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Failure to import Black Magic Raw from avid media Composer to Davinci resolve
Hello!
I work on a Television series, where we have filmed on braw 4k(4096X2304 ) 16bit, 2 cam. We have made proxies (DXNHD35) in Davinci Resolve, with name prefixes, and imported them into avid media files. This works, and in early roundtrip tests, we have managed to relink to the source files in resolve. But now when we try, we seem to fail.The clips are synched and grouped in Avid media composer, sometimes I’ve incremented the timecode of one of the camera like 2-4 frames because that camera loses a few TC-frames for some reason.
What we do: I export an AAF from Avid Media Composer (2018) and import in into resolve. If I chose automatically search for files to link, it relinks to some of the proxies, when I try to relink them to source it don’t seem to work. I have also tried to throw in the source files into the media pool and relink to that, then the AAF automatically relink to the source camera files. I’ve tried changing the import settings in the generic options in the settings menu. but without any real results.
What happens: Some files relink perfectly, some clips relink at the exact place, but on the wrong camera track (it relinks camera 2 instead of 1 and wise versa), sometimes it links to a completely different clip, and sometimes it does not link at al, complaining about nested clip and replace that clip with an red offline one it calls “black”, I think those clips are grouped. Not all clips that have an altered timecode are wrong and not every clip that have been relinked wrong have an alteredTC. The same thing happens wether I link to source files of proxies.
I’m using Davinci resolve 16.2.2.012, and avid media composer V: 2018.10.0.49715.0, we’re sitting on an iMac pro with macOS High Sierra Version 10.13.6..and the files files are filmed with Black magic Ursa mini PRO 4.6k.
Does anyone know what the problem can be, or how to continue my trouble shooting?
Thanks!
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7 Replies
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Noted NYC colorist Dario Bigi has an excellent document for an Avid -> Resolve workflow at this link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hf7gulqzlvoepxp/Avid%20Prep%20to%20Conform%20%28FILM%2912_16.pdf?dl=0
I think this will give you most of the information you need. As a general rule, we warn clients to flatten their edit timeline to no more than 2 video tracks if possible, commit any multicam decisions, know that varispeed and/or speed ramps do not generally come through AAF or XML edit lists, and ideally you would relink to the original media (not proxy media) prior to making the AAF coming in to Resolve.
I generally have pretty good luck with Avid projects coming in to Resolve, and the handful of shots that don’t make it, I just drop in manually. No conform is seamless, because XML and AAF can only go so far. Having a reference video of the entire project with burn-in source timecodes and source file names is extremely useful.
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You have to commit your multi cam clips in Avid before you can make an AAF.
Glenn
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Hi! Good advice! we’ve been troubleshooting some more, what it seems to be, is that since resolve has renamed the clips, is seems hard to find the originals, this is a bit weird, since it has only created prefixes to ther names, but I think the reason is that we didn’t set it to create reelnames properly (I didn’t set up the roundtrip project but rather took it over from the DIT). If we renamed a few clips it did find them directly. And no, commit to multicam didn’t change this. So is there a work around to this? Or do I have rename every single file in the project? Have we managed to get resolve to cut it’s own links between the source files and the proxies it created?
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If your proxys weren’t created properly in the first place, there is no easy solution.
I personally would go back to Avid, link in the camera raw, and start looking for some pieces of info I could link with in Avid. Failing that, it becomes a lot of manual edit replacements.
Glenn
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I guess in a few more years AI will do shot recognition and find files that have been renamed.
At least you have the joy that the renaming during the proxy creation was a simple prefix. Here’s what I would do to fix this mistake. Using file rename software, add the same prefix to a copy of the camera originals. I hope the prefix is fixed per folder so you can batch add that prefix.
Pre import the renamed files into Resolve so it doesn’t go looking for proxies by unticking the automatically import files option when you load the AAF. Unless you have made the fatal mistake of not matching timecode with the proxies, you should get a perfect relink (well it is so rarely 100% perfect).
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I do agree that relinking in avid would be the best solution, but it don’t seem to work, probably because of the same reasons that resolve can’t relink. So now I’m more or less set on the idea that I have to rename everything.
Do you reccomend any specific renaming-software? Thanks for all the help! -
This is the one I use. It’s for Windows https://www.advancedrenamer.com/
I don’t have a Mac recommendation
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