Resolve for long-form Documentary

I’ve been using Resolve Studio for online & grading for many years. Recently, I’ve started using it to edit froms tart to finish on smaller projects like corporate work and music videos, web, etc.

I’m now about to start the editing of a feature Doc with about 200-300 hours of footage. Normally, Media Composer would be my go too. The robust management of media and offline workflow, and the 20 years of working with it make it the go too choice for me.


But because my editing will involve dozens of interviews with subtitles (which seems impossible to handle easily in MC), lots of flat-looking footage, and just the overall interface of resolve, I find myself thinking of switching for this project. But I’m a bit scared to make the jump on such a big project.

I would love to hear from people who used to Resolve for bigger projects and hear a bit about your workflow. Did you transcode everything in Pro Res before ingesting it in resolve? (The proxy media seems very flimsy). How did you find working with various timeline, version, the logging system, in resolve over many months?
And more specifically, how did you handle sending your audio to ProTools for the sound editing and mix? Last time I’ve checked, this last part was very problematic to me…

Thanks for your feedback.

I think transcoding everything to ProRes (say, 422) prior to working on a big documentary is a good idea, particularly if you're dealing with a lot of GoPro / Zoom / DJI H.264 material. Organizing all the material and breaking the scenes down is challenging. If you keep the timelines relatively light -- like, not dumping 17 hours of material in a single timeline -- it can work effectively.

But I don't know of anybody who's done a really big documentary project in Resolve, or even Premiere for that matter. Most of them have been Avid, and we're talking 800, 900, 1000 hours of material or more.

Just dropping a quick commemt so I can remember to respond in a more detailed fashion whenever I have some more time, but the short answer is—most definitely yes, Resolve is perfectly optimized for such a big project—and is actually what I already made the decision to use for a documentary I'm starting next Spring. There are lesser known features of the Media Page that truly makes it a joy to work in before even starting the actual cutting (like syncing audio without having to use a sync bin or creating a timeline first; smart bins; metadata entry, etc.); and combined with the Source Tape feature in the Cut Page is a game changer for shifting through LARGE amounts of footage. Then in the Edit Page, stacked timelines are definitely an option for a method of management, and so-on. Hopefully I'm not too vague, but the Reference manual has also been my best friend over the years for best practices on how they intended the software to be used. I just have the habit of keeping it open in the background as that document is highly navigable and searchable

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My work is routinely documentary, Bryan, but typically its of the shorter 30-60 minute broadcast TV slot variety, almost never more than 100 hours of footage, usually much less, so I'm not sure theres much I can offer ... for what its worth though: for my projects so far, Resolve's logging options for metadata driven Smart Bins are working well for me, very responsive; for my projects, I don't transcode first, rather I'll create a smart bin to isolate clips that will be I know will problematic (eg 4k+ h264 etc) and then create Proxy files for that specific footage. For a larger project it may well be that transcoding everything saves you time and trouble in the long run, especially if you have an assistant; the 'Disable Timeline' feature is a godsend... even on my shorter cuts, as you start to iterate through multiple edit versions, its great to be able to keep access to older cuts without having them negatively impact project load/save times etc and/or clogging up timeline switching menus; speaking of project save, check your Automatic Backup settings... make sure they're appropriate for what you need... plus, in my experience at least, periodic manually exported project / timeline files are worth the extra time and trouble it takes to do that; and the last thing that comes to my mind at the moment, also timeline versioning related, is that long, heavily cached timelines don't duplicate instantly, assumedly because its duplicating that timeline's cache. If you're keeping a lot of versions that can a) be a frustrating wait and b) especially if you don't want/need the duplicated cache, it causes annoying cache directory bloat. On a larger project I suspect this'll need managing carefully.
Cheers
Andy

Thanks everyone for your insightful reply. I will keep on reading. What about audio for proper export to ProTools ? Is this still a big issue ?

Hey,
I'm personally convinced too, that a long form doc is not only possible, but also made easier now when using Resolve...
You may sometimes adapt your usual workflow, for ex. the way you organize timelines, the number of them you make for one specific segment of your doc, and consequently the way you gather clips and content on your HDs.
But overall, I think everything's out there to make it painlessly...

The 1st time I tried, I was a bit scared or concerned too, but at the end of the day I didn't have all the tools we can rely on these days, because this very first attempt was on... Resolve 14
Putting aside the huge upgrades of the GUI and what's behind the curtain, I managed to make it happen by making several projects to be sure I wouldn't have issues with mixed framerates. Now it's just a question of timelines !
I already had clips coming from everywhere, multicam sequences for ITWs etc etc, a lot of things which are so easier to deal with now.
What remains from these - not so ancient - ages ?
In ANY project, whatever I ingest in Resolve is yet ProRes. This didn't and won't change for me. Still, since I'm also a hard Fusioneer, plus Nuke and Motion and Mocha Pro user, I still don't really try to involve ReFusion for more than a basic quick trick : whatever graphics, VFX or CG involved are made on external standalone versions and grabbed into Resolve after export. I know I could try to make it a little more in Refusion but relying on this kind of habit doesn't bother me.

The only thing I can't really answer is the audio part : whenever a lot of tracks are involved in a long term, it's made outside and given to me later on. AAF or XML to co-workers and done, I just wait for them to come back
35 mn was the longest project I made on my own in Fairlight, with just a few Izotope and ERA inside but hey, I admit it's a real job... which is not really mine up to now.

