HELP ! Can you do feature length Docs in DaVinci, I'm experiencing pain in FCP

[Joseph Owens]

No need to start from scratch.

There is a “round trip” workflow that we have been using for some time, involving exporting a project via XML between applications – it works both ways to and from editing programs. Essentially it allows users to elect their application of choice for various phases of a project finish. Resolve has a number of pre-built protocols for accepting and exporting Edit Decision Lists.

Export your Cut as it is to Resolve. RE-constituting may or may not require some nip-and-tuck, depending on some of the editorial choices you may have made, as not all processes (but most) will be common between the Editorial timelines. Speed changes are notoriously difficult, and text/font are nearly always wrong.

Resolve should handle very large projects, but personal experience suggests creating “reels” corresponding to common sense “Acts”. This also gives you some reliability safeguarding the integrity of the project overall.

JPO

[Michael Gissing]

Both FCP and Resolve need minimum specs to be able to manage big projects. Your laptop has enough RAM and the M1 chips are OK but your codec may be a handful for the chip and changing to Resolve may not make that much difference. Also I assume your media is all on an external drive and if you have a big drive, make sure it fast enough and has enough space as that can be a bottle neck. Rest assured however that many of us manage huge feature length docos with lots of media in Resolve including grading and complex sound post so the software does handle it.

As Joseph said, you can export an xml of your current timeline which will translate your edit and many of the effects like standard dissolves so you may not need to start again. I recommend you bring all your media into your project before you import the xml so you can keep the folder structure on you drive. If you import an xml and tick the box to import media, it just grabs the media in that timeline and throws it into a single master folder.

Also you can only import timelines not whole projects so any timelines you need, create them in FCP first and untick the import media option. Resolve is pretty good at finding the media if you pre import it in all its folders. However you may find the odd file that won’t connect correctly if you have repeated file names and timecodes. This happens all the time with people shooting with DJI drones and not managing their file names before editing, allowing a lot of duplicated names.