[Robert Glanns]

I know you can switch the timeline sort to C-mode, as I already mentiones in my original post.

The problem I was asking about is that this mode is only useful for visually sorting the timeline, and not actually playing it back in c-mode.

[Robert Glanns]

Wow, I had no idea about the orphan stills feature. That’s great! Thanks for the tip.

[Robert Glanns]

[Roland R. Kahlenberg] “Hmmm, I thought this was what you wanted. It seems that what you want is to combine the settings from two instances of a filter into a single instance. “

Actually, no. What I want to be able to do is append another instance of an existing plugin via copy and paste. In other words, I want to leave the existing instance of Colorista untouched on the target layer, but _add_ another instance of Colorista to that same layer, via copy/paste from an instance of Colorista from _another_ layer.

[Robert Glanns]

Hmmm…I tried that, but it doesn’t seem to work. All that happens is that the “selected” second instance gets overwritten with the attributes of the copied instance of the filter.

[Robert Glanns]

Oh my gosh I couldn’t agree with you more!

While the dynamics timeline in Resolve is SO much better than Apple Color, I feel like I’m trying to splice genes using a 10 foot pole whenever I try to select the keyframes in Resolve! It really needs a more obvious, dare i say traditional keyframing interface, where you can at least easily grab the keyframes, and grab and drag them in groups, etc.

[Robert Glanns]

Thanks Kevin!

This is what confused me about the Resolve manual’s explanation of this feature. I knew that this was supposed to be possible in the Format tab, but it never occurred to me to use the PTZR controls on my control-surface to pan the still! I had been dragging the sliders in both the “Input” and “Output” sub-tabs, and was totally confused that only the main source clip would get panned, and not the still.

It seems rather counterintuitive that the reference repositioning feature seems to be completely inaccessible via the Resolve UI and only works via the control surface. But I’m glad to learn that it works, in any case.

Now, if I could only rotate the split, then I’d be even more happy!

[Robert Glanns]

[Nick Anderson] “So you got the edl/xml for the feature in a single big one file? That’s not common, unless it’s a film of “Long Shots”. Because editing machine will also have the overflow problem when there’s too much shots in one reel.

Usually, editor should splitting for reels, each reel usally less than 20 minutes”

Yeah, I did get a single (remarkably clean) timeline from FCP as an XML file. The film wont be going to film-out, and will be digitally projected, so would the 20/22 minute reel thing still apply to my workflow? The delivery spec for the film festival this will be going to asks for either HDCAM tape or a ProRes quicktime file on a hard drive.

Mostly, I was wondering about how to most efficiently navigate through all the scenes in a film of this magnitude. How do you easily jump between related scenes without having to scrub through the timeline? The film is a typical, artsy-fartsy non-linear storyline kind of film, so we constantly jump back to scenes throughout the movie.

Would it be better to grade in C-sort mode, in this case? What has been the traditional method of grading feature films in this respect? Coming from a commercial background, I am experienced with the situation where the DP and/or director prefers to grade in context of the edit, and not C-mode, which makes sense to me from a continuity aspect. But is this method recommended for a feature workflow?

[Robert Glanns]

Thanks Bob,

Do you have a preferred graphics card for your installations?

I know BMD has their list, but seriously, if Bob Z. tells me to specifically buy THIS or THAT card for the Z400, I will buy it, no questions asked. I don’t have time to be researching the cheapest/good-enough card for this thing! If it works for Bob, it works for me

Please advise 🙂

[Robert Glanns]

Thanks for the advice!

After many hours of digging, I think I’ve decided on a workable solution to my specific setup. Does this look like a workable system, considering my needs?:

CPU: MacPro 3,1 (Early 2008 8-Core) w/16GB RAM

MacPro PCIe slot 1: NVIDIA Quadro 4000 (for Resolve GUI and dual-monitor AE/FCP/Color GPU use only)
MacPro PCIe slot 2: Cyclone PCIe2-426 16x PCIe expansion card
MacPro PCIe slot 3: Decklink HD Extreme 3D+
MacPro PCIe slot 4: CalDigit RAID card

Cyclone PCIe2-2707 PCIe Gen2 Five Slot Expansion Chassis :

Slot 1 (x16): NVIDIA GTX285
Slot 2 (x16): NVIDIA GTX285
Slot 3 (x16): REDRocket

Again, I’m hoping for a level of grading & playback performance with Resolve that allows me to grade R3D files or ProRes4444 files in realtime (or close to realtime…hopefully at a speed signifcantly faster than Apple Color running on an ATI x1900), with at least 8 levels of secondaries stacked up.

Is there anything I’m missing here?

[Robert Glanns]

Thanks for the feedback, JP…

I guess Im one of those old farts who might be resistant to change, but after working with the CP200 BK/TS panels every day, for a few years now, the “muscle memory” my hands and brain have built up is to the point where swapping with a Wave (or Euphonix) panel would be like swapping out Eddie Van Halen’s guitar with a ukulele right before he goes out on stage. I’m sure the Wave is workable (though I have demoed it with Apple Color, and was less than impressed by it), but I have a perfectly good set of CP200 panels on my desk, so I’m caught in a bind where if I sell the CP200’s in order to buy a better Resolve compatible panel like the JLCooper Eclipse, only for BMD to later announce that they finally support the 200’s, I’ll be less than pleased.

Have you used the JLCooper Eclipse? How do you feel it compares to the Wave in terms of usability, and if it’s worth the added expense to buy it over the Fisher-Pricey Wave panel? I am partial to the ring-around-ball setup that the CP200s have, so I like the idea of the Eclipse more than the Wave.