[Glenn Sakatch]

your widescreen matte may be the biggest barrier for smooth playback..depending on the length of your sequence.

Is it an actually matte key, or are you just using a film mask effect? I think a film mask should be much easier on the system.

Any DNX format on a decent box in Avid should run pretty smoothly.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

you could put the clean map on V1, the map with the line on V2, add an alpha output on V2, and animate a power window to expose the line on V2. This would allow a much more dynamic line to be drawn.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

It gets very confusing with all the transformations you are going through to totally follow along.

So you are taking a file that probably should be tagged as full levels into resolve, and you are outputting it as mxf as auto, which is typically going to get tagged as video, and it appears as though it is. You tried turning off auto, and video looked the same.

You might want to check in Resolve the clip attributes, and see how resolve is viewing the clip. Switch it from auto to video or full and which one changes the image. Perhaps Resolve is interpreting it as video instead of Full.

“I can only get the flat transcode to match the AMA clip, if I change it’s source settings to add the rec 709 Lut and then the “Levels scaling (full range to video levels)”

I’m not sure how a flat transcode out of resolve would need a 709 lut added in Avid. Flat usually means it still looks …flat.
Are you saying when you bring your flat transcode into Avid it already has a 709 look to it?

What are your camera raw settings set to in Resolve? Sounds like you have some metadata being added somewhere along the way that might be leading to the issue. Do you have a view lut or anything like that going on in the resolve color management?

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

What are you transcoding these to in Resolve? You said the originals were prores444s, but I don’t think you said what you were transcoding them to to bring back into Avid.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Thats my point on auto…it will pick either video or full, based on the codec you select. (444 is supposed to be full i believe)

My point is rather than try to figure out what it chose, choose one for it and then you at least know how it was rendered out. If it is rendered out at auto, i have a 50/50 chance of guessing which tranform to choose in other programs.

As everyone is finding out on, going from one program to another is not always a perfect science.

I have become custom to adding a splash of bars and a greyscale ramp to the head of any file that has to go from Resolve to Avid. I find DNX444 is bang on. I find mxf files are so close that they might as well be bang on. Pretty much any other quicktime is a shot in the dark.

Last month i was going from Resolve to DS, and ended up outputting AVIs to get a perfect match.

As for Avids color interpretation setup, i’m always finding flaws with it, and just cleaning it out.

I am surprised you would need any transformation for the rendered clip out of Resolve (did you say it was 444?)

Perhaps try a couple different codecs, again with bars and ramp at the head, to see how they are affected in Avids world.

Is your Avid project RGB? That can affect what you are seeing as well.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

If footage doesn’t look right in Avid,

1-check your import settings (full vs legal) and
2- if you are linking, check to see what transformations Avid has applied in the source settings dialog page.
(more times than not, i have to go and delete all those transformations)

In Resolve, i always set either Video or Full instead of Auto…i want to know what it is going out as. Helps with step 1 above.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

If you want to work that way, just output an uncompressed quicktime, and use that as your source in Resolve.
Output an edl, and use that to cutup the quicktime in Resolve.

I’m not a premiere user, but my guess is the renders you are talking about have no naming convention that resolve is going to be able to use to relink to. They are probably a bunch of files with 32 numbers in their name.

In theory you could manually bring that media in, and rebuild it all yourself…but why bother?

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

Have you tried pointing avid to the original prores files? I have had (very little, but some) success going to premiere, but you should be pointing Avid to the same media that premiere was using to get this any where near close to working.

Once it is in Avid, (if it gets in properly) then you can either work with the prores, or transcode.
“its part of our workflow” sometimes workflows have to change and evolve based on situations at hand. You’ve already got the prores files, why not just use them?

If you need to go through Resolve, you could in theory, bring in your premiere xml, and output a new aaf that can be brought into Avid. This is not part of the Avid roundtrip setup, but is achieved through the export new aaf command.

I have had spotty success with this as well. As always, if premiere is doing a bunch of frame rate conversions, expect to manually re-edit those clips into your show.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

I would only point out that (with no knowledge of your box) your re-transcode might be totally unnecessary.

I just finished a feature lenght movie that was shot Arri Raw, transcoded by the DIT in the field to Prores, and supplied to me for editing. We had to do our own audio sync. I just linked to the prores files and started cutting. This was a 24 day shoot, with approx 4tbs of proxys. My pegassys had no issues playing back the footage, as linked media.
(i should also point out i’m working in a windows box)

You should do up an upgrade to the latest Avid before starting the project, as linking is much improved in newer versions.
Also, if you have the space, (since v7 i think) you can just do a fast import of the prores footage, and it will basically rewrap the media to prores mxf, which is pretty fast, again depeding on your system. I think fast import for prores will only work on a mac.

Finally, be aware that the audio that was synced in Resolve will have lost its relation to the original audio recordings when you bring it into Avid. If you are planning on sending this to a sound house, and they are going to expect to rebuild using the audio recordings instead, you might want to do the audio syncing in Avid, then you can relink the audio files at the end before sending out to the audio house. If everyone is fine using the audio from the prores, then you are good to go.

Glenn

[Glenn Sakatch]

We used to shoot DVCpro 720 all the time, and digitize and work at 1080. Nobody could tell the difference.

Glenn