The Peculiar Way DaVinci Resove Handles Interlaced Footage

 DaVinci Resolve has a weird way to deal with interlaced footage.

First with Resolve, you better pay attention to what kind of media you are bringing in, and how it is recognized. In particular with legacy footage (NTSC, PAL) the Pixel Aspect Ratio is sometimes unrecognized, or recognized as Square. You will have to manually switch to NTSC or PAL Pixel Aspect Ratio. Same with Anamorphic or 4:3 footage. Check your footage for squashed looking image.

Second, the Field dominance is usually recognized properly via Auto, but best to double check against your actual footage anyway and make sure it matches. If not, again modify it by hand, and use the correct settings for your footage, Upper Field or Lower Field. Using the incorrect field will produce unwanted artifacts.

Then, when creating a new Timeline for exporting screeners, make sure the frame rate matches the footage. Ex. 29.97 for NTSC or 25 for PAL. It's counter intuitive, but do not check "Enable Interlace Processing" box. The effect will be to double the frame rate, resulting in a 59.96fps Timeline for NTSC or a 50fps Timeline for PAL. In most cases you do not want to enable interlaced processing.

Resolve User Manual p131:

• Enable interlace processing: Interlaced media is supported throughout DaVinci Resolve. The “Enable interlace processing” checkbox forces DaVinci Resolve to process all operations internally using separated fields, in order to properly maintain the field integrity of interlaced clips in your program. In addition, each clip in the Media Pool has a Field Dominance drop-down menu in the Video panel of the Clip Attributes window that lets you specify whether clips are upper- or lower- field dominant; an Auto setting makes this choice by default.

  There is also a corresponding checkbox in the Render Settings panel of the Deliver page, named “Field rendering,” that lets you enable and disable field rendering when you’re rendering file-based output.

  There are two instances where you want to leave this setting turned off:

  • —  If you’re working with progressive-frame media, it is not necessary to turn this checkbox on. Doing so will unnecessarily increase processing time.

  • —  If you’re using interlaced clips in a progressive-frame project and you’re intending to deinterlace those clips using the Enable Deinterlacing checkbox in the Clip Attributes window, then you must keep “Enable video field processing” off. Otherwise, the Enable Deinterlacing checkbox will be disabled for all clips. For more information about deinterlacing clips,
    see Chapter 22, “Modifying Clips and Clip Attributes.”

    If you’re working on a project with interlaced media that you intend to keep interlaced, then whether or not it’s necessary to turn field processing on depends on what types of corrections you’re applying to your clips. If you’re mastering your program to an interlaced format, and you’re applying any adjustments that would cause pixels from one field to move or bleed into adjacent fields, then field processing should be enabled; effects requiring field processing include filtering operations such as blur, sharpen, and OpenFX operations, as well as sizing transforms that include pan, tilt, zoom, rotate, pitch, and yaw.

    On the other hand, regardless of whether you’re outputting interlaced or progressive-frame media, if you’re not filtering or resizing your clips, and you’re only applying adjustments to color and contrast, it’s not necessary to turn on field processing for interlaced material, and in fact, leaving it off may somewhat shorten your project’s rendering time.

You will not be able to go back to the original frame rate after you choose to Enable Interlace Processing. All outputs will be at double the frame rate. Even if you are applying resizing and other pixel shifting prone processing, you might still want to not enable it in order to maintain the original frame rate.

The other problem with Resolve is that not all formats/Codecs allow for interlaced output. For example Quicktime h264 is always progressive. There is no checkbox for interlaced rendering when selecting h264 or h265. Apple ProRes on the other hand has a checkbox and allows for interlaced rendering.

h264/h265 are mostly for delivery of files to web/computers. But they are also widely used for making screeners, and when the original footage is interlaced (legacy NTSC, PAL), it sometimes is a problem outputting either a progressive file, or worse a 59.94/50fps file.

Let's say the editor uses your files as temp clips into his/her cut, it will be a problem down the line when it's time to online with the original clip. The timing won't match, or the clip will be wrongly stamped as progressive.

Having to export first to ProRes out of Resolve, then convert the ProRes interlaced files to h264 interlaced using Compressor or AME (both allow for interlaced h264 outputs), is not an acceptable workaround, too time consuming and it adds opportunities for errors.

Granted, legacy formats are not much in use these days, except in documentary work as archive footage. And there are tons of archives recorded as NTSC or PAL interlaced. If you are moving your cut between NLEs, and/or when it's time to online, problems will arise. A good online editor will be able to flag and deal with these mismatches properly, but still.

