This page details the Dragonframe to DaVinci pipeline, as used in the making of stop motion animations. First... a few definitions:

Dragonframe

Dragon frame is used in the making of stop motion animation. It is software that connects with a camera, usually a high-end camera such as the school's Canon 70Ds. The output of Dragonframe is an image sequence of raw files. In the case of the Canon Camera, this will be in the form of CR2 files (Canon's camera raw files).

Camera raw and DNGs

Camera raw refers to the unprocessed visual data captured directly from a digital camera's sensor. The advantage of raw files is that they contain the full bit depth and dynamic range of the sensor's data. This makes color editing far more effective and flexible than (for example) a standard jpg or tiff.

Anoyingly, every camera maker has its own version of camera raw. This can make editing them a bit of a hassle... not all apps support all raw formats. Certainly, DaVinci can't even open the latest version of Canon raw (CR3) and does a poor job with CR2 files.

Adobe has addressed this by creating the Digital negative (DNG) format. This is an open source camera raw format that is broadly supported. Importantly, it can be opened natively in DaVinci without any issues.

DaVinci and RAW

DaVinci has limited support for RAW image sequences as would be produced in a standard stop motion workflow. As stated, it cannot open CR3 files and it's handling of CR2 files is a bit buggy. Although it is possible to work directly with CR2 image sequences, it is probably safer and easier to convert them to DNG image sequences.

From Dragonframe to DaVinci

The path from Dragon Frame to DaVinci is relatively simple:

Getting DNGs from Dragonframe

Download and install Adobe's DNG convertor from this page.
Find and note where on your computer it is installed (likely in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe DNG Converter).
From Dragonframe, you need to acquire the DNG files. Dragonframe and Adobe DNG Converter play quite well together.
- In Dragonframe, go to File/Export Movie (Figure 1).
- In the Export Image Sequence dialogue box, select High-resolution RAW.
- Un-tick Crop to aspect ratio and also Un-tick Use push-in mask.
- In the Format drop-down menu, select DNG.
- Select Settings and from the dialogue box that follows, select Adobe DNG Convertor as your DNG Convertor. You will then have to navigate to Adobe DNG Convertor and select it.
- Select a destination folder and press Export.

From Dragonframe, you need to acquire the high-resolution jpg files. This is similar to the preceding process (File/Export Movie). I'm sure that you are clever enough to figure it out.

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Figure 1. Dragonframe's Export Image Sequence dialogue box

Getting DNGs into DaVinci

You will now have a folder full of jpg and a folder full or DNGs. There are many ways to color manage DNG files, but probably the easiest is to do it on a per-clip basis. Here's how:

Open DaVinci and create a new project. Keep the resolution at HD (1920 x 1080) and the frames per second at 24.
Drop your jpg image sequences onto the timeline in their desired order.
Drop the DNG image sequences in the same order on a track above (or below) the jpgs. The DNG image sequence will not feature the same crop as the jpg image sequence. Using the Zoom and Position values of the Transform controls, get the DNG image sequence to match the crop of the jpg image sequence. Once you have done it to one clip, the same crop values can be copy/pasted to other clips via Paste Attributes.

Color grading in DaVinci's Color page

Your DNG image sequence may look significantly darker than the jpg image sequence. Don't panic. To color grade:

Go to the Color page. Select a DNG image sequence and press the Camera Raw button to bring up the camera raw settings.
In the camera raw settings, change Decode Using from Project to Clip. Once you do this, the colour adjustment settings will become active. These settings will be pretty much identical to those in Adobe Lightroom. These settings should mostly be used for primary color grading, i.e. correction. The main correction tasks will be to
1. Correct the tonal distribution (under/over exposure). For this use:
  - Shadows: This will brighten shadows. Use this before touching the exposure value.
  - Highlights should be used only after you have activated Highlight Recovery.
  - Exposure. Use this only if the preceding sliders don't succeed.
2. Correct the white balance. For this use the Color Temp slider.
Once you have applied a satisfactory primary color adjustment, the same adjustment can be applied to other clips. For this, use the Gallery panel. Instructions here.
Secondary color adjustment can be done using daVinci Color's advanced tools. Instructions here.

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Figure 1. The basic controls of camera RAW