[Paul Golden]

I’m working in FCPX 10.0.6 and Resolve 9.0.3. I’ve just sent a 2 minute film over with a variety of resizing, repositioning and a few shots with a slight animated push-in or pan.

On XML import, I checked “use sizing information” and all shots came in correctly scaled and positioned, except for the two shots that had animated camera moves on them. On those clips, the shot came in locked off for the duration at the final position of the camera move.

One thing I’m a little confused about is that Resolve both respects and ignores the sizing information in the Sizing window. Even though my clips are correctly scaled, Resolve shows them at 0,0 and 100%. When I “zoom out” on a clip, I will get the full framing of the original, if I want. I’m not sure why the numerical sizing values don’t show up in Resolve (ie 125% blowup) but it is resized anyway. I would think simple scaling information would translate 1:1 on media that is the referenced by both Resolve and FCPX.

Anyone have an idea what’s going on here? And can Resolve deal with importing keyframed moves or just one time re-positions?

[Paul Golden]

James,

As far as I know, there’s no “force” sync with the monitor command in FCPX like there was in FCP7. And the same goes for Resolve, so whatever app opened first may have control of monitor. This is generally the behavior I’ve experienced.

This is true when I switch between FCPX and AfterEffects (I’m using a BM Decklink SDI hooked to a Dreamcolor). If I open FCPX and view something on the monitor, and then open After Effects, the AE won’t show up on the monitor until I quit FCPX. Then AE shows up on the monitor automatically. If I reopen FCPX, FCPX grabs control of the monitor again.

I don’t think there’s any manual way to control this behavior.

[Paul Golden]

You have two problems:

1) the 2600 is an underpowered ATI card which is not spec’ed for Resolve as a GPU. Resolve generally only allows NVIDIA cards as GPUs. You can use ATI cards for GUI, but to my knowledge, in a Mac Pro, you can’t use an ATI Card as a GPU. DaVinci suggests that you have 2 cards: 1 for GUI (where your monitors are plugged in) and 2nd for GPU, which you leave alone.

2) As far as I know, Resolve and FCP X don’t handshake well regarding which program controls the Grading Monitor when it comes to swapping back and forth if both apps are open. I always quit one before I open the other. That way I’m sure that the right app has control of the monitor.

[Paul Golden]

Thanks Sascha, this is more documentary footage where there aren’t alternate takes and footage is inconsistent so we’re just working with what we have.

Normally, without Resolve, I’d bump everything immediately to ProRes 422HQ and take it from there. Using Resolve to apply LUTS offers the option of creating proxy dailies that can reference back to the original media, saving tons of disk space.

So unlike grading with original “RAW” footage (like RED, Alexa, BMCC), you suggest bumping DSLR footage to ProRes 4444 immediately and editing with that?

I’m trying to keep to a lighter weight proxy workflow where the first pass out of Resolve are ProRes Proxy dailies and then conform the much shorter rough cut’s footage from the H264 originals. I could import the XML from FCP and render out ProRes 4444 and re-import the select footage to grade, but I’m not sure Resolve will re-link that easily.

Are you saying that DSLR footage falls apart when grading from h264 files or is improved by transcoding it first to 4444 and then grading it (assuming I can’t shoot with a higher end camera)? Does putting the footage in a 444 space get you better curves and keys?

[Paul Golden]

I’ve tried synching the audio now in Resolve 9b3 and there’s definitely a bug. I go through the procedure of lining up the picture and sound clips in the Conform window: right clicking on the Video clip in the timeline and click “Link Source Viewer Audio with Video”. At that point the External Audio replaces the Camera Audio and I still see only 2 audio tracks in the Levels window. I then render out 4 tracks of audio and get a strange result:

When I import the QuickTime, I get 4 tracks of Audio, but I get 1 Left Track and 3 Right Tracks on the same movie. Perhaps this is the case because I checked “export with audio/4 channels” in the Render settings.

Another question: once you’ve performed a manual sync, can you “unsync” the clip and do it over (if it was wrong for some reason)? There doesn’t seem to be any way of deleting the new audio (or reverting to the old camera audio) once you’ve performed a manual sync.

[Paul Golden]

I’m sorry, but didn’t get a chance to read Chris’s intro. And I certainly didn’t mean to be unkind. The content is worthwhile, so of course post them. We’ve all had these afflictions…But for the grace of God go I….

[Paul Golden]

I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but is it my imagination, or do these videos have the worst audio hum you’ve ever heard? Sometimes you can barely hear Brawley.

Irony alert: in the the 3rd video on the camera, he wants to show how quiet the fans are in the camera and you basically can’t hear anything but feedback!

Very interesting interviews but marred by horrendous production sound. I know it says Art of Cinematography on the tin, but have a heart!

[Paul Golden]

Apropos to your point, is there any way to create ONLY proxies and import them into FCPX and be treated as proxies? This would be on a location shoot with limited drive space

I’m thinking of a workflow involving Resolve where you

1) Shoot “log” or RAW,
2) Import to Resolve and apply a LUT,
3) Export to ProRes Proxies,
4) Edit in FCPX,
5) XML back to Resolve,
6 grade the original media & render high quality ProRes
7) XML back to FCP
8) Reconform in FCPX

If I make Proxies externally, it seems FCPX treats them as “optimized media” on import and does not classify them as Proxy Media. Am I missing something?

[Paul Golden]

The DeckLink SDI is working for me, and that’s $295. You need a monitor that takes SDI or a conversion box to HDMI, but i think all the DeckLinks work alike. I’m using mine with an AJA HD2P so that I get an RGB signal to my Dreamcolor.

[Paul Golden]

I believe both of the connectors supply variable 12V, 5V and 3.3 power depending on the device connected, but the amp draw on a Graphics card at max is much more than a disk drive. But if the PSU on the Mac Pro is built with additional headroom, there may be enough juice to add a single 75W load (which is the equivalent of the 5770’s single auxiliary input (assuming that the DVD drive is retired.) The MacPro PSU is rated for 980W.

On an older 2,1 Mac Pro, I was able to snake an Esata cable from the motherboard up to the Optical bay, so I’m wondering if there’s any room on a 4,1 to snake a cable down through the back along the motherboard and back to the PCI cards.

I’m looking for a technical reason I can’t do this (like error monitoring etc.) Any thoughts?