts image input sizing zoom.
• Gamma Trackball: Adjusts image input sizing width/height.
• Gamma Ring: Adjusts image input sizing rotate.
• Lift Trackball: No effect.
• Lift Ring: No effect.

Reset Buttons

Above the three trackballs are three buttons for resetting the grade:

• Reset Lift: This key resets any RGB and Level changes made by the left trackball and ring.
• Press: This resets both the RGB and Level changes back to unity.
• Shift Up: This resets only the RGB changes back to unity and leaves any Level adjustments untouched.
• Shift Down: This resets only the Level changes back to unity and leaves any RGB adjustments untouched.

Control Knobs

The top of the panel features 12 high-resolution endless turn optical encoder control knobs with detent resets. These are spaced in groups of four for fast operation in dark suites. From left to right, the knobs control:

• Y Lift: This knob is for adjusting the contrast of the image in the darker areas. The midtone, and to a lesser amount the brighter areas of an image, will also change.
• Y Gamma : Use the Gamma knob for primarily midtone contrast changes with some influence on the darker and brighter sections.
• Y Gain: The Y Gain control influences the brighter parts of the image at a greater extent to the mid and darker portions.
• Reset Gamma: This key resets any RGB and Level changes made by the center trackball and ring.
• Press: This resets both the RGB and Level changes back to unity.
• Shift Up: This resets only the RGB changes back to unity and leaves any Level adjustments untouched.
• Shift Down: This resets only the Level changes back to unity and leaves any RGB adjustments untouched.
• Reset Gain: This key resets any RGB and Level changes made by the right trackball and ring.
• Press: This resets both the RGB and Level changes back to unity.
• Shift Up: This resets only the RGB changes back to unity and leaves any Level adjustments untouched.
• Shift Down: This resets only the Level changes back to unity and leaves any RGB adjustments untouched.
• Contrast: This one parameter lets you increase or reduce the distance between the darkest and lightest values of an image, raising or lowering image contrast. The effect is similar to using the Lift and Gain master controls to make simultaneous opposing adjustments.
• Pivot: Changes the center of tonality about which dark and bright parts of the image are stretched or narrowed during a contrast adjustment.
• Mid Detail: When this parameter is raised, the contrast of regions of the image with high edge detail is raised to increase the perception of image sharpness, sometimes referred to as definition. When lowered to a negative value, regions of the image with low amounts of detail are softened while areas of high detail are left alone.
• Color Boost: Lets you naturalistically raise the saturation of regions of low saturation, sometimes referred to as a vibrance operation. Can be used also to lower the saturation of regions of low saturation.
• Shadows: Lets you selectively lighten or darken shadow detail. Raising this value retrieves shadow detail recorded below 0 percent, while leaving the midtones alone. 0 is unity.
• Highlights: Makes it easy to selectively retrieve blown-out highlight detail in high dynamic range media by lowering this parameter and achieves a smooth blend between the retrieved highlights and the unadjusted midtones for a naturalistic result.
• Saturation: Increases or decreases overall image saturation. At higher values, colors appear more intense, while at lower values, color intensity diminishes until, at 0, all color is gone, leaving you with a grayscale image.
• Hue Rotation: Rotates all hues of the image around the full perimeter of the color wheel. The default setting of 50 shows the original distribution of hues.

Control Buttons

Arrayed around the trackballs there are three groups of control buttons.

The Top Group

• Play Still: Using Play Still, DaVinci Resolve will automatically display a wipe on the Viewer between the current scene and the current still. The button will illuminate green when this mode is on. Pressing Play Still a second time will toggle this mode off.
• Shift Up: Toggles the Split Screen Display on and off.
• Shift Down: Toggles the Gallery Display on and off.
• Wipe Still: Controls the wipe position and mode. This key does not have a simple Press mode, only the ones below.
• Press and Hold: Adjusts the position of the wipe by using the right ring.
• Shift Up : Cycles through the wipe still options with a wrap around.
• Lum Mix: Lets you control the balance between YRGB contrast adjustments you’ve made using the Master Wheels or ganged Custom curves and Y-only adjustments to contrast made using the Y channel Lift/Gamma/Gain controls of the Primaries palette or the unganged Luma curve.

Additional detail can be found in the Color page basics chapter in the DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual, and each of these operations can be seen on the Primary palette of the user interface.

• Grab Still: At any time when you are grading, selecting the Grab Still key automatically grabs a full resolution frame from the Timeline and attaches the node graph metadata for later display and use.
• H/Lite (Highlight) : Toggles the highlight view on or off. This key will illuminate green to let you know this mode is active.
• Shift Up: Cycles through the different highlight modes with a wrap around.
• Viewer: Pressing this key toggles the Cinema Viewer on and off.
• Shift Up: Toggles the Clips Display on and off or Clips/Timeline on the iPad.
• Shift Down: Toggles the Lightbox Display on and off.
• Cursor: Toggles a selection cursor in the Viewer, using the right trackball to move it around like a mouse. When this mode is active, a green light will illuminate the key.
• Select: Selects the color under the cursor for curves and secondaries.
• Add Node: Adds a new serial node after the currently selected node.
• Shift Up: Adds a Parallel node after the currently selected node.
• Shift Down: Adds a Layer node after the currently selected node.
• Add Window: Adds a circular window on the current node.
• Shift Up: Adds a linear window on the current node.
• Shift Down: Tracks the active window in both directions.
• Add Keyfrm : Adds a Dynamic Keyframe at the current timeline position in the Keyframes window.

