Best editing codec for DaVinci Resolve

[Marc Wielage]

Basic workflow questions like this are tough, because there’s a lot of “it depends” situations involved.

If it were me, I’d go with ProRes 422HQ, and I’d also rename the files when necessary to reflect the shoot date and give them a unique identifier that would help prevent conform confusion later on. For example, a shot made today, called “C0001” by the camera, would instead be renamed “042818_C0001”. In a perfect world, you could also provide non-overlapping timecode for these shots to avoid the issue of every file restarting with 00:00:00:00 timecode (for cameras that don’t use time-of-day timecode). I would then treat all the 422HQ files as if they were the actual masters, then put the original camera files away as a backup just in the case of absolute emergency. True 444 10-bit cameras I would consider transcoding to ProRes 444 in original resolution, and I’d stay right on top of the debayer/decoding settings to make sure the key settings — color temp, ISO, and exposure — were all set correctly.

I would also come up with a system so that each day’s shoots were rigidly organized in a way that the editor and assistant editor (and colorist and assistant colorist) would all be able to find everything needed to put each episode together. One method is shown below:

screenshot2018-04-28at11.34.22pm.png

The book Modern Post: Workflows & Techniques for Digital Filmmakers goes into a variety of options.

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Post-Workflows-Techniques-Filmmakers/dp/0415747023/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524983818&sr=1-1

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Marc,

thanks for your expertise. I will do, as you said. It makes sense. I will switch to ProRes422HQ as my working codec. We have nearly no projects where a 4444 codec would make sense. However, I’ll keep it in mind. We use Pavtube for encoding – any suggestions for encoding?

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Marc,

thanl you for your expertise. I’ll do, as you said. It makes sense. Working codec will be ProRes422HQ. I’ll keep the 4444 codec in mind, just in case we have some arri RAW or similar.
We use P.Tube-converter for encoding. Any other suggestions on this?

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Mike Most]

>>Most of our projects are big – let’s say between 5TB – 10TB 4k data.

Everything is relative. On a number of features that we work on, that is one DAY’s worth of data….

[Hal Beery]

We are installing an editing studio with a new iMacPro and BMD Resolve. The doc we are editing is a basket of archival (digitized vhs), xdcam, Mts, dat, mp2, m2ts, Avi.

Which transcoders would you be considering?

thanks,
Hal

[Shane Ross]

EditReady by Divergentmedia.com

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Hal Beery]

Shane, et. al.,

Divergent says EditReady2 doesn’t code: DAT, AVI, or MP2.

Do you know what would code those to ProRess 422(HQ)?

tnx,
Hal