Object Tracking in Resolve 18 is Super Easy and Quick

There was never any doubt that DaVinci Resolve is one of the most powerful tools in post-production workflows. Still, even with a solid claim to the top spot and a huge and growing user base they are providing major upgrades to the NLE all the time.

Resolve 18 is just the latest and it brings some impressive improvements to object tracking, making it an incredibly simple tool that now works shockingly fast.

Coming from Bradley Media is a quick tutorial showing off the latest version of the tool. The one note before we get started is that you will want to make sure you have the paid Studio version of Resolve to take full advantage of the update.

There are many reasons why someone might want to rotobrush and/or track an object on screen. One of the basics is to apply a grade or correction to a particular item or individual.

But, you can also use these selections to apply effects that work around the objects. In this video the example is selecting a car on screen and then having text slide in behind it.

Before Resolve 18, you would have to use keyframing with some manual adjustments to get something that looks good. This could take a very long time.

With your clip ready on the timeline, the first thing will be to duplicate the clip. The fastest way to do this is to hold Alt and then drag the clip up to another track. He moves it up to the third track so he can put the text track in between the two matching clips.

Selecting the top clip you are going to roto out the car. Head to the color tab to get started. Go to the Magic Mask tool and click on Object Tracker. Hit the + dropper and use that tool to draw and line around the object you want to select.

Resolve should automatically isolate the full object with just that rough work. You can finesse it using the + and – dropper tools, though ideally if you have good separation from the background it should work like magic.

Hit the play to track forward and then backward as needed and Resolve should select the object through the entire clip. That’s extremely quick for such an effect.

From here you’ll want to head into the node tree and add an Alpha output. Right-click on the node tree to find this option and then drag the blue square from your node to the blue square at the output to make that alpha output.

Heading back to the edit page you are going to work on the text. With the alpha output done properly, you should start seeing the text working exactly as you want by showing up behind the car. Tweak your text settings to get it how to want and add any animation you want.

I’m sure you can think of a million ways to use this type of effect in your project. 

What do you think about Resolve’s latest update and the new, extremely fast tools?

[source: Bradley Media]

Order Links:

• Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Studio (B&H, Amazon)