The Left Group

• Auto Color: This key performs an Auto Color function on the selected clip or clips in the Timeline.
• Shift Up: Applies the grade to the selected clip from two clips earlier in the Timeline.
• Shift Down: Applies the grade to the selected clip from one clip earlier in the Timeline.
• Offset: Toggles the right trackball to offset mode,  the left ring to color temperature, and the middle ring to tint. This key illuminates green to show you that this mode is turned on.
• Shift Up: Toggles Log mode.
• Copy: Copies the clip grade to the buffer.
• Shift Up: Copies the node grade to the buffer.
• Paste: Pastes the clip grade from the buffer to the selected clip.
• Shift Up: Applies the grade from the selected still in the Gallery.
• Undo: Undo is one of the favorite keys of colorists. Try any grade, and if you don’t like it, simply undo. There are multiple steps of undo available within the page.
• Redo: Sometimes you hit undo once too many times. Redo will put back into effect the last item you undid. As with undo, there are multiple levels of redo.
• Delete: Deletes the selected node from the node graph.
• Shift Up: Deletes the selected window from the node. Shift Down: Deletes the selected still from the Gallery.
• Reset: This key resets the grade of the current node.
• Shift Up: Resets the selected palette. For example, you can reset only a qualifier, while leaving your primary grade intact.
• Shift Down: Resets all grades and nodes on the clip (base mem).
• Bypass: This toggle lets you bypass all grades.  This button will illuminate in red to let you know this mode is active, and why nothing you do to the image is working.
• Disable: This toggle enables or disables the current node. This button will illuminate in red to let you know this mode is active, and why nothing you do to the node is working.
• User: Bind your own keyboard shortcut to this key, allowing you to map your most commonly used shortcut to this button. As of this writing, this function is not available yet.
• Shift Up: Bind your own keyboard shortcut to this key.
• Shift Down: Bind your own keyboard shortcut to this key.
• Loop: Toggles between looped and non-looped playback of a clip.
• Shift Up: Toggles the window overlay.
• Shift Down: Toggles mute and unmute.
• Shift Up: Press and hold to apply the shift up modifier to the next key you press. The button will illuminate green to show that this mode is active. This key can also modify the trackballs and rings to perform additional functions as described in the Shifted Trackball Modes section.
• Shift Down: Press and hold to apply the shift down modifier to the next key you press. The button will illuminate green to show that this mode is active.
  This key can also modify the trackballs and rings to perform additional functions as described in the Shifted Trackball Modes section.

The Right Group

• Prev Still: If you have a still selected, the Previous Still key selects the one preceding.
• Shift Up: Selects the previous Still Album.
• Shift Down: Adds a flag to the current clip.
• Next Still: If you have a still selected, the next still  in the gallery is selected.
• Shift Up: Selects the next Still Album.
• Prev Keyfrm: This key steps backward one keyframe on the Clip/Track Timeline display.
• Shift Up: Moves the playhead to the previous marker. Shift Down: Adds a marker at the current position.
• Next Keyfrm: This key steps forward one keyframe on the Clip/Track Timeline display.
• Shift Up: Moves the playhead to the next marker. Shift Down: Selects the marker and displays the markers popup window.
• Prev Node: Within the Node Editor on the Color page, you are likely to have a number of nodes. These are numbered based on the order that you added them. DaVinci Resolve node graphs are completely user configurable, so you can add nodes anywhere and in any order you like. Thus, the Previous Node key selects the node one lower in numerical order.
• Shift Down: Selects the first node in the node graph.
• Next Node: Similar to the Previous Node key, this selects the node adjacent to the current node, in this case the next higher numerical position.
• Shift Down: Selects the last node in the node graph.
• Prev Frame: To step the Viewer one frame in reverse along the Timeline.
• Shift Down: Move the playhead to the first frame of the clip.
• Next Frame: A single frame step forward for each key press.
• Shift Down: Move the playhead to the last frame of the clip
• Prev Clip: Selects the first frame of the previous clip.
• Shift Up: Selects the previous grade version.
• Shift Down: Go to the start of the Timeline.
• Next Clip: Selects the first frame of the next clip.
• Shift Up: Selects the next grade version.
• Shift Down: Go to the end of the Timeline.
• Left Arrow: Select this key to play the clip/timeline in reverse. Press the Left Arrow key multiple times to play in reverse at a faster speed.
• Shift Down: Track a window in reverse.
• Right Arrow: The forward key plays the clip/timeline forward. Press the Right Arrow key multiple times to play forward at a faster speed.
• Shift Down: Track a window forward.
• Stop: This stops the playback. Press stop again to start up playback again.
• Shift Down: Stop the tracker.

For More Information
For more detailed documentation on the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color panel, you can download the full product manual at the blackmagicdesign.com website.
In addition, the DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual (also available at the same website) goes into great detail on each of the functions tied to the keys.

Learn more at www.blackmagicdesign.com

References

• Blackmagic Design
• Blackmagic Design

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