Written by Terry Doner, May 31 2020. Updated Feb 23 2021.

Introduction

There is a lot of interest in creating worhsip music videos this year. This document is a guide to help you through the process. It is based on the premise of having multiple remote musicians recording their content at home, and multiple collaborators work on the editing. The main tools used are Dropbox, Davinci Resolve (v16) and ProPresenter (v6). You may not need all of these depending on what you want to acheive.

There are a lot of good video tutorials on using Davinci Resolve on Youtube. I have created a playlist of some of the ones I have found to be most helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7NP2WQhDLU6sJHoONvphYrNizkl68yfq

Getting Organized

1. Create a project for each song.

2. Put all of your media assets for the song in one folder structure. This makes it easier to reconnect to the media if sharing projects with others.

3. Store all media in a dropbox folder and work with it from there. Some of these files are very large, so getting them uploaded to dropbox as early as possible as it gives time for them to replicate.

4. Rename your media to names that identify the content. This makes it easier to manage once you import them into the project. Being consistent helps. You don’t want to rename files AFTER you import that creates problems. Suggest a name like “Susan-Vox-PraiseHim.mp4”. The thing that is most important is first - when viewing clips on timelines sometimes the name is truncated but you will still see the leading text. The song name is last - all the media for a song is in its own folder and its own project so that isn't very helpful as leading text.

5. Sketch out a plan for how all the videos will look together, including the lyrics. This will help ensure you leave room for everything.

6. If you have a lot of media items, you might like to organize them into different bins.

7. You want to try to avoid renaming or moving files once you have started adding them to your project.

Song Folder Structure

Within Dropbox we create a folder for each song, for example “Song_ThisWeKnow”.

Within that folder we create a folder for:

• band: the individual instrumental tracks

• vox: the individual vocal tracks

• multitrack_export: A folder to place the individual synchronized tracks from Davinci when audio editing is done in an external program

• mastered_audio: the location for the stereo mix down to be reimported by into the Davinci project.

• released_videos: fully rendered versions

Note: I haven’t said anything about how to deal with different versions of the song in different keys…. Looking for input on how to handle this. Likewise if we have different arrangements.

Creating The Timeline

1. Create your video layers from bottom up, that is put the background on the bottom and the different visual layers on top of each other in sequence. (You may only have two groups). It can be changed later if need be, but less work to get it right in the first place.

2. Do all timing alignments to sync up the tracks

3. If there are singers who are doing significant voice overs during the song, copy their audio a second time (keeping the alignment). Use one track for the signin g and the other for the voice over. You will likely want different reverb EQ and panning for the voice over, so making it separate simplifies that.

   • There is an alternate means which is to use effect automation to cancel the reverb during the voice over. Which method used depends on the complexity of effects added to the signing track. If a completely different effects stack is desired, then the separate track method is best.

4. Name your tracks

Audio Editing (Farilight)

1. Create sub groups for the band and vocals. The voice over tracks can be assigned directly to the main track - Don’t assign it to the vocal as you may assign a reverb to the sub bus.

   • Use the Fairlight menu ”Bus Format” option and add two “Sub” busses, both stereo. Call one Band and the other vocal.

   • Use the Fairlight Menu “Bus Assign” option to assign the vocals to the Vox bus and the band to the Band bus - deassign each individual track from the master.

   • Assign the Band and Vox bus to the Main.

   • It will look something like this:

2. Pan and EQ each track as desired

3. Reverb and Comp you may want to put on the sub bus.

4. Watch that none of your buses clip.

Sync markers and click tracks

Sync markers are audio snaps, cracks or even short beeps that are added to the beginning of the guide vocal that is subsequently also recorded on the other vocal or instrumental tracks - just prior to the beginning. They allow for easy and very accurate alignment of all the audio tracks. The sync markers, ideally, should be left in the tracks as they appear in the project. That way they can be used to realign if there is a movement error made or if at some later point in time you wish to add another vocal it is easy to align. They can be removed during final render by using in and out points. (On the Deliver page, set the In and Out points, the “I” and “O” keys are quick shortcuts, and then set the render range using the option between the video preview and the timeline.

Likewise for click tracks, they too can be left in the project and just disabled. They are less valuable than the sync markers but still may be useful if you want to mix in new material.

Making Davinci Run Faster

There is a video on the playlist about this topic. One thing that is super easy is to use “Proxy Mode” … This will speed up your playback a lot, but your previews will be of lower quality. It doesn’t affect the quality of the final result. Try half resolution to start.

You can always turn it off if you want to see a full resolution preview.

Moving a Project Between People (computers)

Note: As of fall 2020, Davinci resolve 17 is in Beta. Within that release are some major collaboration features which open up new possibilities.

