Reference movie issue

[Juan Salvo]

Ive never expected resolve to work with reference movies… Am surprised it works at all. Wondering are all the parts of your ref movie in media pools available to resolve?

[John Heagy]

Ref movies are very important in our workflow. I allows us to move huge files virtually across our Xsan. We create files in one place and publish them out as ref movies keeping the originals safe and sound.

The files that do and don’t work in Resolve all open in other QT apps, so access to the referenced files is fine. The difference is that Resolve can’t “see” ref movies with multiple referenced files. They don’t load as offline but with black video in Resolve.

Thanks
John Heagy

[Joseph Owens]

[Juan Salvo] “Ive never expected resolve to work with reference movies…”

Me, either. The same with Apple COLOR — reference movies are a big no-no, since the relative addressing gets lost in the same manner as nested sequences cannot be represented inside that model. Where an application expects a direct address to actual media, it cannot cope with another pointer to another pointer.

It sounds like the shared storage needs to be expanded into a universally accessible database, so the project references can find the actual media. In a way, this is a bit like exporting a reference file to an external system that doesn’t even hold the originals, so the reference itself would be invalid.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[John Heagy]

“[Juan Salvo] “Ive never expected resolve to work with reference movies…”

[Joseph Owens] Me, either. The same with Apple COLOR…”

Ok, but I do. Reference movies are integral to our workflow plus they save us time and space. It does take some discipline to maintain the links but, with a large shared storage infrastructure, as long as the referenced files don’t move the ref movie will always work.

A self contained movie is no different than a ref movie except that it points to itself. This may be why a ref movie with a single referenced file works.

Given Resolve works with QT files I’m surprised it doesn’t work. Every app that I’ve encountered that supports QT files has never drawn a distinction between the two.

It would seem to be a easy fix as all the required paths are included in the ref movie.

John Heagy

[Juan Salvo]

[John Heagy] “It would seem to be a easy fix as all the required paths are included in the ref movie. “

Yes, but Resolve doesn’t use these file paths. it uses it’s own relative paths that relate to the media pools available. That’s why I found it surprising that they work at all.

[John Heagy]

“John Heagy] “It would seem to be a easy fix as all the required paths are included in the ref movie. ”

[Juan Salvo]Yes, but Resolve doesn’t use these file paths. it uses it’s own relative paths that relate to the media pools available. That’s why I found it surprising that they work at all.”

Then It’s encouraging that a ref file with only a single referenced file works. If it was expecting the data in the ref file to be media, it would fail.

Resolve does “see” the correct duration, so it is respecting the .mov wrapper – now it just needs to look past the first referenced file to all the others and construct the entire file.

I’d love it if someone could confirm the single vs multiple reference file issue. My first post provides the simple instructions.

John Heagy

[Eric Johnson]

[John Heagy] “We create files in one place and publish them out as ref movies keeping the originals safe and sound”

I know this is not the answer you’re looking for, but If I understand the above sentence correctly, can’t you just give your DaVinci access to the location where your originals are?

And if not that specifically, why not give the station Read access to that volume so the files can be transferred locally to the DaVinci?

I understand that you have a system in place, but wanting the software to do something that it doesn’t want to do isn’t going to get your files color corrected….

[Juan Salvo]

I can confirm what I’ve known for a couple of years. That resolve doesn’t accept ref movies. I’ve made the mistake of trying more than a few times on various versions, the fact that it accepts single referenced movies is a fluke. And probably has more to do with the way QuickTime is referencing the movie than with any hope of davinci support.

[Joseph Owens]

[John Heagy] “The difference is that Resolve can’t “see” ref movies with multiple referenced files. They don’t load as offline but with black video in Resolve.”

This is Resolve’s gentle way of notifying the user that what they’re doing is invalid. It should be interpreted as “yes, we know there is something out there, but what it is is not useable in this application, so here is a placeholder”.

A reference movie can and should contain everything that can be added to a Final Cut timeline — media, generators, transitions, filters, and a very long list of other things that are absolutely not going to fly in Resolve. It is very much like attempting to imbed a nested sequence, which will cause Resolve to reject the project, not even a nice black placeholder.

Absolutely, Quicktime has to support all of this. Resolve supports some of Quicktime’s components, but it is not itself Quicktime, in that it also needs to interpret a lot of other media descriptors that are distinctly *not* QT.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[John Heagy]

[John Heagy] “We create files in one place and publish them out as ref movies keeping the originals safe and sound”
“

[Eric Johnson] “I know this is not the answer you’re looking for, but If I understand the above sentence correctly, can’t you just give your DaVinci access to the location where your originals are?
“

That’s one example of how we use ref movies. We also create original files as ref movies.

Everybody seems to think DaVinci excluded ref movies. Maybe, but until I here otherwise I see it as an unintended limitation that just needs to be fixed.

P2 files are referenced files and I assume they load in DaVinci.

John Heagy