Blackmagic Forum

Quick background: relatively new to non-basic editing. My experience thus far has been editing and color grading in Premiere Elements. It's a good program for what it has, but I'm enjoying the features of Resolve and would like to improve my end product.

Goal: To formulate an efficient Workflow using Resolve for Color Grading and as dedicated NLE

I'm used to doing all post-production without transcoding H.264 (Canon T5i) so this is a bit new to me. Reading about wrappers, codecs, bit rates, ugh. I gain clarity until I read more, and then clouds roll in again.

Prior to implementation, I would appreciate input based on my intended workflow, derived wholly from reading a wide variety of posts.

Step 1) Transcode h.264 to DNxHD (PC)
Should I use 5DtoRGB or MPEG Streamclip?

Step 2) Edit Clips in Timeline

Step 3) Color Correct

Step 4) Encode back to h.264 within Resolve for delivery to Vimeo/Youtube

Will my footage lose clarity with this workflow?
If so, can you recommend a workflow that will create a better end result?

I would definitely convert your source footage. Save yourself allot of pain. Resolve likes ProRes 422. 422 HQ would be my recomend.
But wouldn't it make sense, and this is a question to all, to use Resolve to do this? And at the same time to create offline files for editing that can be easily re-conformed latter?

I would also like to see a workflow for this.

Can Resolve use ProRes 422 on a PC?

Oops. Sorry, I missed that.

To answer your question: Not easily. CinecPro http://www.cinemartin.com/cinec/ will do that.

You can use a ProRes file with your PC but only to read or for the color grading on Resolve but you can not render this codec out of Resolve. You are not obligate to transcode your files to work on Resolve you can work directly with your native H264 files. But it is true that this requires a strong configuration, otherwise, with a PC, you can make a rendering in DNxHD, which is the equivalent of ProRes in the PC world.

*EDIT: I'm also using GoPro footage in addition to DSLR. Might as well cover both issues here.
*REMINDER: PC User

I've come up with some options and would appreciate the forums feedback.

OPTION 1:
GoPro - Convert footage to .AVI using GoPro Studios (fast and can do multiple clips at once)
DSLR - Convert to AVID DNxHD (10 bit) using 5DtoRGB

Color Correct in Davinci

QUESTION: What FORMAT do I render to (from Davinci) in order to ultimately convert to MP4 (YouTube preferred), and then HOW do I convert that format to MP4? Can't export to MP4 in Davinci.

OPTION 2:
GoPro and DSLR - Convert ALL footage to .AVI using GoPro Studios, Color correct in Davinci.
Same question as above.

Is one option better than another; i.e. lossless? Is there a better solution?

A lot of this is so foreign to me. I read convert to this, convert to that, but there are rarely any specifics, esp for PC. There are even multiple formats of DNxHD. How to know which is best?

Help appreciated

Stuart Scott wrote:I would definitely convert your source footage. Save yourself allot of pain. Resolve likes ProRes 422. 422 HQ would be my recomend.
But wouldn't it make sense, and this is a question to all, to use Resolve to do this? And at the same time to create offline files for editing that can be easily re-conformed latter?

I would also like to see a workflow for this.

Stuart, what exactly do you mean by this? Can you explain what you mean about offline files and re-conforming?

Joey:

• Recoding footage to an appropriate editing codec – quality, frame rate, and fields. (ex. ProRes 422 HQ, DnxHD)
• Offline files would be lower res files in an editing codec for editorial editing. (ex. ProRes Proxy)
• Reconform – Replacing edited proxy files with 422 HQ files for grading/output.

Stuart Scott wrote:• Reconform – Replacing edited proxy files with 422 HQ files for grading/output.

Warning: if you have typical DSLR H.264 footage, be aware of the fact that resolve and it's used quicktime file import are not frame accurate in many cases! this can be very annoying, if you have to reconform this kind of proxies, made by another [more accurate] application, with the original source clips in resolve. the results will be out of sync by exactly one frame.

this a well known problem -- several times reported here in the forum! --, but never added to a pubic visible issue tracker or silently fixed.

Martin Schitter wrote:

Stuart Scott wrote:• Reconform – Replacing edited proxy files with 422 HQ files for grading/output.

Warning: if you have typical DSLR H.264 footage, be aware of the fact that resolve and it's used quicktime file import are not frame accurate in many cases! this can be very annoying, if you have to reconform this kind of proxies, made by another [more accurate] application, with the original source clips in resolve. the results will be out of sync by exactly one frame.

this a well known problem -- several times reported here in the forum! --, but never added to a pubic visible issue tracker or silently fixed.

If your source is H264, you're better off to convert to ProRed or DnxHD with good quality as first thing and forget of the h264 altogether.