Now if you are using the original interlaced footage in a progressive Timeline and finalizing in Resolve, then as described in the manual, just de-interlace the footage and you are in business. Just make sure all the clips settings are correct as discussed earlier.

It's odd to me that the proper interlaced workflow when dealing with screeners / temp outputs is so lacking in Resolve. Again Apple Compressor and Adobe Media Encoder are perfectly fine with interlaced h264 outputs.

Why is interlaced only possible with some codecs and not others in Resolve? To me it feels like a random decision on the part of BMD.

DaVinci Resolve 18.1 Continues To Have A Bug 🪲 In Video Monitor Look Up Table

 When applying a LUT to the Video Monitor, it should only affect the output, in my case the SDI out from the UltraStudio Monitor 3G.

Unfortunately it also affects the Scopes in the Edit and Cut Pages even though No LUT Selected is selected in the preferences for the Scopes Look Up Table.

Bizarrely, and thankfully, the Scopes are not affected in the Color Page, at least that's where it's most important. 

SMPTE Bars looking correct on the Scopes

When No LUT selected for Video Monitoring

SMPTE Bars displayed incorrectly on the Scopes in the Edit and Cut Pages. Why?

In the Color Page at least the Scopes look correct.

Note the LUT applied to Monitoring only, not to Scopes.

That's a BUG 🪲 that's been plaguing Resolve version after version for long time:

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=51358

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=69732&p=389301

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=159257&p=863595&hilit=Video+monitor+look+up+table#p863595

Why has this inconsistent behavior not been fixed by now BMD? 😡

Adobe CC April Updates + Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 16 Teaser Page!

Adobe updates CC Apps ahead of NAB 2019.
https://theblog.adobe.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-spring-2019-releases/

Refinements, refinement. Automation galore. If you want to replay the Live Video of Today, head over to: https://www.facebook.com/adobecreativecloud/videos/801757826867284/

Sidenote: Adobe, please time to ditch Facebook for Live events, I can't stand it anymore. You have your own Cloud System; make Live vids on your own.

Whoa! Blackmagic is teasing us ahead of NAB 2019 with Resolve 16!

A revolution in editing has been promised for April 8th 2019 at 9am.

Tune-in to see what it's about.

Down under is stealing the show!

How to Deal With Cinema DNG from BlackMagic Cameras in FCPX

 FCPX does not like Cinema DNG and does not understand it, period. It probably never will now that ProRes RAW is out in the wild.

So what do you do when you receive a ".dng" image sequence and want to edit with FCPX? You will have to go the Offline Route, and use Resolve to do it.

Not a bad thing anyway since you will likely grade and finish your film into Resolve anyway. Probably not the only option, but one that works for me.

STEPS:

• Import your footage into Resolve.
• Select a day's worth of media (or half day, whatever works for you.) Generate a new Timeline from the selected media. It's good Practice to create one Timeline for each day or half day of shooting. Name it in a way you know what's what.
• Optional: Into the Color Tab/ Camera Raw, set the Decode Using to Cinema DNG Default to make the image look somewhat normal as opposed to the washed out RAW look. If you prefer, you can leave the Setting to Camera Metadata for a log output, and turn the Log Processing to BMD Film in FCPX instead. From my experience it does not slow down editing in FCPX.
• Optional: You can add Timecode and Clip Name Burn-in, (or any info you need visible) from Workspace/ Data Burn-in Menu.
• Go to the Deliver Tab.
• Select Render to FCPX.
• Select Format: Quicktime, and Codec: Apple ProRes LT. You can choose whatever you want, LT makes things fast for me in FCPX.
• Select the Resolution of your choice, I use HD or UHD depending which I am finalizing into.
• I like to check Use Constant Bitrate.
• Browse /Create a New Folder, name it "FCPX Proxy Media" or whatever you want, it will be your export folder.
• Click Add To Render Queue. Resolve will add the Job to the Render Queue, Click Start Render.

This way Resove makes an XML that will open in FCPX and load all the low resolution/proxy clips that are a breeze to edit with in FCPX.

Edit away!

When you are done editing, Export an XML of your cut from FCPX. Import the XML into Resolve. Uncheck Automatically import Source Clips into media pool (we don't want Resolve to relink to the low res files.) Resolve will automatically link to the Cinema DNG files and populate the Timelime, ready for Color Grading / Finishing.

