[Andrew Stone]

Answers given will work but if you have XDCAM footage, I would seriously recommend spending the 20 bucks USD and get Sony’s Content Browser 2.0. Make sure you save a copy of the installer for later. It is a straight forward and application agnostic. Best of all it works flawlessly and does proper checksumming as it is saving out and translating the code to disk.

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/contentbrowser

Thank goodness it still appears to be available.

[Andrew Stone]

From the SDI Out on the BM Cinema Camera you should be able to take that video stream and simply connect it to the H.264 Pro Recorder. Note, you will be recording into a computer via the USB cable from the H.264 device.

Sounds like you have the device. If so confirm that you can successfully record from the Recorder to your computer. I would be extremely leary of doing this on a professional and/or paid shoot unless you are certain you will get a continuous uninterrupted signal. Test, test, test.

Good luck.

-Andrew

—
Steadicam & Camera Operator

[Andrew Stone]

I would counsel you to use the .mov format regardless of platform, unless you are editing in AVID and even then the MOV format is essentially NLE agnostic. One of the beauties of the nanoFlash and why I keep using it, is the files are wrapped and ready to go into any major NLE (except DaVinci Resolve on the PC – there is a plugin available that will also you to do a rewrap). They are essentially XDCAM files so you shouldn’t expect any great slowdown in processing like you would if you were doing heavy processing on an H.264 based set of files.

If you have edited XDCAM-EX files or XDCAM HD files before, that is what you can expect in terms of processing performance.

If you want to work in 8 bit (or have to), the nanoFlash is excellent for a whole bunch of reasons and the recorder is flat out reliable.

-Andrew Stone
—
Steadicam & Camera Operator

[Andrew Stone]

Ben,

You should try out “Calibrated [Q] MP4-EX” by Calibrated Software.

It is essentially a tool that allows you to rewrap the XDCAM-EX files so it can be read by DaVinci Resolve. The tool is crude but it works. If you are dealing with 100s or 1000s of clips it is a real chore to do the rewrap process.

Not sure why Sony and BM did not work together on this. Possibly Sony was focused on their new acquisition format, XAVC, at the time for their F5/55 cameras.

EDIT:

You also have to install the XD Decode software module as well with the MP4-EX module for it to work.

I did an update this morning to the most current version to see if the software workflow has improved over time. Still the same. Primitive but it works.

-Andrew Stone

—
Steadicam & Camera Operator

[Andrew Stone]

The lite version. 14 presets come up for DNxHD: 720p 8 bit to 1080p 444.

-Andrew

[Andrew Stone]

I see all the DNxHD MXF codec settings on Windows 7 in Resolve 9.1

-Andrew

[Andrew Stone]

Focus on getting TWO GPUs for the machine. You cannot double up display functionality with image processing. Quadro 4000 is good for the GUI, the card in slot one. I would suggest, the GTX 580 “Classified” version for the processing card. Lots of people having issues with Decklink cards in this mix, so as it has already been suggested go with the USB 3.0 route for your video capture. The graphics drivers and the motherboard do the work to control fan speed so you don’t have to worry too much about noise. I got a big “silent” cooler for the CPU. The machine is very quiet with just that one special cooler. I expected the GTX 580 to sound like a jet engine but it is quiet.

Don’t overthink it but do read through the Windows Configuration guide that you will find along side the installer for Resolve Lite on the BM site. It is all there and they have updated it within the past 6 months so it is current.

-Andrew Stone

[Andrew Stone]

Hi Rohit,

Thanks for the quick response. When each issue came up I performed a proper uninstall before installing anything else.

When I had the issue with the dll in 8.2.2, I did not have 9 beta installed. I tried several times to uninstall and reinstall but to no avail.

When installed 9 beta, I first performed an uninstall of 8.2.2 for fear of dependencies stomping on each other. When I got the quicktime problem, I uninstalled both Quicktime and Resolve 9 and then did a reinstall of 9 which then prompted the install of QuickTime. Still got errors.

Just did a reboot (second time since last install and now the Quicktime error is gone.

I recall a mod on this sub-forum stating that both 8.2.2 and 9 cannot live on the same machine. I have the beta working now so I am not going to tempt fate.

-Andrew

[Andrew Stone]

Solved the dll problem by moving from 8.2.2 to the 9 beta but introduced the known “Quicktime Decoder initialization failed” problem.

[Andrew Stone]

On the Mac side, I almost always converted source files to ProRes using Compressor.

Recently, after moving from FCP to Premiere Pro CS 5.5, I began using Adobe Media Encoder but it would often fail half way through long sequences being run out of Premiere on a Mac.

FFMPEG will work but frankly I do not want to be rockin the commandline while I am editing.

Right now I am seriously looking at Cineform Studio Premium as a solution for file conversion. I have heard more than a few people sing the praises of Cineform as an intermediary codec. Similar to ProRes in many regards.

The issues are going to be (unless something as changed recently) with Resolve not playing nicely with XDCAM EX material and the inability to encode to ProRes on the Windows platform with exception of the commandline app FFMPEG.

My goal is to find the shortest line from A to B without sacrificing too much quality.

-Andrew