Help with Audio and Codecs, Resolve Studio/Linux ???

Hello. This is my first post. I'm coming from years of using Adobe Premiere on Apple computers. My goal is to migrate away from Adobe to another system and DaVinci Resolve looks like the best choice so far.

Earlier this year I built a custom PC with an Intel i9, 64GB RAM, GeForce RTX 2070, and Samsung SSD. The system is running Manjaro Linux.

I am running DAVINCI RESOLVE STUDIO 16 VERSION 16.1.2.026

PROS:
1. I love the editing interface so far. I find the tools are faster and easier to use.
2. I had no trouble importing 4K footage from a Mavic 2 Pro drone, and applying lens correction
3. The color correction/color grading tools seem far superior to Premiere

CONS:
1. Where are the audio codecs? I edited a 6 minute clip of drone footage, added some music, and everything plays fine on the timeline. I exported it and the video is great but there is no sound. I checked all of my settings and they are correct, but in Deliver > Render Settings > Audio, there are NO codecs listed in the Codec drop-down menu. Where are they?

2. I could not import any .mp3 sound files. YouTube's entire sound library is in mp3 format. I have a pretty large library of stock music and sound effects we've purchased over the years. It is 90% mp3 format. For the previously mentioned clip, I simply used Audacity to convert the track to .wav and then it imported fine. While this in itself isn't a deal breaker, the next related item might be.

3. We have YEARS of footage from various DSLR cameras, various models of GoPro cameras and other 'action" cameras, and at least a dozen different drones with their own built-in cameras. I just tried importing some footage from a GoPro HERO4 and the video looks great but there is no audio. Now I realize this might be related to the missing codecs described in item no. 1 and I'm hoping this can be easily resolved.

4. An hour and a half seems like a long time to render a 6 minute clip of 2K footage, considering the specs of my computer. But I think we can examine that after I get the above issues resolved.

I've already done several hours of searching Google, reading posts from this forum as well as watching YouTube videos. I've seen a LOT of the same thing over and over- you need to convert your files to format xyz. But many of the posts I've found are from years ago and don't address my problems directly, or don't apply to Linux.

Thanks

Davinci Resolve on Linux does not support AAC. You will need to convert everything to uncompressed PCM audio.

It's absent in the Studio version of Davinci as well.

Davinci Resolve on Linux does not support AAC. You will need to convert everything to uncompressed PCM audio.

Well, that's a pretty big deal when you have a huge library of clips from all the different cameras and devices I've mentioned, and we're not about to starting converting 60TB of footage on multiple backup arrays. So I guess any time we want to use any footage, we'll have to convert the clips we want to use, instead of just dragging them to the timeline like we currently do in Premiere.

Is it a deal breaker? I can't tell yet. But it might be for many others out there who are looking for an alternative to Premiere.

Should I just use DaVinci Resolve Studio on Windows 10 instead of Linux?

Just tried importing some footage from my brand new Nikon Z6. The video looks great and there is a sound layer on the timeline but it has no data.

Kind of frustrating.

As I've been playing with some things, I've found a simple solution to importing all of my old footage from GoPro cameras and DSLRs. My Linux came with a program called FFmpeg and I can convert the audio in any of my files WITHOUT transcoding the video using the following command:

Code: Select all

$ ffmpeg -i DSC_0117.MP4 -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16be conv0117.mov

Where:
"DSC_0117.MP4" is the source filename
"-c:v copy" transfers the video stream without changing it
"-c:a pcm_s16be" converts the audio stream to PCM so Resolve can recognize it
"conv0117.mov" is the destination filename

You need to use a MOV container because MP4 won't take a PCM audio stream.

I hope this helps someone!

FFmpeg is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. See https://www.ffmpeg.org/

Finally, I'm happy to be back in this forum. I FULLY REALIZE that I'm using an UNSUPPORTED version of Linux for Resolve Studio but there are many other reasons I'm using Manjaro instead of CentOS. I HOPE I can still ask questions here and get helpful answers instead of "Sorry, Resolve doesn't support [insert codec or feature]." At the same time, I always try to find my own answers and I'm happy to share anything I find.

Thanks,

Robert Giordano

Hey, in case you need to automate this, there's a tutorial on how to do automatic ingestion here:

https://passthroughpo.st/painless-linux ... -workflow/

the last section goes over using incron, an FS event based crontab workalike, to automatically pick up new footage and transcode it for resolve