BlackmagicDesign DaVinci Resolve 15 Beta Is Mind Blowing!

 BMD just released Resolve 15 Beta and it's overwhelming! This great color grading tool has evolved into a full-on post-production in a box software.

Check the 19min. YouTube video below if you don't believe me.

https://youtu.be/84e7iCI9Jkk

Now it's very likely full of bugs and lacking many a functionality. And it doesn't have (yet) specific things we like FCPX for: Overall fluidity, Magnetic timeline, Roles, FilmStrips View, Smart Collections, etc.

Nevertheless, you have to recognize the beauty of this thing, and the beauty of where I think it's heading.

I see this new release as a full integration of all the steps in Post-prod with very advanced specialty tools just a button away: Media Manage/Edit/Color/FX/Sound/Delivery. No more clunky back and forth between departments. It's not only all under one roof, it's all under one app!

Now while we wonder and experiment with the shiny new Resolve, BMD folks will be working on Collaboration. As I foresee, editors, colorists, sound people, fx people, we will be working on the SAME Resolve project.

The editor will rough FXs in the Timeline, and "pass" them to the FX artist in an INSTANT. No more managing media, sending notes, screeners and rough comps, it's all in there!

While color, FX and audio people are working in their specialty pages, with auto-linking/management of each comp/media/project, BMD cloud will upload the newly created media in the background for all to see and use when ready. The Timeline will update AUTOMATICALLY at a push of a button, or as set in the prefs.

No more conforming as it is now BUILT-IN. And you will be able to choose when this happens: end of day, in the background, or right now!

Let's see how stable it is under stress, and where this new paradigm leads us. A lot to dig in!

Exciting times!

FCPX 10.3.4 to DaVinci Resolve 14.3 Observations

I just downloaded DaVinci 14.3 and out of curiosity exported a fcpxml of my current FCPX project to see how well things translate. I'm currently using FCPX 10.3.4.

Let's start with audio and then we'll look at picture:

1) My FCPX project starts at 23:59:57:00 to allow for a 3 sec. preroll and then start the first image at 00:00:00:00. Well Resolve handles this differently and continues playing Timecode at 24:00:00:01 and counting... What?

What is this BMD?

Fairlight counts correctly to 00:00:00:00 pass 24hr., but does not like crossing over and plain STOPS there. Even signifies its refusal with a "T" mark in the time bar. And trying to click further down the time bar doesn't do anything.

You won't go pass that 00:00:00:00 point.

Changing the Timeline Starting Timecode to 00:00:00:00 or 01:00:00:00 effectively removes the "T" mark, or better it's out of the way, and Fairlight plays happily.

2) The Disabled Clips in FCPX Timeline are correctly Disabled in Resolve/Fairlight Timeline, EXCEPT for clips grouped into a Secondary Storyline, see below, thus creating chaos.

3) Stereo clips are brought in as Mono L/R. Why we still have to deal with this ancient mode in modern NLEs are beyond me. Are you listening engineers, programmers? We want proper multi channel audio track handling.

3) The order in which Resolve brings audio clips seem very random, and in any case doesn't take Roles into account in any way.

4) Audio grouped under a Storyline in FCPX translates into Resolve as "Secondary Storyline_L/R clip instead of the proper audio clips name. Thus creating additional chaos.

5) Some audio grouped under Storylines are NOT PRESENT in Resolve Timeline. I don't know why some audio is being dropped. That's wrong.

I guess we cannot use Secondary Storylines for audio for this workflow or we have to take all audio clips out of Secondary Storylines before exporting fcpxml.

6) Gain (a Logic Pro Effect) is ignored. Alex4D Sound Only (a FCPX/Motion Transition) is ignored.

7) Volume is ignored.

8) Fades are ignored.

So all in all, not a very satisfactory first impression audio wise  I mean we live in times where we must keep as much as possible of the information from system to system, and this is clearly not a good example of that. Sending fcpxml to X2Pro to ProTools via AAF is a much more advanced workflow. As far as Audition goes, it still can't open fcpxml, you have to roundtrip through Premiere and loose most of the info there. Audition cannot open AAF, so cannot make use of X2Pro either. Then there is Logic, but I don't have any info at this point. If you do, please leave a comment.