Finally I'm convinced it's all about complexity of the project, more than the numbers of hours of footage, because if it's all the same kind of content/clips profile, we have everything we need with metadata, power bins, galleries, to treat it with efficiency imho...
It's been a while I'm not scared anymore to start huge projects not on my good old FCP 7

What about audio for proper export to ProTools ? Is this still a big issue ?

Sorry Jean-Philippe, thats not a workflow I've any first hand knowledge of in Resolve, so I cant speak from experience. There have certainly been threads here, going back a long way, with users facing difficulties sending AAFs to Pro Tools, but I read recently that the latest versions of both Resolve and ProTools should work together. There's a recent thread here that ended with a user posting "its working now as of 17.4.2" but thats just one user's experience. Theres a blog post here on a ProTools oriented site (not affiliated with BMD) that seems to offer a round up of the current state of things but I can't speak to its accuracy.

I have been struggling with pro tools export for years and I wrote on this forum just to ask for help with this problem, but finally I can say that export for pro tools works !!!!! The important thing is that you open the aaf on the latest version of pro tools !!!! I finally feel safe using davinci for films and documentaries.

I have been struggling with pro tools export for years and I wrote on this forum just to ask for help with this problem, but finally I can say that export for pro tools works !!!!! The important thing is that you open the aaf on the latest version of pro tools !!!! I finally feel safe using davinci for films and documentaries.

That is very good news! Which specific version of Resolve and Pro Tools are now compatible?

My feeling is with a big project the horsepower of a computer you are running the project server database becomes more important. Especially with collaboration mode.

I have been struggling with pro tools export for years and I wrote on this forum just to ask for help with this problem, but finally I can say that export for pro tools works !!!!! The important thing is that you open the aaf on the latest version of pro tools !!!! I finally feel safe using davinci for films and documentaries.

Fantastic ? What version was that ? Any specifics I should know about ?

I have been struggling with pro tools export for years and I wrote on this forum just to ask for help with this problem, but finally I can say that export for pro tools works !!!!! The important thing is that you open the aaf on the latest version of pro tools !!!! I finally feel safe using davinci for films and documentaries.

Hi! Quite interested on this point, too. Currently editing a 90 min documentary in Resolve and the first tests with AAF export to ProTools still had some old problems. Production sound translated ok, but some sound fx and other sound clips, coming from offline mp4 clips, etc, play as strange "noise" in ProTools.
Any ideas on what might be causing this?
Thanks!

Hey Jean-Philippe, hope this isn't too late to reply:

I've edited many short docs (~half hour or less) in Resolve, plus one feature doc. It's been great overall, some caveats:

- Transcoding to an edit-friendly codec like ProRes is worth doing, as Marc mentioned. I've used Resolve's proxies system extensively to avoid a conform-back-to-source step at the end, just switch off the proxies and you're done. ProRes Proxy at HD (or DNxHR LB) and it absolutely flies!

- It's worth working in 'reels' of ~20 minutes each on long complicated timelines. Resolve's UI/responsiveness is not quite as rock solid as Avid's; it does deteriorate a bit with lots and lots of clips. But it is nothing like the terrible Premiere experience (anyone tried to zoom out and lock a channel on a 2-hour timeline in Premiere?) Honestly, I do this in Avid too.

- Some glitches with realtime audio playback have been persistent, sadly. Fades being ignored, etc. Normally a restart clears it up, but that's not the best.

- Pro Tools mix output has been a challenge. On projects with an audio reconfirm (hooray!) I've had no worries with a media-less AAF, but then you have to manage all the media separately. For Resolve-based audio media management I recently had more success with Avid AAF and disabling video output, but it's been a few months since I've finished a project so I'm not up to speed.

- Media management is hit-and-miss. I like to send source materials to grade, not bake out an intermediate (or a flat file). Sometimes the odd bad clip can cause media management to fail, either crashing Resolve or silently stopping MM. On about half the projects I've had to spend time with the error log open, painstakingly diagnosing problem clips. Resolve should be more error-tolerant here, and should provide more details about problems, and should definitely not fail silently.

Some DR pros, and most of them are a pretty deal:

- The editing UI is really good, nice and responsive and I love the trim tools.

- Subtitles are great, improving all the time.

- Audio options are a joy to use. I put in quite a lot of effort on audio, it's how I make sense of an edit and I also think it can often sell an edit/idea to the powers that be. Dipping into Fairlight for full-channel effects/processing makes the offline job much easier. It's not quite as powerful as Avid but, man, it's a lot more intuitive.

- I live by markers, and Resolve is fantastic. Best if you have a bit of text-bashing ability to adjust the makers-EDL output when you need it, but I use markers all the time, for all sorts of things, a habit Avid taught me. Resolve is next level, it's a joy.

- I'm into python scripting, and this too has been a real time saver. Automating output for things like stills at markers (or sections for review at long markers) has given me more time to do creative editing.

Stephen

I'm trying to use Resolve for my long-form documentary as well, but have reached the point where apparent proxy bugs are slowing me down.

1. Proxy files of Blackmagic Raw footage have clipped amplitude at about 768 on a 1023 scale. This only happens when using Resolve Color Management. The result is your BRAW footage will look terrible when using proxies.

2. I created a bunch of sub-clips from the raw footage before it became apparent I was going to run out of disk space. The proxies I generated later were not found unless I individually edited each subclip TWICE, once to link the proxy files, and again to check the box to use full extents (otherwise the sound and picture are out of sync). Selecting a bunch of subclass from the same master clip and trying to make these edits en masse doesn't work. You literally have to edit each one individually.

Other than that, it's GREAT!