[Marc Wielage]

Jason Bowdach has a good webinar on how to optimize Resolve performance on different systems over on MixingLight.com:

https://mixinglight.com/color-tutorial/performance-optimization-in-davinci-resolve-webinar/

The reality is that 4K Raw is tough anywhere. Regular 4K is demanding. You can get it to work to a point by using Optimized Media and tweaking the Performance settings in Resolve. Another method would be to use proxy transcodes for the edit, and then finish on a more powerful system and relink back to the camera originals.

[Marc Wielage]

[Michael Reed] “Umm, that site seems to have templates for After Effects and so on but as far as I know (and correct me if I’m wrong) there are not templates on that site for Resolve ???”
I’m told that MotionVFX is in the process of porting a lot of their transitions, titles, and effects over to Resolve & Fusion over the next few months.

[Marc Wielage]

It’s a $2000 laptop. It’s not going to be good enough to use for color correction, if that’s your question. It might work fine for dailies or something like that.

If you used an external color-managed calibrated display, it’s possible the system could work to a point for color. But I would only trust the laptop screen itself for a GUI display, nothing more.

[Marc Wielage]

[Mike Thomas] “Is “nesting” something specific to Vegas or is there something similar in Resolve that I haven’t discovered yet? If not then how do I work on 40-60 individual scenes then put them all together at the end?”
You should read “Advanced Editing in DaVinci Resolve,” which is available for free on BMD’s website:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/training

This is pretty mandatory reading for anybody moving to Resolve from another editing platform.

[Marc Wielage]

2GB of RAM will be extremely tough.

[Marc Wielage]

[Robert Withers] “I try to use the Resolve “manual” but it’s a multi-pagen pdf that seems to permit only single-word searches. Like I can search “duplicate” and “timeline” but not “duplicate timeline.””
Actually, you can do searches like that in Apple Preview and in Adobe Acrobat. I have said before that I wish the 3335-page manual was broken up into five sections:

1) installation/configuration
2) conforming/editing
3) Resolve Color
4) Fusion
5) Fairlight

That way, the first section would be maybe 100 pages, then each subsequent section would “only” be about 800 pages. Those are easier to search.

I’d also love to see a hypertext index at the end, but the manual changes so quickly, it’d be tough to do. I had one almost done for 12.5 some years ago, but they up and came out with Resolve 14, so I bailed on that idea.

[Marc Wielage]

I don’t think there are.

[Marc Wielage]

Here is a link to the official document detailing what formats Resolve 16 supports (free and Studio):

https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_Resolve_16_Supported_Codec_List.pdf

[Marc Wielage]

This is kind of like the question of “which language is harder to learn: Greek or Russian?” They’re both not easy, but a lot depends on your background and your philosophy.

Blackmagic has some terrific (free) textbooks on their Training page that start with the basics and get into more advanced topics over time. Sit down with one of these PDFs and the software, and you’ll be able to figure it out.

[Marc Wielage]

Noted NYC colorist Dario Bigi has an excellent document for an Avid -> Resolve workflow at this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hf7gulqzlvoepxp/Avid%20Prep%20to%20Conform%20%28FILM%2912_16.pdf?dl=0

I think this will give you most of the information you need. As a general rule, we warn clients to flatten their edit timeline to no more than 2 video tracks if possible, commit any multicam decisions, know that varispeed and/or speed ramps do not generally come through AAF or XML edit lists, and ideally you would relink to the original media (not proxy media) prior to making the AAF coming in to Resolve.

I generally have pretty good luck with Avid projects coming in to Resolve, and the handful of shots that don’t make it, I just drop in manually. No conform is seamless, because XML and AAF can only go so far. Having a reference video of the entire project with burn-in source timecodes and source file names is extremely useful.