As for picture:

a) Basic Titles with single formatting/font translate correctly. All others do not.

b) Speed changes have been working correctly for some time now, and still do.

c) Stills translate correctly, but not the Ken Burns Effect which is IGNORED. Stills in Secondary Storylines translate as "Secondary Storyline" instead of the name of the still. Plus some seemingly random stills are discarded, and I cannot figure the reason why. That's WRONG.

d) Fades and Cross-Disolves still translate correctly.

e) Effects (Vignette, Color Correction, Gaussian Blur, Drop Shadow) are discarded.

f) Transform and associated keyframes do translate, but appear quite shifted, so adjustment will be necessary.

g) Generators are not understood and continue to be replaced by Roundtrip Dummies.

At this point all the known limitations are still in action, we continue to be in "Bake everything into QT before exporting to fcpxml" mode, or too much is lost in translation. Secondary Storylines are still a no-go and a cleaned-up FCPX timeline is your friend.

Is It Possible To Use Adobe Premiere Pro To Check Your DCP?! Well, Yes! Sort Of.

I never tried that before, interestingly enough, PP can open a DCP - j2K and pcm mxf(s) components, and let you bring them into a Timeline and playback!

DCP Playback inside Premiere. Groovy!

I know it does not replace checking your DCP on-site / in a theater / on proper DCP servers, but it's an easy way to at least check for gross error (or lack of thereof) in your encode.
PP performs the XYZ -> YUV correction on the fly as you can see in the screen grab above.

On my MacPro I can playback at 1/2 in real time, with synced audio so I can check that as well. And I can play the whole DCP. I say it's pretty dandy!

Coupled with Easy DCP Player Demo to check for the DCP integrity, it's a step towards controlling the quality of your creation.  In Easy DCP Player you can playback the first few seconds, after that the quality of the image is severely degraded, and the audio is muted, unless you buy the full version.

DCP Check with EasyDCP Player Demo (playback quality degraded after a few seconds)

Note that you can also check your DCP in Resolve, thanks to the bundled Easy DCP Creator/Player Demo plug-in, but high quality playback is limited to a few seconds here as well. You can however just scan through without playing just to quickly check how it looks, without degradation.

DCP Playback in Resolve (scanning through the timeline in pause keeps the image in high quality - unlike playing back.)

Do We Need A Dedicated SSD Device For NLEs Caches? YES! Definitely For Large Projects (Features.)

Are we at a point where we now need a dedicated -fast- device exclusively reserved for Caching?  Will that decrease response time and thus will make our apps more responsive?

-- Bruce Johnson from Provideocoalition says YES! In the case of PCs and Adobe Premiere.

-- Definitely a boost for FCPX as well

-- How about Resolve?

The location of Cache can be set in FCPX in the Library Properties/Storage Location/Modify Settings:

in Premiere under Project Settings:

 AND under Preferences/Media (Previews):

in After Effects under Preferences/Media and Disk Caches:

in Avid MC under Settings/Media Cache:

in Resolve under Project Settings/General Options:

Now, you will notice that these Apps cache different things... Also Caches can grow really big in the case of AE, quickly eating hundred of GB out of your disk.

Adobe explicitly explains in AE that it is best to use a SSD separate from your footage:

So, for the sake of experiment, I will be adding a SSD to my main Mac soon, and I will set the Caches to this dedicated SSD, see if I get improved performances on these apps.

Let me know what kind of results you get with your own experimentation!

Resolve 12.5b broken Color Setting in the Dip To Color Dissolve (Yes I know it's beta.)

The Dip To Color Dissolve behaves erratically in Resolve 12.5b causing the app to crash. In the Inspector, the Color Setting doesn't show properly, any attempt at modifying the Color while in this state will result in a crash.

After several attempts at replacing the transition, the proper display of Color will show, and things will be fine - no more crash.  Eventually, after a crash, the Color setting will show its normal state.

Erratic behavior1:

 The Color setting has a slider and a box with "0.000" in it.

Erratic behavior2:

The Color setting displays a slider and a box with "--" in it.

Any attempt at modifying the Color in both cases will crash Resolve.

Normal behavior:

Here it shows its normal state, clicking on the rectangle opens the color wheel, and all is fine.

Color wheel pops-up on clicking the rectangle.

Premiere Pro 9.2 to Resolve 12.5b via FCP xml

Good news: Export Final Cut Pro xml works well.  Cuts are accurate, speed changes (including keyframing) are accurate, L and J cuts, scaling is accurate (including keyframing.)

All these work equally well on Merged Clips, ah!  I just transferred a small 30sec. project, so nothing big, we'll see how it goes with longer projects.

