does it make sense to have multiple timelines/projects?

Hi,

I'm wondering whether it is wise to have multiple projects given the amount of the videos and the respective performance of my laptop. Even if it a new one it's not designed for video/audio editing I would say.

I have grouped all videos to associated blocks in first instance anyway and within my project the timeline does consist of almost 80 videos with a volume of more than 7 GB in total already. As a result the laptop isn't working very smoothly any more. Again it's my best guess because I don't have any experience with the software. And in the very first beginning I didn't noticed a behaviour like this, respectively I feel it's getting even worst with every video I add to the media section of my timeline.

So my idea was to finish up the current block (respectively the timeline within my project) an start with a new project for each new section. Finally I can deliver all timelines of all projects and merge the outcome in the end.

What do you think?

Me again

It might not be the ideal way how to treat with the issue but I can already tell you by starting a new project with just a few new videos my laptop runs the hell fast again.

At least this is working for me. If there a more professional like solutions just let me know

I'm wondering whether it is wise to have multiple projects given the amount of the videos and the respective performance of my laptop. Even if it a new one it's not designed for video/audio editing I would say.

I think it depends on how stressful the source material is. If it's very light duty HD files, it can work OK to a point. If you're using 4K (or higher) Raw files and doing a lot of color correction, it's going to crush the system's CPU and GPU very quickly.

My usual tactic for features is to slice them up in 20-minute "reels" (the old-school film approach), and then only assembling the whole thing together once the film is locked and approved. In some situations where there's a lot of changes and versions, we might start dividing it up among projects. Often at the very end, I start a new project with only the "final final" version so there's absolutely no confusion as to what's approved and what was temporary.

I do find that projects with dozens and dozens of timelines can slow down the system, but Resolve 15 has changed to allow the user to load or not load all the timelines in memory when the project is launched, which helps reduce this problem. Logistically, I don't like dealing with a project that has 40-50-60 timelines because of the potential for confusion. Simplicity is good, particularly on a long-term client project going over a period of days or weeks. And back up frequently.

I wish this forum had a like button.

At one time I had a long term project dedicated to a client with several HD timelines covering each event, but I also found my iMac getting slower and slower. I switched to using project folders based on activity within a period of time which could be a calendar year or shorter periods. A now use a project for each event and would only use multiple timelines in a project when I want to do something differently without losing previous work. That could be alternate cuts. Or different grading.


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In my old school editing workflow, duplicating the timeline works like versioning, (rough cut1,rc2, etc., mix1, mix2, etc.). It is not uncommon to have dozens of timelines in a project. But since Resolve seems to get bogged down, with heavy projects, when this happens, I copy paste the last one into a new project. So I end up with multiple projects in a folder with each one having 10 to 20 timelines representing various stages of the project.

Hey,
I've been also using this kind of split up projects, not because I felt Resolve starving in the end, but because I feel it more handy...
So one TL hardly exceeds 1 hour length (except a final one - dedicated to export only - which just gathers previous reels TL), and one project hardly includes more than 10 TL; I also use folders of projects to sort it out...

So if you were working on a 100-minute movie and I looked at your computer screen, would I see five 20-minute timelines contained within one project? OR five separate projects each with its own media pool?

My usual tactic for features is to slice them up in 20-minute "reels" (the old-school film approach), and then only assembling the whole thing together once the film is locked and approved. In some situations where there's a lot of changes and versions, we might start dividing it up among projects. Often at the very end, I start a new project with only the "final final" version so there's absolutely no confusion as to what's approved and what was temporary.

I do find that projects with dozens and dozens of timelines can slow down the system, but Resolve 15 has changed to allow the user to load or not load all the timelines in memory when the project is launched, which helps reduce this problem. Logistically, I don't like dealing with a project that has 40-50-60 timelines because of the potential for confusion. Simplicity is good, particularly on a long-term client project going over a period of days or weeks. And back up frequently.

So if you were working on a 100-minute movie and I looked at your computer screen, would I see five 20-minute timelines contained within one project? OR five separate projects each with its own media pool?

One project, 5 or 6 x 20-minute timelines.

Once an entire version is locked, and the client comes in for revisions, I do a Save-As for the entire project and call it "Project v2." The old version remains in the project folder, so it's there in case we ever need to refer back to it. I try to keep the sessions as lean and mean as I can just to make it run a little zippier.

Once the whole show is done, then I do another Save-As and call that version FINAL. You could in theory create one timeline with the entire project, or just create one Nested timeline made up of all the other timelines to render a single file of the entire feature.

If there are alternate forms of delivery, like HD, 4K, HDR, or whatever, I'd save the entire project with this new file name. That way, there's no chance of the wrong version getting exported within one project. I do generally wind up with an additional timeline of TEXTLESS, but that generally takes up very little space, maybe 5-6 minutes or so.

i work somewhat diffrently, i do not see any issues with full feature length timelines, tonight i'm working on a full feature film top to tail, 98 min

looking in my "old timelines folder" there's about 50 timelines, all full length in there

i tend to work at the highest deliverable raster, so my master timeline for this film is DCi4kscope

i also tend to use other software for mastering - so i render a CTM at DCi4k raster and use that to add the mix tracks, titles/text and scale down to 2k and HD

the finishing software i use had parent/child related timelines making versioning and dropping fixes into versions cleanly pretty simple when compared to Resolve's workflow for the same end game

i'm working on a 2x 2697v2/128g sys ram/2x 1080Ti / SAS array, i've seen Resolve alone useing 40+gig of sys ram without Fusion

I'm currently working on a documentary of a band recording a song in a studio. Shot on 3 RED cameras and 2 Panasonic 4K cameras, we're at 20TB of video and audio footage with another 10TB to go. Resolve 15.2.2 is running just great on my iMac Pro connected to a QNAP 872XT thunderbolt NAS. I've got 4 (soon to be 6) timelines, and everything on the computer side feels snappy and solid.

There were a few things that made this work:

1. Blackmagic gave me a patch to increase the number of open files allowed under Mavericks (10,000 vs. default of 256), needed when using lots of RED media

2. I needed to nurse along the audio ingest process. Resolve builds waveforms in a lazy way--only calculating them during the time when Resolve is idle (which makes the system seem faster to use if you don't need the audio waveforms right away), but also only on the active timeline. For the amount of multi-track audio data I had, it was an overnight process to get all the waveforms built, but it was also a multi-day operation because Resolve didn't eagerly build audio waveforms for all the timelines, only the one I left it looking at went I went to bed.

I'm very impressed at how stable and snappy things have been for me on a project that is much, much larger than any I've yet attempted to date. And I'm very impressed that things are working as well as they are with me just working as I please, without having to do too many special things to accommodate the limitations of my software or my hardware.