[Glenn Sakatch]

Are you sure this is from a 5D? It should just be shooting h264, unless there is some new update running around.

If it is dvcproHD somehow, you will need to purchase the codec. Google Raylight, costs about 30 or 40 bucks i think and they might even have a trial to make sure that is your problem.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Not sure why you would try to relink an existing sequence, or copy of an existing sequence to a group of clips that should just come in when you import the AAF. Both would use the same media, but the aaf is already pointing to that media. The Relink step seems unnecessary to me.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Was going to say, “don’t assume they will work right away”

I’ve tried Neat Video on Avid DS and it doesn’t work.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Not sure what the advantage would be. All the AAF out of Resolve is, is a list to help Avid find the renders out of Resolve. Are you losing some information by going this route?

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Just watch your timetable.

BlackMagic is great at promising delivery dates, not so good at hitting them.

Resolve was 3 or 4 months late

We all know what happened with the original Cinema camera. (still hard to find up here)

Hyperdeck studio pro was about 9 months late.

Not saying it will be late, but i wouldn’t hold my breath. 🙂

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Sounds like you may have a drive issue. You say you are new to 6.5. Have you used this system successfully for any other projects yet?

Part of the problem may be that you are using the system drive for all your work. This is not the recommended path. Ideally you should have a small raid setup or at the very least an external firewire drive to handle your video. 3 tbs probably is enough for your short film, but there is more to it than
drive size. Drive speed trumps drive size every day. It is possible your internal drive isn’t fast enough.

You say the button is greyed out. Have you selected the drive for it to transcode to? Just because you see your local drive in the window isn’t enough, you have to click on it to tell Avid what the destination is. The Transcode button at the bottom will be greyed out until you do this.

couple of other things you could try.
Go to your format tab (up in the settings area) and switch your project settings to a “lighter” workload. Switch down to 720 or
even NTSC 30 and see if that helps your playback.
Remember to set this back to 1080 whenever you want to import new footage or do any transcoding, as it will affect your compression options.
Check your quality settings at the bottom of your timeline. (the square that is either yellow, green/yellow, green or green with a 10 in it. This affects your how much juice the box is needing to playback files at a high quality. You can work at an easier quality setting, but still make your final output high quality.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

This is a pretty cheap (read free) program. You would probably have to go through and log the shots first,
then do a batch capture. I’ve never used that feature on Avid, but i know it only does it on certain camera types, based on their signal. Its not really a magical, any tape can be automatically broken up procedure, unless the tapes your are using have timecode breaks at each shot.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

you say you “imported”…do you mean you AMA linked? If so, yes, transcode.

If the clip is greyed out, perhaps you are not selecting the clips properly. select 1 clip and right click on it.
consolodate/transcode should be available.

Some of the settings you are worried about (frame length 30s) are not relevant to what you are doing.
that setting is for bringing in stills, and how long of a clip the still should be.

Some of the other settings could affect how the picture looks, but shouldn’t have too much bearing on its ability to play back.

Play back is mostly connected to your drive speed, and other system specs.
What are your project settings, what drives are you using, what kind of computer. More information is usually better for people to lend opinions.

Even your camera model may help us understand what is going on.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Replied to this earlier, but it seems to have gone into the interweb waste lands, so i’ll try again.

I don’t think anyone can say Avid has been keeping up with the jones’ on their upgrades for DS. A couple of years ago we were all told that the porting of the system to 64 bit was very tough, and occupying all their resources. Since then we have gone from versions 10.1 to 10.3 to 10.5 to 11.0 to 11.02 in fairly rapid (by DS standards) succession.

We are still all screaming for an AMA workflow so that we aren’t out of luck when every new format comes out.

The Color panel upgrade in 11.0 was one of the happiest moments of my life. (how sad is that?) I love the panel. It isn’t totally customizable, but there is a lot there that can be tweaked, including workflows for non color aspects of the program, like programming DVE control to one of the balls and wheels.

The 3d DVE needs to be redone from the start. I don’t think it has changed since V7.6.
Same with the trackers. I would love to see a plainer tracker put into this box.

Many of the basic tools are the same as older versions, but honestly it was so far ahead of the grade back then, that it didn’t matter. As all the new devices come out, its time for Avid to step up to the plate again, or it will lose more customers, rather than gaining new ones.

We’ve been talking about the price point on it, but it is actually quite a bit cheaper now than it used to be, so that is a start, but perhaps it needs another reduction. (to do that they would probably have to bite the bullet and merge MC and Symphony, and lower the price of that product)

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Hi Fred, just wanted to chime in as well.
First things first, never been a fan of “fan boy” comments, so i’ll try to not have this be one.

I’ve been on DS since late ’99, and have stuck with it through thick and thin. Currently running 11.02

I have also cut on MC since ’95, so i know it extremely well also.

I started using FCP in 2006

I started getting into resolve about 2 or 3 years ago..when it dropped to 1000 dollars.

My company also has a Flame premium and we recently bought a Smoke Mac.

Just starting to look into the Fusion/DS workflow as well.

Because of my history with the products, i tend to head towards MC for the edit and DS for the finish. I am using resolve for a bunch of fun stuff, but when my back is to the wall, i color in DS, using the Euphonix panel.

I have been going through Smoke at my own pace, but to be fair to it, i need to commit a project to it, and just dive in. I find it’s color weaker than Resolve and DS, but perhaps i haven’t found all the magic yet. I’ve been struggling with some aspects of AAF workflows bringing lists in from AVID.

I find a lot of rendering taking place as well. The jury is still out on it.

As i said, I love my MC/ DS workflow. Its worth noting you get a license for MC when you buy DS, so in the grand scheme of things, that could help justify the cost. Unfortunately the reason for the MC license is the lack of AMA workflows. DS can do live links to Red footage, but many other camera types have to run through AMA to get converted. Its graphics tools are very good for creating effects and fixing many problems, or masking off areas for your color pass.
Its trackers can’t hold a candle to the resolve trackers for Color correction, but i don’t think many applications can. For effect tracking it is fairly basic, but anything major, i find it easier to go to Mocha.
and come back.

You say you are tired of the roundtriping, but i think that is the nature of the beast these days. To refuse one product over the other for that reason is perhaps not the best. I always try to pick a product suited for the job. If a particular situation comes up and i think it would be best if i jumped over to a different product for a particular fix, i wouldn’t hesitate to do so. That being said, i can stay in DS for
95 to 100 percent of all jobs i throw at it, but i know the Flame artist will say the same thing, and i’ll bet most of the Smoke artists will say the same thing.

I currently have Resolve and DS and Media Composer all running on the same box. The black magic card and the Kona cards don’t seem to mind each other at all, as long as only 1 program is open at a time.

my 2 cents.

Glenn