H264 is for DISTRIBUTION, has never been intended to be used in post production....

waltervolpatto wrote:If your source is H264, you're better off to convert to ProRed or DnxHD with good quality as first thing and forget of the h264 altogether.

if you have to use resolve that's more or less the only workaround right now.

i don't say, it's wise to use long-GOP encodings for fast navigation within typical editing tasks, but it's more a shame, when a professional application isn't able to handle this kind of simple file import and transcoding in a clean, accurate, and efficient way!

waltervolpatto wrote:H264 is for DISTRIBUTION, has never been intended to be used in post production....

the all ALL-INTRA variants of them got invented as a quite useful way of ACQUISITION!
and on small cheap storage media they are not the worst choice.
if you use them with reasonable bandwidth and bitdepth settings as in sonys XAVC, they are quality wise even better then most old fashioned traditional intermediate codecs.

What program do you suggest to convert to DNxHD?

Vito DiFronzo wrote:What program do you suggest to convert to DNxHD?

you can still use resolve, just convert them and from that point on you use the converted file for everything.

Martin Schitter wrote:

waltervolpatto wrote:If your source is H264, you're better off to convert to ProRed or DnxHD with good quality as first thing and forget of the h264 altogether.

if you have to use resolve that's more or less the only workaround right now.

i don't say, it's wise to use long-GOP encodings for fast navigation within typical editing tasks, but it's more a shame, when a professional application isn't able to handle this kind of simple file import and transcoding in a clean, accurate, and efficient way!

waltervolpatto wrote:H264 is for DISTRIBUTION, has never been intended to be used in post production....

the all ALL-INTRA variants of them got invented as a quite useful way of ACQUISITION!
and on small cheap storage media they are not the worst choice.
if you use them with reasonable bandwidth and bitdepth settings as in sonys XAVC, they are quality wise even better then most old fashioned traditional intermediate codecs.

the XAVC format is NOT the one from the dlsr format... they cannot really be treated in the same way.


Btw...

http://www.sony.co.uk/pro/article/broadcast-xavc-white-paper-1211

waltervolpatto wrote:

Vito DiFronzo wrote:What program do you suggest to convert to DNxHD?

you can still use resolve, just convert them and from that point on you use the converted file for everything.

Thank you.

What I'm asking, though, is what program do you suggest using to convert the compressed H.264 footage into DNxHD?

I really like 5DtoRGB on the Mac; I would think their Windows version would be equivalent, but I have no data.

5DtoRGB has a very pleasing conversion process. The results look significantly better than other conversions.

Vito DiFronzo wrote:

waltervolpatto wrote:

Vito DiFronzo wrote:What program do you suggest to convert to DNxHD?

you can still use resolve, just convert them and from that point on you use the converted file for everything.

Thank you.

What I'm asking, though, is what program do you suggest using to convert the compressed H.264 footage into DNxHD?

you can still use resolve, just convert them and from that point on you use the converted file for everything..... or use one of the extra software mentioned by Lee

I have tried to convert my H.264 files to Prores 422, and I have tried to edit the H.264 files without transcoding (only replacing the audio with PCM).

As far as I can tell, there is zero difference in performance. I get occasional stutters (especially in the color window, and especially after a while), but I can live with it.

My question: Are there other advantages to converting to Prores or some other "pro" format?
For instance quality of the finished, graded footage?

Haavard Pettersen wrote:I have tried to convert my H.264 files to Prores 422, and I have tried to edit the H.264 files without transcoding (only replacing the audio with PCM).

As far as I can tell, there is zero difference in performance. I get occasional stutters (especially in the color window, and especially after a while), but I can live with it.

My question: Are there other advantages to converting to Prores or some other "pro" format?
For instance quality of the finished, graded footage?

mostly speed. lots of it.

Haavard Pettersen wrote:I have tried to convert my H.264 files to Prores 422, and I have tried to edit the H.264 files without transcoding (only replacing the audio with PCM).

did you use all-intra or a long GOP variant of H.264 in your recording?

all-intra H.264 should behave very similar to prores or dnxhr in NLEs but you need about four times the bandwidth to archive the same image quality as in long GOP recording of usual scenes. only for content with an unusual amount of movement all-intra may look better and show less compression artifacts than utilizing GOP compression given the same bandwidth / storage requirements.

Haavard Pettersen wrote:As far as I can tell, there is zero difference in performance. I get occasional stutters (especially in the color window, and especially after a while), but I can live with it.

seeking backwards is usually much slower for GOP footage. that's the main issue.

Haavard Pettersen wrote:My question: Are there other advantages to converting to Prores or some other "pro" format?
For instance quality of the finished, graded footage?

no -- the image qualitiy is always better if you do not transcode. prores HQ is a good compromise and may look sufficient in most practical cases, but rendering straight from the source will be allways better. usually you will not see much performance difference while rendering in both cases. this simple forward playing works quite well on GOP footage too. it's only the response time on editing operations, where it makes a perceptible difference.