Brad Hurley
Forum Replies Created
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Yes, learning how to use the track destination controls and the auto-select buttons in the track headers is key to successful and efficient editing in Resolve. These are actually very powerful features: imagine, for example, that you want to edit a clip with synchronized audio into your timeline but you have 50 audio tracks. Soloing the track destination control for the audio track you want that audio to land in ensures that it’ll go in the right place.
The manual has a good explanation for how the track destination controls work (and how to solo a track destination control without having to manually un-select all other tracks); it also has a good explanation for how the auto-select buttons work (which governs what happens on other tracks in your timeline when you insert new clips or move existing clips around).
Another really good resource for learning this is the free Advanced Editing in Resolve 15 PDF available from the training section of the DaVinci Resolve website. Pretty much everything in there still applies to Resolve 16 unless you use the cut page.
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Hi Brian — I think the NEX 7 actually takes better video than the NEX 6, which is the camera I have. I tried shooting some with mine today and it’s not as bad as I remembered; I think I was using a not-so-great lens on it before. I’m using a cinema camera these days so it was actually kind of liberating to shoot video on the NEX 6 with autofocus and image stabilization, neither of which are available on my cinema camera.
I’m really glad the fix worked for your archives!
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Yay! No need to thank me, thank Google. ???? When you said you had an older Mac, it made me suspect you might still have Perian on there, which is no longer needed but was included in older Mac systems to allow Quicktime to play audio in .mts files.
As an aside, my stills camera is the younger sibling to your NEX7, the NEX6. I love it for stills and have no plans to upgrade, although it takes perfectly awful video and I never use it for that. Great camera, though.
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Okay, after a bit of sleuthing online, here are two things to try:
1. Go to your system prefs, and see if you have Perian installed. If so, click on that, then click on the Uninstall button.
2. If you don’t have Perian, there may still be a leftover plugin from Perian that is preventing the audio from playing. From the “Go” menu in the Finder, go to Library > Audio > Plug-ins > Components and see if there is a file there called a52Codec.component. If so, delete it.
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Hi Brian — what happens if you drag a copy of one of those files off whatever disk it’s on and into another hard drive or even just another folder on your computer? Don’t move the file, copy it by holding down the option key while you drag it.
Now open the copy from its new location with Quicktime and see if the audio plays. Import it into FCPX and see if the audio plays. If so, there’s your solution: copy all those files to a different folder and then import them from there into Final Cut.
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“These situations illustrate the benefit of using only “lean libraries”, ie media and cache kept only outside the library. That way it’s easy to duplicate for backup at a file level.”
Totally agree. I keep multiple backups of my original media, but my working copies are on a RAID 5 (which I back up, since RAID is not a backup) and I don’t copy media into the library. I have another set of media backups kept offsite, and then for long-term offsite archiving I will be using Amazon Glacier.
I hope your tips work for the original poster!
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What happens if you right-click on one of the libraries (control-click if you have a one-button mouse) and choose “Show Package Contents?” Do you see folders there? One of them should be called Original Media. If you can get into that folder you should be able to retrieve your media files even if the library is corrupted.
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See https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208658
Captions can be used for subtitles and you can even export .srt files (you can also import .srt). By using roles, you can even create alternate captions in multiple languages for exporting different versions of a project for different audiences.
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Hi Ray,
Sorry if my response was confusing: “Resolve” refers to a different program, DaVinci Resolve, it’s another NLE (non-linear editor) like Final Cut, Premiere, Vegas, AVID, and others.
You could download the free version of Resolve from Blackmagic Design’s website, import just two clips (one on either side of your jump cut) and apply the “Smooth Cut” transition to see how it looks. That would be the cheapest way to experiment, although depending on your computer it might not work very well (DaVinci Resolve is very GPU-hungry and doesn’t work very well on most laptops unless they have a powerful GPU).
You’d probably find Final Cut easier to use. If someone is currently doing editing for you in Final Cut, why don’t you ask him or her to try applying the “Flow” transition to one of those jump cuts and see how it looks?
As far as I know, all NLEs use this same optical flow technique to “morph” a jump cut. None of them can perform miracles; I’ve had good luck with it in some situations and not so good luck in others. I filmed an event last year where one of my interviewees had a bad stutter; he was demonstrating something while talking so I couldn’t just cut out the stutters and put b-roll over the jump cuts. In most cases the sections I cut out were a bit too long for optical flow to do its magic and the result wasn’t great.
In your case, although your jump cuts are actually being created by different takes, it might work. I would first ask the person who’s doing your editing for you. You could compare with DaVinci Resolve by downloading the free version as I mentioned above.
If you want to post links to clips here, any of us on the forum could try applying those transitions to see how they work. Others here might have other suggestions to offer too!
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“Ridiculous question, but what is a test machine?”
That refurbished 2014 Mac Mini is my daily personal computer, the one I use for email, web browsing, office apps, etc.; I have a separate (also refurbished) top-of-the-line 2013 Mac Pro that is dedicated for my audio and video work. The Mini is more energy-efficient and I bought it a few years before I got the Mac Pro. I have Final Cut and DaVinci Resolve (and a few audio DAWs) on the Mini, which I use mainly for following along with tutorials, testing plugins, or reviewing new footage without having to fire up my production computer and RAID. That’s all I meant by “testing machine.” Final Cut runs fine on my Mini, but I’m working only with HD footage and it’s all shot in Prores HQ. DaVinci Resolve 16 struggles on my Mini, but that’s to be expected with its specs; it works fine on my Mac Pro (I mainly work in Resolve, not Final Cut).
I don’t think Final Cut will work on your 2010 notebook and you should upgrade that machine anyway as I doubt it’s getting security updates anymore. I agree with the recommendations to get an iMac 5K.