Tag: Davinci Resolve

Workaround: DaVinci Control Panels App crashing

Under DaVinci Resolve 19.0, not only does the DaVinci Resolve Control Panels app crash immediately when I try to start it, but Resolve itself also refuses to start as long as the app is installed. In both cases, the Windows Event Viewer displays exception code 0xc0000409:

Windows Event Viewer entry

Fortunately, uninstalling just the Control Panels app allowed me to work with Resolve again. However, whenever there’s an update available for my Speed Editor, I need to find a workaround. Previously, I installed the Control Panels app on a different computer, but this time it was even more frustrating, as it also crashed on that second machine.

What eventually worked for me was temporarily disabling all other startup applications. A simple way to do this is by pressing the Windows key + R, typing “msconfig,” and then selecting “Selective startup,” leaving only system services checked (unchecking “Load startup items”):

msconfig

After restarting with this selection, DaVinci Resolve Panels ran just fine and updated my Speed Editor:

Once done, I set the selection back to “Normal startup”. I did not have the patience and time to go through the startup apps and disable them one by one to find which one was causing the conflict. You could do this in the “Startup” section of the Windows Task Manager or with other applications like Autoruns.

DaVinci Control Panels app crashes? Try installing it on a different computer

Whenever DaVinci Resolve notifies me that a new firmware is available for the Speed Editor, the following happens:

  1. I open the DaVinci Control Panels software.
  2. It shows up like this for a few seconds (at most) and then disappears (crashes):
DaVinci Control Panels app showing a blank window before crashing

I was unable to resolve this problem on my PC. Instead, I’ve installed the Control Panels application on a different computer, where it worked just fine:

DaVinci Control Panels App working

Unfortunately this required installing DaVinci Resolve, too, which can take a while. It would be nice if Blackmagic made the Control Panels app available as a separate download.

This post is mainly meant to remind me to simply use this method the next time I want to do a firmware update. If you don’t like it, you can always try to get help on the official DaVinci Resolve forum.

How to make looping videos (for cinemagraphs, looping GIFs) using Davinci Resolve

The challenge: Loop a short video clip seamlessly so that it appears to go on forever.

Let’s take this drone footage*:

Example drone footage

It’s not terribly interesting or noteworthy but it’s good enough to demonstrate the concept.

If we simply repeat the same video multiple times, there will be a noticeable jump (repeated 4 times below):

Repeated four times

If we reverse the video, the frames will match but the direction of the movement won’t, which makes it look rather goofy (this is what Instagram does with Boomerang):

The solution: Blend the video onto itself

I have used DaVinci Resolve for the following steps (a powerful free version is available),  but the concept is the same, regardless of the software. I first cut the video down to a shorter clip (which cannot start at the very beginning of the original footage). As far as the length of the clip is concerned, this is up to your artistic vision and experience. If there’s a discernible repeating movement in your video, you can use this for orientation. I picked a one-third rotation of the wind turbine in the upper left corner:

Wind turbine

The looping playback control can be very useful during this step:

loop playback

The resulting clip was just a little over 2 seconds long:

Clip

I then copied it to another track and moved both to the right for demonstration purposes:

clip copied

Next, I lengthened the clip on the upper track by dragging the “in” point to the left:

in point dragged to left

Note that the upper clip starts earlier in time and contains footage which is not a part of the lower clip.

I then shortened the upper clip by also dragging the “out” point to the left. The end of the upper clip now perfectly matches the beginning of the lower clip (because it is the part of the original video that comes just before it):

Out point dragged left

So far, this looks like a needlessly complicated way to split a clip (and yes, you could do it on a single video track). Things got more interesting as I moved the entire upper clip to the end of the lower clip (and moved both of them to the beginning of their tracks):

upper clip moved to end

Obviously, yhis resulted in a clearly visible jump at the point where the upper clip starts. However, this jump can be made a lot less noticeable by slowly fading the upper clip in:

blended onto itself 1

The video had now been blended onto itself and I had ensured that the frame at the end was a perfect match for the frame at the beginning.

Here’s the result, repeated 10 times:

Short blend (repeated 10 times)

If you know what to look for, you can see the blending happening (particularly in the water). To make it less obvious, I lengthened the upper clip and the blend:

video blended onto itself 2

This is the result (again repeated 10 times):

Looped video (repeated 10 times)

This is the basic concept. You can improve the result in DaVinci Resolve by freezing everything except for the parts where movement should be visible (and also by stabilizing and color grading the video):

If you want to learn more about DaVinci Resolve, I recommend reading the extensive user manual or watching some video tutorials (like the ones made by Casey Faris or Ripple Training). Should you have any questions, I recommend posting them in the official DaVinci Resolve forum (and not in the comments below).

* The video was recorded on a DJI Phantom 3 Standard. The ruin of the mill you see on the left is located in the Luxembourgish town of Moersdorf. The drone was launched from the German side of the river.