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AVID Resolve roundtrip
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i would just use the automatic duck to send the whole thing to FCP……then send to color! make it lovely , send it back!…..why don’t things get any simpler than this? oh yeah, because tcp and color were made for each other…..
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kim krause
“i would just use the automatic duck to send the whole thing to FCP”How will you manage to do that?
Joseph was using MXF and unless this footage is converted to some sort of Quicktime wrapped DNxHD, FCP can’t read those files because it can’t read MXF wrapped video/audio. Besides that, FCP/Color will be gone in a year or two and so will FCPX. Best to spend some time learning Avid workflows since a large part of the market is going to switch.
twitter.com/illyalaney
nextLAB Mobile
SpeedGrade DI
Resolve
da Vinci 8:8:8 Renaissance
Color
Truelight -
joe mentioned aaf and i have on many occasions dragged avid projects into final cut using automatic duck and then sent it to color for grading and then after sending it back had fcp make me a new avid project as well….whats your problem? are you just scared to admit that color still has some merit and that despite its shortcomings there are still things that fcp and color can do that no one has managed to make as simple.and before you go off at me about davinci, etc…..i am fully aware of color and fcp being dumped by apple. that’s just the way things go and i am sitting on the edge waiting to jump into davinci…however for most of my projects and clients i see no advantage…..for instance, one project i am working on, i am sending color project files to my client so they can render it on their side and link it back to final cut. this is only possible because everyone who has fcp also has color. i don’t have to render out shows and copy huge files to drives and send them half way across town anymore. i just email the color project and i’m done. try doing that with davinci! oh wait ya can’t because not everyone has resolve on their mac! oops….
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kim krause
“joe mentioned aaf and i have on many occasions dragged avid projects into final cut using automatic duck and then sent it to color for grading and then after sending it back had fcp make me a new avid project as well….whats your problem?”FCP and Color can’t read native MXF files so you must have been using something else. AAF has nothing to do with what codec you’re using.
twitter.com/illyalaney
nextLAB Mobile
SpeedGrade DI
Resolve
da Vinci 8:8:8 Renaissance
Color -
you don’t read very well….joe mentioned that he tried AAF which is an avid format that automatic duck can send to FCP. once in fcp you can easily go into color, in case you hadn’t noticed. from color back to FCP. then using automatic duck export, create an avid project that you can open in avid. i have done this many many many times and it works flawlessly……don’t take my word for it tho…try it for yourself or ask around before you show off your lack of knowledge…..sheesh!
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Most of our shows are Avid, so my studio uses a variety of AAF and custom ALE workflows with Terabytes of Alexa/Epic footage everyday. : )
I should have made my last post more clear. I’ve been using Automatic duck since 2005-2006 and I know for a fact that even if you rebuild the Avid sequence in FCP using an AAF, you can’t relink the clips in FCP to MXF files and therefore can’t grade and edit off of the original MXF files created in Avid. The keyword here is MXF. Maybe that’s where you’re getting confused.
Automatic Duck “discards” the MXF container and re-wraps the Avid video and audio into Quicktime so FCP can read those files. This is not an instantaneous process and in the case of online quality DNxHD codecs, it takes a significant chunk of time. Quicktime re-wrapping is also buggy and can produce weird gamma issues with Avid codecs.
The original post was about working with MXF files, not re-wrapped Avid codecs, so being able to recreate an Avid sequence in FCP is useless if the intention is to work directly and quickly with the MXF files. Either way, re-wrapping Avid media or creating Avid Quicktime codecs to online an entire show or feature is a huge waste of time unless the client really wants to work that way and is willing to pay for it.
Like I said in my earlier response to you:
“Joseph was using MXF and unless this footage is converted to some sort of Quicktime wrapped DNxHD, FCP can’t read those files because it can’t read MXF wrapped video/audio.”twitter.com/illyalaney
nextLAB Mobile
SpeedGrade DI
Resolve
da Vinci 8:8:8 Renaissance
Color -
Stepping back into the original conversation…
yes, MXF is the trick, and no, Automatic Duck is a non-starter here. Been down that road, and Quicktime is a non-starter as well. I have an AVID-MXF AVC project (series) and I am massively disheartened by the lack of insight into this workflow which seems to be confined to “speculation” and workarounds.
