Blackmagic Forum

I am very new to Davinci Resolve and have installed V17.0B Build 13 on my Mac.

I have converted over 80 - 2 hour 8mm and VHS tapes to 1080 mp4 (initially mkv format) using OBS Studio and now have some 1.5 TB of video files of 20 years of our family. My task is to sort through all these files, break them into specific subject matter (e.g. Person 1 birthday, special holidays, trips, etc.). I have no clue how to organize this volume of files and break them apart so that I can then recombine them into unique timelines.

1. Do I create many timelines of each file for the subject matter and then assemble them into other timelines?
2. Do I break up the files into clips - naming them or putting metadata into them?
3. Is there an optimal way to manage this task and if so, what is it?

I have just purchased a very fast 2 TB SSD drive to move these files into to expedite the editing and now just trying to gather all these files into a single hard drive from all my video sources.

I would appreciate some direction prior to me staring down the wrong path!

Thank you.

This isn't the appropriate forum for a general question like this one, but before undertaking this large task, you need to read up on 'subclips', 'duration markers', 'metadata' and 'smart bins'.

When these concepts are familiar you can think about how best to approach the work based on your specific requirements. If you're not familiar with these concepts, all you're going to make is a mess.

1. Why are you using beta software for such a large project?
2. Please check if your OBS recordings have a constant frame rate (MediaInfo is free), or you'll run into all kinds of trouble.

John: I appreciate the assistance and will look into the recommendations you have provided. I am trying to avoid the mess and that is why I asked the expert community. Sorry if I picked the wrong forum - as I said - I am new to this.

Uli: I am using what I could find as a person very new to this world of video - and OBS appeared to be a good tool. OBS does have constant recording and it was 60 fps. I used OBS to create the mkv files and now plan to use Davinci Resolve for the actual editing. I also tried to import the files into Resolve and there appeared to be no issue with that. I also built a preliminary Timeline with a number of video sources (from OBS) and they looked fine.

Thank you both for the input.

How did you import .mkv? Transcoding or re-wrapping?
I know that OBS can be set to a constant frame rate now and if nothing stressful is running on that computer at the same time, it works. But I've seen cases, like demanding software running concurrently with OBS, that it delivers variable frame rate even if it's not set to do so. So, it was just a heads up from my side.

Uli:

I am afraid that I do not understand your terms 'transcoding or re-wrapping'.

What I did is to connect my analog device (VHD Player or 8 MM Camera) to a 'AV to HDMI,RCA to HDMI, GOOOA 1080P Mini RCA Composite Cvbs AV to HDMI Video Audio Converter ' then HDMI output to a August HDMI HD Video Capture Card VGB500 (60 FPS) then to OBS Studio set to 1080P and 60 FPS. OBS Studio directly converted the Video and Audio stream to mkv format. Then using OBS Studio, they have a 'Remux Recording' option that takes the Mkv file and produces mp4 rapidly.

Since I have the mp4 files now - can I check their frame rate quickly in Resolve to ensure they are the same?

Thanks

Transcoding means re-compression into another codec or other settings of the same one. Can be a quality loss.
Re-wrapping is just moving the video from an incompatible container (like MKV) into a compatible one (like MOV or MXF).

To check your formats you can use the free MediaInfo. The second tab has all the info.