Premiere to DaVinci – Frame Resize

[Juan Salvo]

Sizing in PrP works differently than anywhere else. It seems to be absolute, not relative. Others may have better advise for you. But mine would be to ignore all the PrP sizing, and do it yourself in Resolve.

Colorist | Online Editor | Post Super | VFX Artist | BD Author

https://JuanSalvo.com

[Andrew Smith]

If you have access to fcp7 you can try ‘washing’ it through that, it worked for me and now I always bring PrP xml thru that procedure.

Just import that xml you created in PrP have a quick look at what data comes thru and then export back out from fcp and into Resolve with the standard settings (before you started trying different sizing etc).

Hope that helps.

[Jef Huey]

Or try exporting an AAF. I have had good luck with that version of “washing” a PrP project for Resolve. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Jef

[Matt Lowe]

Thank you all so much for your replies!

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get any of the resizing data to translate to FCP via XML or into Resolve via AAF.

When I import the sequence into FCP7, the unsized clips have a scale property of 100, and any resized clips have a scale property of 0, but their center point is adjusted.

I feel like this started because I started by right clicking on the clips in PrP and choosing “Scale to fit Frame”, which, unlike FCP, doesn’t adjust the scale size in the clip properties, so there is nothing to translate over.

In fact, I don’t see any property that choosing Scale to fit Frame in PrP changes, except for the fact that it resizes to fit the frame.

[John Tissavary]

Works just fine… if you used ‘scale to frame size’, NOT motion scaling, to resize the 4k R3D files on your 1080 timeline.

This is a very common mistake with Pr users, I get a lot of Pr XMLs with R3D media that was scaled using transforms instead of ‘scale to frame size’ which makes transforms useless.

You’ll have to re-create your cut with scale to frame size and then re-export an XML, or re-create transforms manually in Resolve.

John Tissavary | colorist | owner
The Post Collective

[Andi Winter]

as far as i know the reframing via aaf or xml will not translate into resolve.

but if you send it back via aaf or xml from resolve to your editing app, the editing
app will remember those settings for you and reapply them.

[John Pilgrim]

I’m curious what Premiere is doing.
Having looked at the XML that Premiere produces with the Export FCP XML (“xmeml”) as well as the XML inside a Premiere prproj file (“PremiereData”)
I suspect they may be applying a XSLT transform to generate the FCP XML from Premiere’s own internal XML.
Matt, I’d love to look at the FCP XML that Premiere is exporting for you and see if there was a way to recover the lost transforms.
Let me know.
John

[John Pilgrim]

I just made a test project with two 4K Red clips in a 1920×1080 sequence.
The first clip I scaled with the PPro Motion effect.
The second clip I scaled with Scale to Frame Size.
The FXP XML export had a standard FCP xmeml XML “Basic Motion” effect for the clip with the Motion effect scaling where it belongs at XPATH
/xmeml/project[1]/children[1]/bin[7]/children[1]/sequence[1]/media[1]/video[1]/track[1]/clipitem[2]/filter[1]/effect[1]

The clip with Scale to Frame Size had no “Basic Motion” effect in the FCP XML.

I will continue looking but on first perusal I couldn’t find anything in the FCP XML export that would indicate that the Scale to Frame Size clip should be scaled, which would make writing a scripting solution difficult/impossible.

EDIT: The Premiere prproj XML has an “ScaleToFramePolicy” attribute at XPATH
/PremiereData/VideoClip[572]/ScaleToFramePolicy[1]
that is set to 1 for the second clip. Interesting, but not much help for the FCP XML.

[Sam Bright]

Hey John,

I have completed a whole project in Premiere Pro CS6 with a number of push ins and I believe that the default to scale frame size has been ticked throughout the whole stage of the project for my clip imports RED FOOTAGE (4K). As a result when I’m now trying to give my XML for grading conform in davinci resolve, the grader cannot get the right push ins retained from my sequence. I think he was saying the clips are zoomed too far in.

Any ideas of a way to do rectify my project / XML for the colourist? Without re-sizing every clip, 1 at a time and re building the whole timeline.

Sam

[Patrick Taylor]

I’ve been having, and thus researching this problem of late, and happened on this thread. I have since found a solution.

I’m sure others have figured this out already, but I’ll post it here just in case. And if anyone sees any issues with my workaround, please post here.

I have found that setting an Input Zoom value of exactly 2 in Resolve solves the problem.

When comparing to a reference movie, inside Resolve, I have found that doing this preserves all the resizing etc that was done in Premiere perfectly. And, since I am doing an Input Zoom instead of a Node Zoom, from mostly 4k files, there is no loss in quality.

So, it seems that Premiere-generated XMLs that contain sizing info are causing footage to be zoomed out, or shrunk, by a factor of 2 inside Resolve. Not sure why this is happening, but at least it’s consistent, and can be dealt with.

-Pat Taylor