No sound on clips in Resolver

Hi people,

First post so be gentile

The last time I dabbled in video (home movies) was around 10 years ago with a Panasonic 3CCD camera and media studio pro ver 8 ! So the other week I upgraded my equipment and purchased a new Panasonic HC-VX870 4K camera and spent sometime this afternoon getting to know the camera. I don't have an Ultra HD tv so shot footage in 1080p 50fps, only to find out that the old software I had didn't support this format so I found and downloaded Resolve 12.5 - and on first impressions it looks really nice.

Now onto my problem. The camera has the files in an .MTS format, and I've copied these clips to a folder on the desktop and under the media section have browsed to that folder and selected a clip which then appears in the "preview" screen. If I click on the play button the clip runs but there is no sound.

I tested the clip by opening the folder in windows explorer (I'm running windows 7 pro) and clicked on play and the clip plays fine with sound.

I can browse to a different clip in a different folder in the media section of resolve and play a MOV file and that works but no matter what I try I get no audio with the new camera clips. The embedded audio shown under the audio tab doesn't show any trace on the VU meters so it's not like there is audio there and it's muted in some way. It's like the audio has been stripped from the clips.

Any suggestions ?

Regards

Malcolm

OK after days of searching I now find that MTS files are not 100% supported with various reasons stated from licencing rights for the codec, to arguments that it's not a "professional" format.

The part I don't get is Blackmagic provide this wonderful, extremely powerful NLE platform for free, making it the obvious application for the home / hobby user who will have camcorders that save the files in this format. I also don't understand a lot of the comments saying that the royalties to use the audio codec cost too much. I can preview mt MTS files in windows file browser, and have had to resort to purchasing another NLE application from a non mainstream company. This cost me the measly sum of just $29 but imports and decodes the MTS file format fine. It lacks some of the finesse of Resolve, but it does allow me to edit and produce media for upload to the web.

Even using some of the file format converters still result in the same silent video clips, and having to convert all the clips as part of the workflow is just adding to the complexity for someone like me who simply wants to connect their camcorder to the PC and edit the footage.

I use Clipwrap for mts file conversion to Prores which resolve prefers. Hoping it won't be necessary in Resolve 14!

Thanks for the post.

I've been using clip toolz to do the conversion following a trawl through similar posts on the forum. It works, but it's a bit of an inconvenience having to batch process 20 or 30 clips into a format that Resolve can use. I have to let it run overnight in order to be able to edit the day after I return from filming, which isn't really a hardship, just an inconvenience if I'm in a hurry to get something up on Youtube.

As I mentioned, I could understand it if the application was £1000+ which is well within the budget of people who make their living from this industry. But offering it for free (which I thank Blackmagic for) will mean that a lot of serious hobbyists who have mid to top end consumer HD (or like me 4K) cameras will want to take advantage of the features Resolve has to offer.

Like I said, whilst the £30 application i purchased doesn't have all the power of Resolve like the colour matching and nodes etc, it does handle the "standard" file format that nearly all HD consumer cameras output. I've heard that the main reason is the cost of licencing the audio codec costs as being one possible reason it's not supported in Resolve, but if that is the case, how come smaller software houses can afford the licence and include the codec in their software, which at £30 is nothing these days.

I'm hoping that future updates of Resolve will negate the need to convert the file format, but I won't be holding my breath....

Regards

Malcolm

The problem is the Dolby AC-3 2 channel audio that is used on your camcorder. It's this that Blackmagic would have to pay licencing on, which would probably rule out the free version of Resolve. My Canon G40 HD camcorder, like the more expensive professional camcorders that can record in AVCHD, can record audio in linear PCM so getting round this problem. There is no problem with AAC audio used with MP4 video.
Though appealing to home users and hobbyists, you must remember that first and foremost, Resolve is a professional NLE, intended for professionals in the video industry.

Definitely try the free software called Edit Ready (used to be called Clip Wrap). It converts clips pretty darn quickly, and you can set it to convert to ProRes422 or ProRes422HQ for use in Resolve. It also allows you to name the new file and you can add metadata. http://www.divergentmedia.com/editready

I've used it with .mts files - works great, quick, good quality.

EditReady is not free, it's $49.95 (as of July 2017). There is a demo version but it only transcodes the first minute of a clip.

If anyone knows of a free transcoding/re-wrapping program please share, especially if it works on Windows. And don't mention Convert4 because that seems to have gone away.

Try Cliptoolz as mentioned above

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=37632&start=50

Convert 4 hasn't gone away, it just changed it's name: http://hdcinematics.com