Retime preferences need to be reset in Resolve, as the Premiere settings do not translate.  No biggie.

Cross-dissolves translate perfectly and can be modified further into Resolve.

On the other hand, Dip to black dissolves translate fine, Dip to White dissolves turn into Dip to black dissolves for some reason.

You'd think: Easy enough to change them back to Dtwd I'll select the transition, open the Inspector, change Video Transition Style to something else, then select Dip to Color Dissolve again...  Nope.

Any attempt to change the transition either results in instant CRASH, or the BALL OF DEATH or if you're lucky enough to be able to open the Inspector panel, the Color Setting will CRASH Resolve. Interestingly enough, sometimes after the crash (but not always), the Color setting behaves properly... Go figure.

Note that after a crash, the Resolve Project comes back as it was the last time it was saved.  You will loose anything you've done between the last save and the crash. You've been warned.

I then tried to purely replace the Dip to Color Dissolve with the Resolve flavor... Well this transition appears to be BROKEN in 12.5b.  The Color setting behaves erratically, and when the Color does not appear, there is instead a slider with a box and "000" in it. Trying to change that value will crash.  Eventually after a few attempts replacing the Dtcd, the proper Color setting shows up: a rectangle with the selected color in it.  Clicking on the rectangle will open the color wheel.  So it's all Resolve fault.
http://humanuser.blogspot.com/2016/04/resolve-125b-broken-color-setting-in.html

DaVinci Resolve 12.5b

Kicking the tires of Resolve 12.5b:

- Much more responsive! I think BMD and Adobe are busting their chops to reduce FCPX advance, and that's a GREAT thing!

- Better playback speed, good. Although with some thingss like file overlay it chokes like before.

- The file overlay is not resized when changing frame size, not at the Project, nor at the Clip level. That needs to be fixed. Something I do often: work on the full size Timeline, insert a full size overlay, render a half size Proxy with burned-in overlay. Well the overlay does not get resized by half. Not right. By contrast, the "build-in" overlays, like Source TC, etc. do resize properly.

- And by the way, I would like to have a better preview of the output BEFORE hitting Render.  Adobe does it, one can even compare Source/Output, I would like to see this implemented in Resolve.

- Seem to me that rendering speed is improved as well, not by a lot more, but somewhere like 1.5 possibly, one and a half time real time, as opposed to real time before for a similar rendering task.

- Waveform display in the Viewer, multi Composite modes, yeah!  Full screen Playback, cool!

- The Auto-Sync works fine, I would like to be able to fine-tune the audio after it's been merged though. Except in Clip Attribute where there is a vague "Linked Audio", or in the Media Pool where it shows 4 channels (fro ex.) instead of the Clip 2 channels. I would like to be able to quickly see in the Media Browser that any Clip has synced audio, and the name of the audio clip attached.

- Fine tuning of the synced audio is possible in the Media Pool: Show the Audio Offset Column, and it will display (in Sec. and 1/100th of a Sec?) the Offset applied to the audio file.  Double click in this box, and you can adjust the value for perfect sync.

- There is also a convoluted way of doing it via the Media page, with the audio tab open, use Option Comma/Period to offset by one frame before/after, or Option Right/Left Arrows to offset by 1/10th of a second.
In my test, I can only offset one way: in advance with Comma and Arrow Left.  Period and Arrow Right seem to be non operant.  Maybe a bug?
The biggest bug is that it has no provision for appending tracks... It replaces the embedded tracks with the separate ones - Even if I first Auto-Sync to append audio...  So for appending tracks, the above Fine Tuning is the only viable one. For now.

- There is a way to add Timecode to a non Timecoded Clip (from TC less DSLR say), LTC recorded onto the camera audio track will be used to generate a Timecode track - Right-click on the clip and select "Update Timecode from Audio-LTC." I got to try this.

- Note on audio recorded without Timecode: Set the Timeline Frame Rate in the Master Project Settings BEFORE importing the audio, else just like FCP legacy, Resolve will stamp the imported audio to the FR of the Settings - and then audio will eventually DRIFT if on the wrong FR.  Double check Frame Rates for all clips in the Edit page /Media Pool.

More to come.

DaVinci Resolve LUTs (on Mac)

To use LUTs with DaVinci Resolve, copy them to:

HD / Application Support / Blackmagic Design / DaVinci Resolve / LUT


Restart Resove for the LUTs to appear in the drop-down menus.

Note that the folder structure is respected, that's a great way to keep your LUTs organized.