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Power Mastering with Source Timecode & The Resolve Manual
We wanted to see if there are people here who are experienced with used Resolve for laying off to tape. Specifically with source timecode assembled onto the tape. This is a common commercial workflow for final color correction where various shots are going to the VFX house. The VFX house is going to ingest the HD Tape on their Flame and conform from the EDL. As such they need source timecode with usually a minimum of 3-seconds of source timecode preroll prior to the first useable frame for each shot.
The timecode on the tape is assembled on with big jumps in code between shots. We have no problem doing this from our DaVinci 2K, however we attempted to Power Master from Resolve on this last job and it proved not only difficult, but poorly documented in the Resolve Manual in terms of step-by-step procedures.
Job Specs:
We were trying to get a 30 second commercial comprised of 25 shots with 30-frame handles laid off to an SRW-5500 with source timecode for each shot. We had 9-pin deck control over the BMD Decklink HD Extreme 3D+.A few issues/questions that came up:
1) We kept getting a video input error that would turn off the VTR and stop the process. This was finally fixed by sending a matching HD video signal (in this case 1080 59.94 Black from a signal generator).2) After a few hours of trying various methods, pouring over the Resolve Manual and this forum, we never able to get the deck to record. Resolve would get control and the record light would light up for a quick second then stop. Finally we gave up and convinced the VFX house to take a DPX sequence. This is obviously not acceptable in the long run. FYI we do tape laydowns all the time from other devices and are very comfortable with the SRW-5500.
3) Question: Is it even possible to take a colored sequence in Resolve and lay it down to tape in ONE PASS without stopping the tape and black-encoding new timecode for each shot (which would be EXTREMELY time consuming)?
4) If it is possible is seems like there should be a choice to “add pre/post roll” of X seconds to each shot (so that the receiving house logging/ingesting the tape in the future would have some address track to read on their system.)
5) In general the Resolve Manual’s info on how to do this was cursory at best. I’m a huge fan of what Blackmagic / DaVinci has done for color grading (and the look of the new manual), but I do think it could go deeper on a lot of these workflows. Was it dumbed down from the huge DaVinci manuals that used to come out prior to Blackmagic’s acquisition? The manual for our DaVinci DUI and 2K is like 350 pages (and ugly as hell I might add 🙂 Very grateful for an aesthetically pleasing manual… but would also like more technical details please.
We look forward hearing any experience / feedback on this issue.
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3 Replies
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Hi Paul,
If you have rendered files on disk, you can use the “Batch Output” function to lay off clips to the deck with handles. You can choose how many seconds of handles you want. It will lay off the files in one-go to the deck. Remember to choose Assemble mode.
If you have not rendered the files, and want to use PM (Power mastering), then you need to think about the handles. You will have to use the “Create Session with handles” function to create handles, and then that off with source timecode output turned ON.
In both these cases, your Deck will be set to regen timecode from Ext-VITC.
Regarding the loss of Deck control issues, remember to set your Decks to “AUTO” sync. If they are set otherwise, you’ll get a loop-around problem where the Deck is chasing the Decklink sync, and the Decklink is chasing the Deck. A good workaround for this is to use a sync generator to feed to both the Decklink card and the Deck itself.
Hope this help.
Regards,
Rohit -
Hi Rohit,
Just to confirm, if we use Power Mastering method to output to tape with Source Timecode output turned ON, we will need to feed the Decklink analog audio channel 1 to the LTC timecode input on the VTR, correct as this will feed timecode to the VTR. Correct ?
This is how we have done it in Resolve Linux v6 so just need to confirm that it has not changed in v7.
Thanks,
-chrispy
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You don’t need the LTC unless you are going through a device which doesn’t pass VITC timecode.
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