Marc Wielage
Forum Replies Created
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If the Resolve timeline has even a tiny piece of audio or a short clip much further down the line, then you’ll have a big chunk of black at the end. Find that piece and delete it or deselect it (D key) and then it won’t render. Or just mark the out point in the delivery page so that segment is not rendered out.
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I would advise doing a short (1 minute or less) test and see how the effects translate. In some cases, the latest versions will work OK. Be aware that repositions are often affected by source resolution, so if you have HD proxies of a 4K project, and then bring the 4K media into Resolve, the repos/slides/whatever may not work.
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You should have a button at the bottom of the Export Stills dialog box:
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DNxHD can be a terrific format at a high enough bitrate. DNxHD 175x is pretty darned close to ProRes 444. In theory, DNxHD 350x is a teeny bit better than ProRes 444, but to me the key is that they’re both 10-bit formats. I’ve had very few problems with DNxHD, but you do have to be careful with Data Levels vs. Video Level settings in Avid. I would advise making sure the editor provides a second or so of color bars just to verify accurate levels within Resolve.
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[Shane Ross] “The issue here is that Resolve won’t read ProRes MXF…only ProRes QT. The guy has the cut all done, and all the files are ProRes MXF…but Resolve won’t read them. It’s a feature Resolve lacks.”
Often, I find the answer is to use the format the software supports, rather than complain about the software. There’s a lot of color-correctors out there that can’t deal with MXF’s. Workflow issues like this are critical, and it’s one reason you have to test the workflow — even if it’s just a minute of material — to avoid going down a road that’s going to turn into a dead end. -
Patrick does a good job and MixingLight has terrific tutorials.
My tactic is both to use the built-in clipper to limit the excessive white/chroma peaks, but also keep a close eye on the show while you’re correcting. It’s better to use curves or manual gain/desaturation controls to control the levels rather than let the clipper do all the heavy lifting.
Note that even the hard clip within Resolve will not always stop a really egregious blast of chroma. The hardware clippers were traditionally used in broadcast (sometimes at the transmitter) to stop these problems before they happened. Software clippers in my experience are good but not quite up to that.
If you want to see what the various settings do, set up a given adjustment and then crank on the levels and watch what happens on the scopes. Note that the manual says:
The clipping imposed by Broadcast Safe itself does not have an inherently soft roll-off. For best results, Broadcast Safe should be used in conjunction with the Soft Clip controls in the Color page, or a Soft Clip LUT.
I have had situations where I’ve had to drop a high soft/white clip curve as a Timeline node just to control these situations. I don’t use it all the time, but if you’re up against a deadline and have to get some dodgy material “air worthy,” it can work.
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ProRes YUV has always been flakey. I would recommend always using ProRes 444 (or a variant) when possible.
I can’t help you with running ProRes on Windows. I think there are issues between the OS, Apple, and BMD, and you could chase your tail forever trying to put out those fires. My only advice would be to convert everything to something more Windows-friendly, like DHxHD or DNxHR. Either that or go to the Linux version, which is not cheap but does work well.
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My advice if the loose parsing doesn’t work: hire an inexpensive assistant editor to sit down overnight and conform it all by hand. If you pay the assistant $20 an hour (which is not unreasonable), he’d get the whole thing done for $200. From where I sit, this is a miniscule price to pay for valuable color-correction room time.
Not organizing and archiving files for longterm data retrieval is a recipe for disaster. I’ve had to piece together projects that were 10-15 years old before, and it can be an absolute nightmare. I worked on a 20-year-old project where we took an existing feature and expanded it back out for a “director’s cut,” and we had to use outtakes, dupes, and all kinds of crap. Getting the sound together was worse. Now, imagine this kind of thing 50 years from now, with 100 different possible file formats…
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It’s covered very well in the manual. But the manual has about 500 pages just on editing.
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If it doesn’t happen in ProRes, then I’d say the easiest solution is to use ProRes.
Scopes and test signals should tell you what’s going on when the material is exported and imported. My guess is that this could be a Data Level vs. Video Level problem.
