[Juan Juig]

Hi Shane, thank you for the reply!

In the future I most definitely will use a video mixdown. The thing is that usually when I’m exporting from Avid I receive the graded file, that doesn’t have any cuts anymore and I just add the opening credits, final credits and perhaps some FX that was rendered elsewhere. Those are usually the elements that are not DNxHD 185x and represent a little percentage of entire timeline.

Would you say that exporting the timeline as “Custom” to DNxHD 185x without doing a mixdown would yield the same (or really similar, without noticable differences) result as doing a video mixdown and exporting it “Same as source” in the specific situation that I have described?

I now also did a test: I imported the same clip with a duration of around 5 seconds as DNxHD 120 and DnxHD 185x.
– I tried exporting both of the clips on timeline as Same as source and the result is strange. Since each codec represents half of the timeline, Avid exports the clip with a different bitrate: in my case 165 Mb/s. MediaInfo doesn’t label it as anything specific but it does say it is a DNxHD codec by Avid. When I import it back to Avid it just says “Avid DnxHD Codec”.
– When I exported a whole clip as Same as source that was DNxHD 185x and just a few frames of the DNxHD 120 file I got a different result: MediaInfo labelled the exported clip as DNxHD 185x by Avid and the bitrate was in fact 185 Mb/s. However when I brought it to Avid with Source Browser it again only said “Avid DNxHD Codec”.
– Exporting only the portion of the timeline where the DNxHD 185x clip was resulted in an expected outcome: MediaInfo labelled it as DNxHD 185x by Avid and when I brought the clip back to Avid it was labelled as DNxHD 185x.

So I guess that if you use the Same as Source export option Avid will always export one ONE sort of codec with a constant bitrate. In the case of mixed codecs it will find a middle way and export it with a non-standard bitrate, but if one of the codecs presents the majority of the timeline it will label it as that particular codec.

I’ve been an editor for a while and I now believe it was definitely not ok that I sometimes didn’t use a video mixdown. But would you say that if the exported files were labelled as DNxHD 185x and I had no issues with them that those files are still ok in a technical sense? I’ll be more careful in the future for sure. 🙂

[Juan Juig]

I am using Media Composer 2018.12.8, since this is the last update that I got on my perpetual license.

You can change the default font size under Settings –> Interface. Hope these settings also aply to the 2019 version and to the FX window.

Let me know!

Juan

[Juan Juig]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond. In what way could you notice an error with the classic import, besides Avid specifically telling you that (like in my case)? Is it safe to assume, that if you get no error message during the import, the import has been truly successful and that all the information in an individual video file have been preserved?

[Juan Juig]

Thank you for the reply. I tried transcoding with Source Browser now and it seems it worked. So you are saying that transcoding this way is always more reliable? Why is the classic import function so unstable?

[Juan Juig]

Thank you everyone for your replies.

Mr. Leitner, I have to correct you though. Avid also supports 10bit monitoring. You just have to enable it in the bottom left corner. You need to switch from “full resolution” to 10 bit full resolution. It’s the yellow/green rectangle that affects only the preview quality.

Cheers,

Juan

[Juan Juig]

HI, sorry for late response. The problem you are describing has never happened to me. Also never accidentally deleted any files while working with DaVinci. I do however always keep at least 1 backup of material on a seperate external disk, just to be safe with potential situations like this and of course to have a backup, if something happens to the main drive, they’re on.

Perhaps someone else can give some insight on how DaVinci works here. If you do some research of your own, please let us know how you Resolved (:D) it.

Cheers,

Juan

[Juan Juig]

That sounds odd. Can you post a screenshot of the timeline?

[Juan Juig]

A workaround would be to firstly set the 2nd audio tracks on all the Multicam clips (on A1), copy those audio tracks, move them form A1 to A2, paste the tracks (to A1) and set them to 1st audio track.

As you said, when grouping Avid will automatically join all the tracks that were originally on A1 to a joined A1 track, all the tracks that were on A2 to a joined A2 track and so on… In your case, because you imported single track audio clips, they are by default set to A1. Would have to research if it is possible to change that.

Unless you have a high amount of different clips, the workaround should do the job in this case.

Cheers,

Juan

[Juan Juig]

On the Media Page in the Media Storage Windows there is a symbol with three dots. Click on it and select “Show Individual Frames”. This should do the trick.

Cheers,

Juan

[Juan Juig]

Thank you for your reply! Can anyone confirm for sure?