Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve: a clean roundtrip.

A roundtrip is the trip a project takes out of Premiere Pro to be graded in DaVinci Resolve, then back for finishing and delivery. You hand the cut to Resolve as an interchange file, the colorist grades against your source media, and the graded result returns so the project can be finished. The media stays on disk the whole time. What travels is the edit, described in a file.

The word makes it sound like one continuous job done by one person. In practice it is two halves with different owners, and being clear about that changes how you prepare.

Who actually does the trip back

Sending the cut out to Resolve is editorial’s responsibility, and that is the half this guide is really about. The return is usually not. On most professional finishes the conform back is handled by a conform or online editor downstream, and the graded material may never re-enter your Premiere project at all. The grade gets integrated into a finishing timeline that someone else owns.

So treat the outbound trip as the thing you own and get right, and the return as something you prepare for rather than necessarily execute. The cleaner the file and media you send, the less the conform fights you later, whoever is doing it. The steps below are written from that point of view.

Before you start: prep and project settings

Resolve grades best from a clean timeline. The flattening, effect-stripping, ramp resets and naming that get you there are the same steps in the guide on preparing a Premiere Pro timeline for color grading, so do that first. Two things are specific to the roundtrip:

• Project settings. Confirm frame rate, resolution and timecode start before anything leaves Premiere. Resolve can set its project to match the imported file, but agreeing the spec up front beats fixing a mismatch after the grade.
• Proxies. If you cut against proxies rather than camera originals, note the codec. ProRes Proxy is the usual choice in a Premiere pipeline; an Avid pipeline tends to use DNxHD or DNxHR. Resolve conforms against the originals either way, so the colorist needs reachable full-resolution media regardless of what you edited against.

Exporting from Premiere

For the picture, export FCP XML: File → Export → Final Cut Pro XML… with your flattened grade sequence selected. Name the file to match the sequence and keep it with the handoff. A colour roundtrip rarely needs audio attached, since sound goes to its own AAF, but if it has to travel you can export AAF instead. Which format carries what is covered in the guide on FCP XML vs. AAF vs. EDL.

Importing into Resolve

In current Resolve (18 and 19), import from File → Import → Timeline, available from any page. On the Edit page you can also right-click in the Media Pool and choose Timelines → Import → AAF / EDL / XML. Older builds list it as File → Import AAF, EDL, XML. The import dialog offers to set the project settings to match the file, which is the quickest way to avoid a frame-rate or resolution mismatch.

If clips arrive offline, the paths in the file didn’t resolve. Point Resolve at the folder holding the source media and relink. Nothing grades until the media is online.

Grading, and the conform back

The colorist works on the Color page. Once the grade is approved, the material has to come back, and this is the mechanism whoever conforms it will use. On the Deliver page they render Individual Clips rather than a single flattened master, with Use Source Filename on and a handle of a few seconds, to a mezzanine codec, ProRes or DNxHR, at source resolution. Resolve writes a new XML or AAF alongside those graded clips. Imported into the finishing application, that file rebuilds the timeline linked to the graded media.

As noted, that import is often done by a conform or online editor in their own project, not back in your editorial Premiere. Rendering individual graded clips with handles, rather than one baked master, is what keeps the finish editable: trims, dissolves and reframes can still be adjusted because each shot is a separate clip with room around it. Your part is to have sent an outbound file and media clean enough that this step conforms without surprises.

What about audio in a roundtrip

It usually isn’t in this trip at all. The Premiere → Resolve roundtrip is a picture path: you send an FCP XML for the grade, and the colorist works on the image. Sound takes a separate route to its own mix, exported as an AAF for Pro Tools rather than carried through the colour roundtrip. Running the two as parallel handoffs, picture to Resolve and audio to the mix, keeps each one simple and avoids dragging a full audio session through a grade that has no use for it. The settings for the audio side are in the guide on exporting an AAF for Pro Tools. If something does need to travel with the picture for reference, that is the job of the burn-in reference video, not the XML.

Where roundtrips break

The same handful of issues account for most failed conforms.

• Effects and transitions. Lumetri grades, Warp Stabilizer, plugin effects and most transitions don’t translate. Bake anything that has to survive into the source media before exporting, or expect it to arrive as a plain cut.
• Nests and multi-cam. Nested sequences and multi-cam clips that weren’t flattened can import as something other than the shot you see. Collapse nests to their content and flatten multi-cam to the selected angle before exporting, so each position on the timeline is a single source clip.
• Mixed frame rates on one timeline. Clips at a different rate from the sequence, conformed or interpreted inside Premiere, can land at the wrong speed or duration after the trip. Note any of these and confirm how the conform should handle them.
• Speed changes. Constant speed adjustments sometimes survive; ramps rarely do. Reset them before export, and document any that have to stay so the conform can rebuild them.
• Project-settings mismatch. A frame rate or resolution that differs between Premiere and Resolve throws the conform off, sometimes by amounts small enough to miss at first. Agree the spec before you export.
• Offline media. The interchange file points at your storage. If Resolve or the conform station can’t reach the same paths, every clip arrives offline.
• Timecode drift. If the sequence start moved during editorial, the conform can line up a few frames out. Start the export sequence from a clean reference such as 01:00:00:00.

A repeatable version of this workflow

Once it is set up the same way each time, the outbound half takes minutes:

1. Lock the cut and confirm frame rate, resolution and timecode start.
2. Duplicate the cut, flatten and clean it into a grade sequence (see the color-prep guide).
3. Export FCP XML, named to match, into the handoff folder.
4. Include the full-resolution source media, or confirm shared storage so paths resolve.
5. Add a reference video with timecode and clip-name burn-in so the grade and the conform can both be checked against your locked picture.
6. Confirm with the colorist and the conform editor how they want the graded clips returned, codec, handles, naming, before anything is rendered back.

Get the outbound half right and the rest of the chain has something solid to build on, whether the trip back lands in your timeline or someone else’s.