[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

Sascha, thank you. So is 8 bit pretty much standard on Scopes and Waveforms?

In Touch Media GmbH
Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

I just had a similar problem with Quicktime media… I wasn’t seeing anything in a particular folder and then suddenly all the QT media I already had in the media pool would go black…

When you start the Activity Monitor, while Resolve 10 is running, you should be seeing a process called “QTDecoder”. If you are not seeing it, that process has crashed/quit and Resolve can now no longer handle Quicktime media. In any case you need to restart Resolve to restart the QTDecoder.

In my case, the “bad guy” was a h264 clip, which was in the folder I was pointing the media library to. The QTDecoder would quit, whenever I would look at that folder on the media page. It was a tedious process finding that clip. I created a new folder and moved files over, one at a time, every time refreshing the library view. The moment I placed that file in the folder an made Resolve refresh, the QTDecoder crashed.

There may be other reasons why the QTDecoder crashes, but that was the one in my case.

Perhaps that helps.

In Touch Media GmbH
Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

I can not help but wonder whether there has every been a more exciting time in my career in terms of choices. And due to the overwhelming amount of choices, perhaps also one of the most difficult.

When I look back at some of my very early films in the 1980’s (I was roughly 13 then) I shudder on the one hand but I remember the excitement of creating them, not knowing much about the craft of film making at all, but simply feeling compelled to grab a camera an do it – doing rough, manual edits from one VHS deck to another. Seeing those films fills me with pride as the impulse to start making films was much greater than the obvious obstacles at hand. Looking back at those days it seems that my limitations as a film maker were no greater than the apparent lack of quality a VHS tape offered by today’s standards.

I remember FCP 1.0 on a G4 computer I invested in. There were soooo many issues with that software but such excitement at being able to sit down and edit on my own terms and my own time.

And after a long road of similar experiences and personal milestones, the Red One came into my life in 2008. I spent many years shooting with that camera, never seizing to be amazed at the ongoing improvements, marveling at the images and everything the camera enabled me to do. Have there been difficulties, problems and glitches? Yes, plenty. Have there been films of mine, which I would rather ignore? Yes, plenty. But not because of the gear I used but because of the choices I made.

But I can not feel anything but gratitude for all the personal growth this new technology has enabled.

And my involvement with this technology and the dialogue with some manufacturers has perhaps also enabled the technology to grow in return. And I have never once come across a manufacturer whose purpose was to create a bad product or sabotage my art. They were all trying to cater to my needs but also had a vision of their own. In the end they were all just making choices. Good choices. Bad choices. Choices that they thought to be good choices, but in my opinion or for my needs weren’t.

I don’t want to make films in my sleep. I want to engage in journeys that will make my experience here worth my while. There are days I cheer, days I cringe, laugh and cry – both about my equipment as well my abilities.

Is this an excuse for anything that Red or other manufacturers are being faulted with? No. But I also have a choice. I always have. I always will.

And I thank all those manufacturers for giving me that choice – to stick with them for the promise that I sense, or kiss them goodbye when our paths no longer meet. The frustration I sometimes feel when a so called improvement (not to be mistaken with problem fixes) does not meet my personal wishes or expectations is mine to deal with. I know that many people would not agree with me, but my desire for any company is that they follow their own strong vision of the future and it’s perfectly ok, when that doesn’t line up with my own view. I am not saying that there is no need for dialogue or listening to your customers. But in the end I would rather leave a company and their product for making a bold and heartfelt choice than slowly wander down a path that only caters to my own limited expectations of their product.

Just like any customer will leave me and my company when our visions for their future no longer match. And in my opinion that’s the way life is supposed to be – full of choices, sometimes quiet, often bold, ever changing.

Tobias

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

Thank you all for your thoughts.

In general I like the functionality of creating proxies and switching back and forth right in FCPX.

Normally, when shooting entire projects on Red, we go the route that Oliver also described.

We process 720p Prores Proxy media in RCX Pro, import into FCPX and edit (not creating proxies upon import). When then go on to Resolve to the r3ds.

In this case however, the client supplied us with some existing full res uncompressed 1080p footage, thus wanting to use the proxy mode, when on the road.

But again, it seems silly to have FCPX create proxies from proxies and I percieve the quality loss as significant (considering we do a full debayer in RCXP for these proxies, so they look they best they can).

So as suggested, I duplicated the proxies into the FCPX proxy folder and it works.

I would be great, if FCPX could recognize the incoming Prores Proxy codec, and thus automatically eliminating the need to duplicate all this footage into another folder.

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

[Carsten Orlt] “The fact that users will have to create a vimeo account to become customers is a shame, although understandable from a technical perspective of course.”

That’s true… but don’t you have to become a customer, a registered user, whatever you wanna call it at any platform where you can watch pay per view content?

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

So I found a fix for my particular situation – albeit it being a bit cumbersome.

As I said, Compressor 4 was only seeing a Stereo audio track (Info window in Compressor) in a 1080p25 Clip with 8CH audio and handled it accordingly (only passing on stereo).

I opened the clip with QT Player 7 and looked at the properties. 8 channels of audio as expected. Then I changed the Labels (is that what you call those?) for each channel. They were all set to mono by default. I went ahead and assigned the corresponding surround labels from the available list to each each channel. Saved the file and voila, Compressor is seeing the audio as 7.1 and handling it accordingly…

…sometimes manual labor i inevitable?

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

Pass through is what I am doing… however since Compressor “believes” the file only has Stereo audio, it’s only passing a Stereo audio through… hmmm

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

Great thank you! That works.

So now my bottleneck seems to be Compressor. My Quicktime 10 Bit Uncompressed has 8 channels of audio. I verified this via re-import into FCP7.

When I open this file in compressor the info says it only has Stereo audio? Why would Compressor not see the 8 channels?

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

Very sweet indeed

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany

[Tobias Heilmann-schuricht]

Thank you

In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany