-
Grading After VFX and Compositing
Hello everyone. I am pretty new to DaVinci Resolve and recently I started to edit a music video which I have shot on 5D MKII. I do this kind of project for the first time and I decided my workflow will be the followoing.
I convert everything to Cineform 10bit, edit them in AVID Media Composer, export the sequence to AE, render them as JPEG sequence import to PFTrack after which I will continue in C4D and and Realflow and only after that I will enter all the data to my previously imported sequence. After I have the sequence with all added VFX I want to grade that in DaVinci Resolve Lite. So the question is what is the best way to export all that into Davinci? Is the only way to render it as cineform footage or not ?Thank you very much in advance.
-
8 Replies
-
Depending on every shot your grading will b different. Davinci has a powerful scene detection tool, but is going to be easier for you if you go to grade with an XML or EDL file and your footage.
Why do you have to transcode all your 5D footage to something else to edit in AVID?
Try to simplify your steps, do your edit, send your VFX clips to the software you need, then put the VFC clip back in your AVID timeline and export the XML or EDL to get to Davinci for final grading.Axel Arzola
http://www.facebook.com/arzolafilm
https://www.youtube.com/user/axelandkretel -
I though ttranscoding it to 10 bits will help me to get better grading quality. And if I do the VFX and then put back to Avid will my graphic elements go there as well ?
Sorry if my question sounds stupid I have never tried it .
Thank you very much. -
HI, As you have an Avid, consider using DNxHD for your Avid and Resolve I/O. It’s a good codec and quite manageable. If all your VFX shots can be rendered or transcoded to this format then you can place them in the Avid or Resolve as you need.
Peter -
Thank you so much for your help. Just one more question. Does the Avid install DNxHD codec automatically or I have to download it from their website? And will it convert to 10bit so grades are higher quality ?
Basically what shall I do to get the nicest grade ? -
The quality of the grade comes with the original file you get from the camera. Converting to DNxHD codec is only to give your AVID something easier to handle, but the quality will never be increased by the transcoding you do.
If your computer can handle the h264 files from the 5D without getting too slow, then you don’t even need to transcode anything.Axel Arzola
http://www.facebook.com/arzolafilm
https://www.youtube.com/user/axelandkretel -
Sorry I meant quality of the grade, because I was thinkin it is better to transcode to 10bit so when you play with the colorsyou have more bits to grade.Please correct me if I am wrong.
Thank you very much in advance. -
You can’t have more bits than your original acquisition format. Since you are capturing in an 8bit format (h.264 from DSLR), th extra 2 bits in DNxHD, Cineform, DPX, etc… are wasted. Resolve grades in a full floating point space, so once you bring an 8 bit file into Resolve, for instance, any operations you do are in floating point, rather than integer space.
That said, h.264 is a crap file format for post. Period. It’s long GOP, not frame accurate, doesn’t have real timecode, etc…, so converting to something else (DNxHD mxf or QT if you’re working Avid) and giving it some jammed timecode would be my choice of workflow.
DNxHD is part of the Avid installation, depending on what version you’re running (i.e. how up-to-date, not MC vs. Symphony).
John Tissavary | colorist | owner
The Post Collective -
Thank you so much for the information, it is a great help for me. I just read about the bits making difference on the Cineform website and some other forums and that is the reason for thinking that way. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge now I will start my project knowing every step in detail.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up