Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve Workflow With a Review Checkpoint at Every Hop

Most of what gets written about the Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve workflow is aimed at the wrong failure. The guides, the forum threads and the media offline videos all treat the round trip as a file problem, right, which boxes to tick when you send the XML, why half your clips came into Resolve red, how to get graded clips back into Premiere with handles. All of that is real and I'll walk through it, but in my agency the round trip has almost never died in the conform.

Where it actually dies is the approvals, because the producer signs off the offline cut on one link, the colorist sends the grade on a different link a week later, and the client watches the graded version and writes that the second interview answer runs long. Now an edit note is sitting on a color review the editor never opens, and the colorist trims the shot in Resolve to be helpful, so the two timelines quietly stop matching. The XML was perfect, right, and you still end up with a lost couple of days and one really really uncomfortable call about which version is the real one.

So this is how I run the Premiere to Resolve round trip now, with the file steps done properly and a review checkpoint at every hop, so the offline cuts and the graded export sit on one card and the producer approves both halves in the same place.

How the Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve workflow actually flows

I think of it as four hops rather than one pipeline, basically because each hop changes who is holding the timeline. The editor cuts in Premiere until picture lock, the locked sequence leaves as an XML with a reference movie and the media, the colorist conforms and grades in Resolve, and then comes the return, either delivering straight out of Resolve or sending graded clips back to Premiere for titles and the mix.

Most teams review at the first hop and the last one and trust the middle, right, and the middle is where the expensive surprises live. So every hop gets a checkpoint, and each one is a status change on the same card rather than an email that says "looks good".

The reason is cost, so let me do some purely illustrative math, right. Say a re-conform after a late edit change eats 45 minutes of the colorist's time once you count relinking, rechecking and rerendering, and a sloppy lock causes three of them on one film. That's over two hours of the most expensive person in your post chain redoing work that a checkpoint on the offline cut would have caught.

Locking the offline cut before turnover

A few expensive jobs taught me that picture lock is a commercial decision before it's a technical one, and everything before it is offline editing, starting from a rough cut and tightening round by round. In PlayPause those offline cuts go up from the Premiere Pro panel straight from the timeline, so the producer reviews MV1, MV2 and MV3 on one card, right, and the editor clicks each comment inside Premiere and the playhead jumps to that frame. When the producer is happy with MV3 I don't accept "yeah this is fine" on WhatsApp. I ask for the approval as a comment on MV3 and then set the card's custom status to Picture locked, because that status marks the moment edit notes start costing money.

Then the editor preps the sequence, which is where most media offline problems get prevented rather than fixed. Duplicate the locked sequence and name it something like Brandfilm_MV3_TURNOVER, flatten any multicam clips, break nested sequences back out, and collapse the picture onto as few video tracks as you honestly can. Lumetri and most effects won't translate, so disable them, titles go on their own track because the colorist doesn't grade your lower thirds, and any time remapping ramp gets flagged, because constant speed changes usually survive the trip while ramps very often don't.

The last piece is the reference movie, a straight export of the turnover sequence with timecode burned in, and to be very honest it's the most skipped and most useful file in the package. The rest of what goes to the colorist is in my post on the handoff package for a colorist.

Exporting XML from Premiere and conforming in Resolve

For most jobs the XML roundtrip between Premiere and Resolve is the right method. In Premiere you select the turnover sequence and go to File, Export, Final Cut Pro XML, and that file carries every cut, the source paths, the timecodes and basic sizing. It's basically only as good as the paths it points to, so the media has to travel with the same folder structure and file names.

In Resolve, set the project frame rate to match the Premiere sequence before importing anything, because it gets very very hard to change once media is in. Then go to File, Import, Timeline, pick the XML, untick automatic import of source clips if the media is already in the pool, and keep sizing information on so scale and position moves come across.

Red clips are almost always a path problem, right, and the usual culprit is proxies. If the editor used Premiere's attached proxy workflow, the XML still points at the camera originals, but if they cut on transcodes imported as ordinary clips, it points at those transcodes and the colorist has to relink to the originals.

Then the colorist links the reference movie to the conformed timeline as its offline reference clip and checks the two against each other cut by cut, looking for the wrong take, the one frame slip, the retime at the wrong speed and so on. Only when that matches does she leave a comment on the card saying "conform checked against MV3". Blackmagic's own DaVinci Resolve training material covers the conform and relink tools properly, and if your offline lives in Final Cut, my Final Cut Pro to Resolve workflow post covers that version.

Where review happens: Premiere side versus Resolve side

On the Premiere side the review lives inside the editing app, with comments read in Premiere and the panel paired to the workspace by a code.

On the Resolve side PlayPause has no native integration, right, so the honest loop is a review copy rendered from the Deliver page, H.264 at the timeline's own frame rate, uploaded and read in a browser beside the grade. Our page on PlayPause for DaVinci Resolve walks through it, and my Frame.io alternative for Resolve colorists post covers the colorist's end.

