Blackmagic Forum

Hi,

Is there a cap on the length of a video project for DaVinci Resolve? For instance, I am about to edit a documentary with a final length of between 20 minutes to a half hour. The raw footage to sift through will be a lot longer. I recall reading this post where it suggests to break down Resolve projects into 20 minute chunks:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/277/5774

Is this something I need to keep in mind when I work on larger projects?

Longer features are usually dealt in reels but if your whole project is about 30 minutes then this isn't probably necessary. I'd guess the maximum length of a timeline is 24 hours as that's the limit of your standard timecode.

Fathom Story wrote:Is there a cap on the length of a video project for DaVinci Resolve? For instance, I am about to edit a documentary with a final length of between 20 minutes to a half hour. The raw footage to sift through will be a lot longer. I recall reading this post where it suggests to break down Resolve projects into 20 minute chunks...

I think there are a lot of different philosophies and styles of editing for different projects. Documentaries are rough just because of the sheer amount of footage to have to access. Whole books have been written on how to structure documentary editing and edit rooms, so it's a complex subject.

My observation would be to organize the material in bins -- say, one for each day or one for each person being interviewed, or one for each location or subject -- and then start going through all of the material and creating subclips of the choices you make. Some people prefer to get all the interviews converted to text and then do the coarse editing on paper, then once you know where the good material is, then do a fine-edit with the actual files.

I think you could do a couple of hours with (say) 30-40 clips without too many problems, assuming nothing but a general overall LUT or look to just see what's there. I would not try to dump much more than this into a single timeline, for the simple reason that it gets very messy very quickly.

The manual has some great information on the use of Metadata to help organize clips, provide keywords for specific information, mark good scenes vs. bad scenes, and lots of other valuable information.

For the final timeline i think you can be 24 hours long, it is a matter of practicality: if i have a 2h long project, i will split it in different 20 minutes timelines or at least 3acts, for 1 hour program you can certainly do one timeline.

A smaller reel is lighter to handle, just a thought.

Disclaimer: I'm soo used to have reels.. that's how movies come to me for finishing.

i did a project for a gallery that was 8 hr long, @ 4k.... Resolve held it's end up just fine

Tero Ahlfors wrote:I'd guess the maximum length of a timeline is 24 hours as that's the limit of your standard timecode.

...

waltervolpatto wrote:For the final timeline i think you can be 24 hours long,

So... Yeah..
That's what I thought too. And traditionally at least it should be correct. Timecode is somehow supposed to be limited to 23:59:59:2X (or 119 at max... ) Or we wouldn't all remember/mention that limit.
It is like that in Premiere Pro - Hard limit with an error message.
In Avid - Sort of looses it around 24 hrs.. doiesn't write TC beyond
and in FCPX - TC becomes incoherent after 24 hrs..

Then a colorist friend told me he was cruising a 68 hr timeline.. and it made go "wait a minute..."


I just love how BMD kicks traditions in the ass...

255:59:59:119

This isn't some DHARMA Initiative code. This is Resolve's current (V15 on my macbook) TC limit in a timeline.

This revelation was so cool that I just had to share it somewhere

I wonder if there is a limit (metadata limit? codec/container limit?) in exporting it to a file, I didn't try cause I wasn't sure how it would affect my laptop to export such a behemoth.




p.s. Then Smoke (I have it as a Trainer, rarely use it now days... Anyone frequently working on it in 2018??) just had to ruin all my fun... I stopped checking after it passed 1000:59:59...

Hi Hector,
(humor)

Today + 255 days = 2019/02/28.
See you soon
byeBye .... Maybe Davinci Resolve V16B3? gold V16B4 ...?

waltervolpatto wrote:A smaller reel is lighter to handle, just a thought.

And easier to navigate around. I used to think of it as a 1200' lab roll.

As far as limitation according to 24-hr time code, that makes sense. The alternate would be to sort out how big the address stack is that would accommodate some kind of huge Absolute Frame Count reference. How many zillion frames long can a timeline be? 255 hours? Sounds like an octal relationship. TAD that, my DCA PDP-8/11 brethren.

jPo, CSI

Hector Berrebi wrote:Then a colorist friend told me he was cruising a 68 hr timeline.. and it made go "wait a minute..."

Good luck exporting an XML that has to work with the rest of the planet.

There are SMPTE committees working on new timecode systems that will work up to 120fps, and there has been talk of having a days:hours:minutes:seconds:frames system. But it would obsolete every piece of existing software, cameras, and recording hardware that now exists. It will be very hard to transition from a world where 23:59:59:23 is the maximum timecode value on a 24fps timeline, to one that goes hundreds (or thousands) of digits above this. It'd be a ton of recoding. It's possible, but it's going to be a mammoth undertaking, given that timecode is kind of the linchpin that holds a lot of audio, video, color, and VFX together.

I get nervous even when people hand me stuff that starts at 00:00:00:00, because (being an O.G. post guy), Hour 0 was almost always verboten in tape.

Marc Wielage wrote:There are SMPTE committees working on new timecode systems that will work up to 120fps, and there has been talk of having a days:hours:minutes:seconds:frames system. But it would obsolete every piece of existing software, cameras, and recording hardware that now exists. It will be very hard to transition from a world where 23:59:59:23 is the maximum timecode value on a 24fps timeline, to one that goes hundreds (or thousands) of digits above this. It'd be a ton of recoding. It's possible, but it's going to be a mammoth undertaking, given that timecode is kind of the linchpin that holds a lot of audio, video, color, and VFX together.

Yes.

Hence my utter surprise and shock to this revelation.



first thought was.. Am I getting old?

Marc Wielage wrote:Good luck exporting an XML that has to work with the rest of the planet.

Its a dailies timeline for a whole season of a show... I don't think they are exporting it (or XML of it) in whole.
That timeline was probably part of a workflow in that specific German post house..