So, am I correct in assessing that there is, in fact, no return trip out of Resolve to AVID? Why… if this is the case, is there literature taking about it, or is this a classic Microsoft bait-and-switch that states, yes, you can do it, but how, we don’t know? Its “their” (the other manufacturer’s) fault it doesn’t work.
My client is not interested in re-cutting the show, for whatever reason (imagine)… I’m not that excited by the prospect, either. “Send To… Final Cut” its not.
The other issue is that I cannot seem to be able to see the actual cut of the show in any of the master/source/color/conform windows and so on and so forth sort-modes no matter how many Record/Target/Source modes I toggle — its always the whole shot flash-to-flash in all timelines. I would dearly love to be able to just see the show as cut — like the project looked when we exported the AAF from the AVID. I really really don’t care about the handles. This is not even tape-to-tape mode, its rushes. I thought I would be correcting a finished episode, not the entire source clip bin. I would really prefer to be able to grade in-context as-edited.
I’m probably missing something rather basic, but reading the manual 4 times with the application in front of me, pressing all the buttons is obviously not enough.
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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We ended up bailing out on our workflow that got Resolve footage back into the Avid linked to a timeline.
We were having too many issues with files not linking properly and simply don’t have the time to hand hold the process that much with episodic work piling up. I never did like the idea of changing tape IDs anyway.In the end, we’re sending one MXF file out to Resolve for the entire episode and using an AAF file to represent the cuts. On the timeline we mix it down to one track and then use the Symphony’s reformat tool pan & scan with subdivide to create the matching edits into the mixdown track. This then shows up in Resolve exactly as it would if we used the original MXF media through AAF except we’ve lost the handles and are dealing with much less media.
From Resolve we’ll render out one file representing the colour corrected mixdown track and bring that back into the avid. It mirrors our traditional tape to tape process, with one video track coming back in, which is what we’re used to dealing with anyway.
Not what I was hoping for but still way more economical for our series budgets and I trust the workflow will improve over time.
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How did they label the Tapes in Avid? The Tape column should actually be relabeled as Source since everyone and their momma is using tapeless cameras now. The key to a “solid” roundtrip is making sure everything in Avid is set up right in the first place and typically each camera roll/card or file should have it’s own unique tape name to prevent any timecode conflicts. This problem arises more often when using DSLR footage though.
If their tape names are bunk you’ll have to modify the source/tape name. After a Master Clip is linked to a file, you have to “unlink” the clip in order to re-label the source/tape name and the only way I know how to do that is by holding Shift + Control and RIGHT clicking on a clip then selecting unlink. I think it’s Shift + Control, but it could be Shift + Command. I won’t have Avid in front of me until later tonight(the sweet dailies Graveyard Shift) but I’m sure you can figure it out by button mashing.
Hopefully Avid MC 6 will make relinking a whole lot easier.
twitter.com/illyalaney
nextLAB Mobile
SpeedGrade DI
Resolve
da Vinci 8:8:8 Renaissance
Color -
We receive consolidated edits from an offline setup out East for conform, grade and package here for commissioning broadcasters and int. distribution.
In this tapeless (XDCam) series, having a number in the tape column is hit & miss when the projects arrive, so there is clean up work that could be done here if we had time but we don’t. The method we’ve used to have files relink is by putting all master clips (source and Resolve renders) into one bin and modifying all tape names to be identical, then relinking the old sequence to the Resolve renders. Seemed odd to me but it works although I don’t like the idea of changing anything on the source master clips (even if we don’t have tape #s in there)
Other then mixdowns not linking back up, we see approx 10% of shots not linking correctly back in the Avid. Not huge but still time consuming to pin point them and manually sort it out. All i/o with Resolve is with DNxHD mxf files.We also noticed that Resolve seemed to blow away the reel ID information in the clip metadata when it rendered out. We tried a few different settings but didn’t find one that preserved the incoming ID information through to rendered file. If you know of a way to do this I’d love to hear it.
As I said previously, working with one long file for the entire show seems to be the sweet spot for us at this time due to time constraints on the show.
I’m sure if we had more time to fiddle we could find a way for this to work better than it currently does, but the series landed only a week after we had Resolve up & running so we’ve been through trial and error on the fly while trying to maintain schedule.I am hopeful that with Blackmagic & Avid collaborating more, a thorough round trip will be developed. If you have a cleaner way for round tripping I’m all ears!
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