How can optimized media include audio?

I have my rushes stored on a slow external USB drive with a noisy fan. I optimized the media onto a faster drive and now all the video is on that drive but the audio still plays off the first drive. Is there any way around this within Resolve? I would love to turn that drive off.

If not, then is the answer to make my own prores proxies to include video and audio, keep them in the same folder structure but on another drive & change the file extensions to match and then do manual relinking myself using "change source folder" (as described here at 2min30)?

Does anyone have a good workflow for Mac? MPEG streamclip still going strong?

What about using the media management option to transcode your media to Prosres or DNxHR and relink to the transcoded clips? Does that create new audio to meet your needs?

Resolve has a very easy workflow to reconnect your timelines back and forth between proxy and original media.

Thanks for pointing that out - I had missed the Media Management tool completely. That seems to do it all if it works well - has a tick for "relink to new files" and "preserve folder hierarchy".

Not as neat as optimization which effectively relinks to native media on the Delivery page by default (Video>Advanced settings "Use optimized media" is unchecked) so I'd still prefer it if audio could be carried over as an option.

Can anyone confirm that transcoding and re-linking in MM tool all works, particularly when re-linking back at the end? And I've been working with half-res - does it not confuse Resolve at all if you transcode to half-res and re-link bacl to full res at the end - in terms of transforms or titles at a certain position on screen?

Will try to do some tests when I get time.

The best way I've found to use this method is to do the following:

(you don't have to relink to the clips you create with the media management tool at the time you create the media - that's optional - just an FYI)

1. Create separate bins (one for original camera clips and one for what I will call 'proxies' - not to be mistaken for proxy resolution mode).

2. Go to edit page for a timeline where you've used used either the original camera media or proxy media.

3. Select one of the clips and then CMD/CTRL-A to select all clips in the timeline.

4. Right-click and select the option 'Force Conform Enabled' to REMOVE the check mark beside this option.

5. Return to the media page and right-click on the timeline icon representing the timeline in step 2.

6. Select Timelines > Reconform from Bin(s)...

7. Select either the bin you created for original camera clips or the one for the proxy clips to force the timeline to re-link to one or the other.

I've been playing with a timeline in 1/4 proxy mode, adding some titles using both the native title effect as well as a lower third from Titler Pro 4 (NewBlueFX) and then jumping back and forth between the original camera media which is 1080p29.97 XAVC-L material in my case and actually two different sets of DNxHR 444 proxy material - one at same resolution as camera media and one at NTSC SD resolution while simultaneously working at 1/4 proxy mode just to really confuse things and at first glance things seem to move back and forth quite easily.

FWIW - This workflow was not obvious to me - I dug it out of the manual with some help from others on this forum. In answering your post I was forced to explore this again and the second time around it all seemed to make much more sense (funny how that works).

Let us know what you discover in your travels.

Cheers

Thanks Steve, that is working for me in a test, and using half-res proxies.

Interestingly I'd already done a test before you posted where I used the relink command to move to proxies and back and that had crashed the program once I re-linked to the original media. Re-conforming the sequence has been more successful. Only downside is the red exclamation mark on each clip which isn't nice to look at (but I see that is expected behaviour from the manual & is useful information). In the manual it would seem that re-conforming was more designed for this task than re-linking in that it only mentions re-linking offline clips.

Today I am trying to move to a new project because I getting so many crashes and I thought I'd just consolidate the selects and long assemble of interview footage, but I've had no luck with it.

I first used media management on the timelines and consolidated with handles (relink to new files was greyed out so not an option). I then exported xml's and imported them into a new project (I am trying to start again to get rid of any corruption). But the sequences re-conform to the wrong clips even though filenames are unique. I've tried with "assist using reel names" off and on. I also tried copying and pasting the timeline over and then re-conforming.

I read on another thread that you need to export a timeline that has these new smaller clips in it with their new names, but it never gave me new sequences and it won't re-link/re-conform to the consolidated clips.

Could anyone (from BM perhaps?) confirm whether Optimized Media comes without sound (when original source media is offline)? This seems to be the case in practice for me when I take source media off my home network.. (v12.5.5)

If so, any plans to do Optimized Media with sound in Resolve 14? This would be extremely handy for untethered work on laptops.

In Gabriel's post in the below thread - he seems to have gotten Optimized Media working with sound (whilst source media is offline I presume ..going by his post..though I am doubtful)
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=55780