The catch here is who the colorist actually is. A colorist we use every month just sits in our workspace as a member, which doesn't change the bill because pricing is flat per workspace. A one-off freelancer usually doesn't, and on the Agency plan guest version upload lets her put the graded render onto our card without an account, with her name and email recorded against it, so the grade arrives exactly where the edit already lives.

Stacking the graded export on the same card as the offline cut

The graded export goes onto the existing card as the next version, never a new project or a new link, so after three offline rounds the first graded render becomes MV4, and version stacks are there from the Creator plan up. The producer opens the same link they've used for weeks, sees MV4 on top with MV1 to MV3 underneath and every comment still on its frame, and that one habit is what fixed the mess I opened with.

For instance, say it's a six minute brand documentary, the producer locked MV3 on a Friday, and the colorist conformed Monday and graded Tuesday and Wednesday. The card moves to a custom status called In grade the moment the turnover goes out, and when MV4 lands I switch it to Grade review and @mention the producer with "graded, conform checked against MV3, no edit changes". Every comment also lands in our Slack channel, and who-watched analytics tells me who opened MV4 and when, right, which is useful to know before a client call.

If your return trip goes back to Premiere, the colorist renders individual clips on the Deliver page using the Premiere XML preset, with a second or so of handles and unique file names, and Resolve writes a matching XML alongside them. The editor imports that, finishes titles and the mix, and the finished conform goes up as MV5 on the same card. I have those clips rendered in ProRes 422 HQ for headroom, and only an H.264 review copy goes up for notes, because a client doesn't need a 40 GB master to tell you a shot feels cold.

Comparing offline and graded versions side by side

Once MV4 is on the card I open side-by-side version compare, which is on the Agency plan and up, and play MV3 against MV4 in sync. I think it's the most underrated step in the whole offline edit to color grade review, because it does two jobs at once, right. It catches conform problems that got past the reference check, an alternate take, a cut moved by a frame, a title that lived on the disabled track. It also shows the producer what the grade did, because a graded film on its own just looks nice, while the same moment next to the flat offline shows the skin tones, the sky, the contrast and so on.

I also tell producers to judge color on a decent screen, since a phone at 40 percent brightness makes a good grade look muddy. There's a page on version compare for documentary editors, and I've written about side by side grade comparisons from the colorist's view.

Handling notes that belong to edit versus notes that belong to color

Every note on a graded version is either a color note, which the colorist owns, or an edit note, which changes the locked cut, and in my experience the whole round trip lives or dies on the fact that those two cost wildly different amounts. "The sky at 00:03:12 is too cyan" is a five minute fix in Resolve, while "can we lose the second answer at 00:02:40" means a change in Premiere, a new XML or a matching trim in Resolve, a recheck, a rerender and a fresh round.

So I triage every comment on MV4 myself. Color notes get a reply with an @mention to the colorist, and edit notes get an @mention to the editor plus a line to the producer saying this reopens the lock. If they still want it, the change happens in Premiere first and gets mirrored in Resolve, so the timelines don't drift. For a tiny trim I'm pretty sure it's faster for the colorist to do it in Resolve, which is fine if the editor makes the identical trim in Premiere that day, and you see what I mean here, the rule is really about both timelines telling the same story.

On Agency these rules live in the project's folder Playbook, the turnover spec, ProRes flavour, handle length and the edit notes rule, with checklist items that aren't done until ticked, so a freelance colorist joining mid job reads it first. If the client is fighting the grade rather than the edit, my post on getting a Resolve grade signed off covers that, and if you're moving the whole edit across, I wrote about switching from Premiere Pro to Resolve too. Trust me on any level, a producer who can see which notes reopen the lock sends far fewer of them, does that make sense, right.

Frequently asked questions

Should I use XML or AAF to send a Premiere timeline to Resolve?

For picture I send a Final Cut Pro XML out of Premiere almost every time, because it carries the cuts, source paths, timecode and basic sizing, and Resolve reads it reliably. AAF can work too, but in my agency it's the format the sound mixer wants, so I keep it for audio. Either way, send a reference movie with burned-in timecode so the colorist can check the conform.

Why do my clips show media offline in Resolve after importing the XML?

Nearly always because the paths inside the XML no longer match where the media lives, right, so a renamed file, a different drive name or proxies cut as ordinary clips will all turn clips red. Select the offline clips in the media pool, choose Relink Selected Clips and point it at the top folder of the original media, and Resolve searches down from there. If transcoding changed the timecode or file names, go back to the originals.

Do I send the graded master or a review copy for client approval?

I send a review copy every time, an H.264 render at the timeline's frame rate, and the ProRes master stays with the colorist until the graded export client approval is done. The browser plays a streaming copy and never touches the original anyway, but a small file keeps rounds fast, right, and the master only moves once the card says Approved.

If you run this round trip across two departments, put both halves on one card before you touch any XML settings, because at the end of the day it's the cheapest fix in this post. Every plan on the PlayPause pricing page starts with a 7-day free trial, and Agency at $19 a month has the version compare and guest upload this workflow leans on.

So yeah. That's my way of saying it.