[Vladimir Kucherov]

Can you just charge hourly and roll with it? 🙂

I’ve seen very different figures with feature stuff. I’ve seen people take 90 hours for example.

You could take the time it takes you to grade a short form narrative and scale that. That will probably give you a safe estimate, since once you break a feature down in reels it looks no different than 4-6 20 minute shorts

[Vladimir Kucherov]

Could we see a few lines from your EDL? It’s tough to troubleshoot without any info.

[Vladimir Kucherov]

Interesting… does your clip have a reel name? If it doesn’t that could be a problem..

Could you try %L_ instead? that would use the filename.

[Vladimir Kucherov]

Hmmm, well you’re right. And I do have plans to update this with XML support – but it’s a much harder parser to write because there’s a lot more data to take care of. There are also the following issues which make roundtripping some of the things you mentioned somewhat useless.

1) Geometry I usually do in Resolve because most of the time I’m working with 4k red down to 1080p and want the best res for zooming.
2) Multi layers aren’t supported in Resolve anyway 🙁 what I would do is make multiple EDLs then reassemble in FCP. Not too too difficult, and the opacity levels are preserved in EDL.
3) Resolve sucks at rendering speed warps in source mode. Last time I tried it rendered me about 100 2 frame quicktime files. The EDL will import with the timewarp fine, but you won’t have a render file to link to. That’s why I always create a 2nd EDL with all my speeds effects “undone” – then render that after I render the main show, and re-do them in After Effects (looks better anyway!)

That only leaves filters and keyframed animations and such. Which would definitely be nice to roundtrip, but again, I can probably copy paste all that data from the original timeline onto my new one.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that this script is a shortcut for a defficiency. I’m probably going to be chipping away at an XML variant but I’m really hoping BM beats me to it with some native XML roundtrip support!

[Vladimir Kucherov]

The suffix is actually not random. The number at the end of each clip is frame count (from 0) of that clip’s IN timecode. So if timecode were 00:00:01:05, suffix would be 00000029 (24 frames + 5 frames)

The idea is, if a clip is marked in EDL to start at 00:00:01:05, I know what the filename of the rendered clip will be. So I just change the filename to that. Resolve outputs timecode correctly, so even if I add handles everything links up properly.

So in that sense, I’m getting true roundtrip right now. I export my EDL, import that into Resolve, grade, and export. Then I convert the EDL, import the new EDL into FCP and all media reconnects to the identical timeline I exported. I’m not 100% sure what using XML would add in this case. Do you mind elaborating?

I haven’t used split and add too much myself, but I love my automatic clip linking when grading. Especially for music videos where a single performance shot is cut in 50 times across the timeline, it’s so easy when you grade one, grade them all. This method allows me to maintain all original relationships of source footage and get a near perfect roundtrip.

[Vladimir Kucherov]

Not too much difference if you’re media managing, except that it saves you that step. I deal with a lot of RED projects though, and it’s not really possible to media manage R3Ds as far as I could figure out.

[Vladimir Kucherov]

Same for me. Did a render out maximum speed R3D full quality premium on a 2008 mac pro – no errors. It seems to actually take its time whenever it needs to. Awesome!

[Vladimir Kucherov]

I’m not exactly going to riot if BlackMagic DOES include multi-track with blending. I’ve never had to deal with a situation where 2+ tracks are blended simultaneously, but it sucks if you’re bleeding clients due to this issue. Here is my brainstorm on that subject:

I think it should be possible to use reference footage feature to make better coloring choices during blending. Something like:

1 – simplify timeline as much as possible. Anything that can be a dissolve should be a dissolve. Then export each remaining layer as separate edl
2 – bring each layer into davinci. grade the base layer. export full (or chunk, although since we’re probably talking ads, full export should be quick)
3 – bring in as reference quicktime for layer 2’s edl. if timecode matches, should drop right in
4 – go to shot, load up still in offline mode, set to mix, and set opacity to match timeline, grade for final effect.

heck, you can probably do it faster by grading base, taking a still, loading up 2nd layer, playing still where needed, and vice versa.

It’s not ideal but it will allow you to make grading decisions with mixes.

[Vladimir Kucherov]

Wellp, ProRes will tax your CPU, and DPX will tax your storage. So go with whichever is stronger on your setup, and if they’re both strong, go with whatever leaves you with less converting!

[Vladimir Kucherov]

If it’s just 4 shots and you need a grade on it, I would just render out those shots separately in a format your VFX dept prefers. When they give it back to you, just delete the old shot from the timeline, and drop insert the new ones – they should drop right in.