A Davinci project consists of two things: 1) All of the media that is referenced in the project and 2) the project ‘edits’ themselves.

We are managing all of the media by using a common Dropbox folder. This works best if you have the dropbox client installed (but not mandatory). It is important that files are not renamed after they have been included in the Davinci project. Make your life simple as always keep your media in these common folders. If they are put there early (from the very start) then dropbox will have enough time to replicate them to your collaborators.

The project edits are stored in a database internal to davinci. But one can export all the settings and edits for a project using the File->Export option. This creates a “.drp” file.

One the first computer:

1. Save the project

2. Use the “File -> Export”

3. A file navigator will open, navigate to the shared folder. Pick a good name for the export file as there could be many of these and confusion about which one is latest. Suggest something like “Project Name-V1.drp”. The “.drp” files are small and replicate through dropbox quickly.

One the second computer:

1. Wait for all of the media files to download

2. Find the ‘.drp’ file and open it.

3. Go to the Media tab in Davinci -you should see that all of your media is ‘red’ - select them all, right-click and choose “Relink …” and navigate to the shared dropbox folder. If all the files were in that folder (or subfolder), you should be all set. If you still have ‘red’ media you may need to repeat this for another folder.

4. Save your project.

You can transfer the project back to the first computer again by exporting from the second computer and importing to the first computer.

Considerations

• Both computers should have the same version of Davinci installed.

• Fonts that are used in a project need to be independently installed on both computers

• Any plugins used need to be installed on both computers. At this point not using any additional plugins but Windows and MacOs each have their own installed as part of the OS. We should avoid using the “AU” plugins because they only exist on MacOS.

Creating Lyrics

There are several different ways of creating lyrics for use in videos. Here are a few methods.

Propresenter Timelines

1. Install Propresenter V6 (we have a campus license), and also configure to download lyrics from SongSelect - this part is one of the nicer things about this method.

   • I don't think this works remotely.

2. Create a new document for video use - I add “LyricVideo” to the document name. For example, for the song cornerstone, I would name the document “Cornerstone-LyricVideo”

3. Set up the arrangement as normal but the layout used should be one line of text per slide. I also recommend adding a blank line to the end of every verse/chorus. The reflow editor is your friend.

4. As normal also place a ‘background’ slide at the beginning and a blank at the end.

5. Apply the formatting as desired, templates are useful.

6. Pick your background graphics.

7. Now we need an audio track. Kesha creates a guide vocal video for the musicians, and we will use that as our lyric guide. We need to create an audio only copy of that.

   • On MacOS, open the video in Quicktime and use the “File-Export-Audio Only” option.

• On Windows, the extraction can be done with VLC. https://www.howtogeek.com/66165/from-the-tips-box-extracting-audio-from-any-video-using-vlc-sneaking-around-paywalls-and-delaying-windows-live-mesh-during-boot./

Watch this video

Clicking on this opens the timeline editor.

1. • Add the audio we created above using the ‘audio track’ button

. Now it is time to record our timing

1. • Click “Clear all”

   • Click the record icon to the left of “Audio Track” - the little bullseye

And click on your background slide

• • • This will put the background at the very beginning of the timeline.

    • Click the play icon (beside record) and the audio track will begin to play. CLick on each lyric slide at the appropriate time, you will see it added to the timeline.

      • Note: Do not use the spacebar, that highlights each word in yellow as you tap space, karaoke style.

    • You can stop at any point and adjust individual slides if the timing wasn’t quite right (drag them on the timeline) or delete them.

    • You can also click anywhere on the timeline while it is playing and it will play from that point.

    • You can change the playback speed if you wish

Continue working with the timeline until it is correct and remember to include the credits (last slide) near the end.

Exit ‘record’ mode

1. • Now we need to create the video - a different kind of record from above.

   • Open the output recorder. “Actions - Record Output”

• • • And name the file - suggest “Lyric-Songname” - I store these directly in dropbox.

    • Ensure your speed is 1x (which it will be unless you changed it)

    • Press “Clear all”,

    • Press the record button - on the “Output Recorder”, not the timeline:

• • • Wait about 2 seconds

    • Press “Play” on the timeline and let that run until the end.

    • Press “Stop” on the “Output Recorder”

1. • Review the result and ensure it is good.

Congrats - mission accomplished.

Davinci Subtitles

Another way to do this is with a subtitle track in Davinci Resolve.

• “Add Track” to the timeline - it must be a “Subtitle” track.

• Using the track inspector add the lyric line in the text box, and “Add new” to add a new text box.

• Each individual lyric box can be positioned on the timeline and adjusted for timing.

• Set the formatting using the ‘Track Format’ tab in the inspector.

• If a background video is required, put that below everything else (V1) and it would likely need to be looped. Using the option (alt) key will copy a video to be able to quickly populate V1 with everything needed.

• When doing the render in the “Deliver” tab you must select "Burn into file" under the Deliver>Subtitle Settings.

These instructions are covered in this video

If you have your lyrics in a text file, laid out as they would be sung in the arrangement, then you can use web tool to quickly create the sub title track. If you are repeating chorus or verses, repeat them in the file.

• Go to https://toolslick.com/conversion/subtitle/txt-to-srt :

  • Paste the text into the “input” box

  • Set the start time to when you want the first words to appear (just before they are sung), in seconds

  • Set the End time to when the last words are to finish, also in seconds.

  • The start counter can remain 0

  • Click Convert - it will generate a corresponding “.srt” file and download it. It will be called ‘output.srt’ and will be in your download folder.

  • Find that file, rename it, and move it to the song folder

• Now in your Davinci project:

  • Do File -> Import File -> Import Subtitle and find your file from above

  • Create a new subtitle track

  • Move you timeline head to where you want the first words to appear

  • Right click on the srt track you imported above and click on “Insert selected subtitles to timeline”

  • Now do your track formatting and tweak the placement. Don’t forget that you can select multiple boxes and shift them all to the right (shortcut key “y”).

Reaper

Yes, Reaper is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), but it can also process video everything you need to know is in this video.

OBS

Lyrics can also be done all in OBS. These videos shows two different ways to do this. One using a plugin and the other using Google Slides. (You could use just about any presentation program in the same way).

(Thoughts About) Round Tripping for Audio

Round-tripping is a term which is used when you start a process in one program, export some assets, edit those in a different program, export the result and re-import them back into the original program.

In this context we would start in Davinci, export the audio, edit the audio in another program, such as Logic Pro, and then re-import back into davinci to merge with the video.

In general we have audio coming from two different sources - purchased tracks (no video), and in-house recorded tracks

Since the videos need to be synchronized anyways, I think it best to align the content in Davinci (at least those that have video). Once that is complete, then each track needs to be separately exported. This is accomplished via the Deliver tab in Davinci.

On the video panel, it is important to unclick “Export Video” - this will greatly accelerate render times, and create significantly smaller files.

On the Audio panel, You have to change the file name and the track number for every track, add to the render queue, and then repeat.

Note: The above method is the hard way to do this... I need to rewrite that section. I have experimented with the process, a different means has been discovered which creates all of the audio tracks in a single step and places them all in one file. Waiting for a response from Jim to see if that is workable - It is certainly faster and easier to produce.

In the image, the file name has the track number - it would be a good idea to also add the part descriptor (ie. pno, bass, kesha, etc).

Once all of these have been added to the render queue, then select all the render jobs and click “Start Render”. These files are full video. (We may decide to go through Quicktime audio export to create an audio only version, which would be smaller and transport faster via dropbox).

Place all of these exports in a folder called “multitrack_export”, if there needs to be a correction afterwards, then create a new folder with a version number “Multitrack_Export_V2” (the original becomes the de facto V1).

The mastered audio track(s) should go into “mastered_audio”. Amdd a version number to the end of every mastered audio mixdown you create to share. V1, V2, V3 etc. This practice helps ensure the next person has the right version.

If we acquire or create sub-mixes, they should go in a folder called “stems”.

Tips for Recording

There are some good ideas for recording.

More specifically for recording of vocals:

1. Try to get your microphone as close a practical to your mouth, at the same time watch out for breath (wind) noise. The microphone might need to be slightly to the side. Within 30 centimeters is likely good enough.

2. Some devices (usually digital cameras but not most phones) have ‘automatic gain control (AGC)’ switches. With this turned on, the camera will try to keep your volume at a constant level which will undo any vocal dynamics you intentionally create. It will also create noisy quiet portions. It would be best to turn them off, but you also will then need to manually set your recording volume to keep your loudest portion within what your camera can handle.

3. If your phone camera has multiple lenses (1x, 2x, etc) try using the 2x setting to see if that gives better framing.

4. If recording with a camera that has a focal length control (ie a DLSR) try using a longer focal length rather than wide angle.

How to Record Your Part Using Sync Markers

The key outcome is to capture within your recording the sync markers that are on the guide track. Exactly how you do this depends on how you are recording. Here are a few examples:

• Playing the guide vocal on your computer, listening on headphones and recording on your phone

  • Unplug your headphones so that the audio plays through your speakers, start recording, start the playback, hold your phone microphone close-ish to your computer speakers. Record through the sync marker and then plug your headphones back in and smile.