[Michael Gissing]

I’ve been musing over this issue for a while. It seems that seasonal flu which killed 650,000 people world wide last year was no reason to restrict our passion for travel and trade shows. COVID-19, currently rare, certainly has a higher mortality rate that seasonal flu (10 x the flu’s current mortality) but is still relatively harmless as a virus, compared to Smallpox, Ebola and others. Highly virulent flu variants like the H1N1 at the end of World War 1 killed between 40 and 100 million, although it’s really hard to know exact mortality. It was the first and most dramatic world pandemic. We always stand the chance that a variant in seasonal flu will be far more virulent than COVID-19.

I’m in two minds about this seemingly over reaction to COVID-19. I applaud the efforts to limit the spread and I have no issue with the cancelling of trade shows. Along with that I applaud anyone who wishes to limit their travel over the next year and who self isolate when they have a cold, just in case. My reasoning is that the greater good this will afford the environment, at the obvious expense of our broken capitalist system, will also make us question our normal social selfishness.

I’ve just returned from a three week location doco shoot with a head cold which cleared up in a couple of days, but it did focus my mind and behaviour, avoiding people who are health fragile and self isolating for a couple of days just in case. It’s pretty clear that I don’t have COVID-19 but I did think more about others than I do when seasonal flu comes through.

I have never been to NAB and now probably this will be the beginning of the end of such shows as the internet age means they are less relevant.

[Michael Gissing]

[Declan Smith] “Using the Function keys does on the surface seem quicker, but when an insert overwrites audio you have to back track.”

If you enable clip layering you are not erasing audio with an insert. You can tidy up on the Fairlight page where you can view the clip layers and drag to other tracks without moving the video

[Michael Gissing]

It sounds like Pr is getting the RAW frame rate wrong and Resolve is correct. If the crew says it’s 500@25 and Pr says @24 then that would explain the timing issue

[Michael Gissing]

Drives no difference really between Mac & PC. Drive format on Mac is HFS+ unless it’s the new Catalina OS which is a new variant.

However, all these questions need to be directed to the post people who will have to deal with your work. Please ask them about drives and formats. Cables will be also specific to the drives used and the Mac you are using. Maybe Thunderbolt, maybe USB-c, maybe USB3.1 .

[Michael Gissing]

Before you import the stills on the Media page, select ‘show individual frames’ and you can then select all and import. Click on the three dots … top right of the source folder screen to enable this option.

Because Resolve is designed to import image sequences as a single video it is the default. Best option is to not use numbers in your stills name so they all are seen as individual frames, not an image sequence.

[Michael Gissing]

The free version limits the number of GPUs to a single card. It fully utilises that GPU so the only limitation is adding extra GPUs.

Here’s what they say on the support page where you download the software –

” The free DaVinci Resolve 16.1 includes all of the same high quality processing as DaVinci Resolve 16.1 Studio and can handle unlimited resolution media files. However it does limit project mastering and output to Ultra HD resolutions or lower. DaVinci Resolve 16.1 only supports a single processing GPU on Windows and Linux and 2 GPUs on the latest Mac Pro.

If you need features such as support for multiple GPUs, 4K output, motion blur effects, temporal and spatial noise reduction, de-interlacing, HDR tools, camera tracker, multiple Resolve FX, 3D stereoscopic tools, remote rendering, an external database server and collaboration tools that let multiple users work on the same project at the same time, please upgrade to DaVinci Resolve 16.1 Studio. “

[Michael Gissing]

The xml is designed to be read by other NLE software. Usually it opens in a browser if you just click on it. Unless you need to edit the xml outside FCP there is no need to ‘open’ it from the saved file. If you are transfering your edit to Resolve for example then open Resolve, >import timeline>select the xml file.

[Michael Gissing]

Plus stills, speed changes…etc

[Michael Gissing]

The limiting thing with layers in Color was getting the order right. It did achieve a nice grade and worked well with my Tangent Wave, actually better than Resolve with the same panel.

[Michael Gissing]

Looks like a good tool and I get the desire to stay within one NLE. I was interested in your comments about it looking and feeling a bit like the old Apple Color. I presume it doesn’t have a limit of 7 layers however.

I’m surprised they don’t use nodes. So much easier to reorder and copy paste individual nodes between clips. I suppose layers are easier and less scary.

For me nodes and the ability to apply group and timeline grades in Resolve are just so much more powerful.