Blackmagic Forum

Hi Folks,
I've managed to begin the process of migrating our studio from a FCPX/Ae/Resolve12 workflow to one that's mostly based inside Resolve 15 Studio. I'm putting a business case together for our CEO to invest in a 10GbE SAN and workstation upgrade so we can set up the collaborative workflow too and I'm wondering if you guys could help few things in Resolve Studio 15 that might affect how we execute some parts of the workflow. Been working through the Resolve15 manual but some questions need answered sooner than later:

1. We currently run our file structure like so for the 'project file' style setup with other apps:
/FILM
//CLIENTS A-D
///CLIENT NAME
////PROJECT NAME
/////ASSETS
//////Project Files
//////MOTION
//////STILL
//////AUDIO

We have quite a lot of clients with multiple projects per client. My concern is that I'm not sure how to approach creating a database(s) that maintains some sort of order over the years yet doesn't choke when it gets big (or worse).

1. Am I better creating a Postgre Database per client (light but too redundant?) and locating it in the 'CLIENT NAME' level of each client? Or should I have a single Postgre database at the 'FILM' level and then keep the file structure as shown above? (Big database, possibly failure vulnerable?)

2. When ingesting from shoots we're dumping footage directly into the file structure as shown above. later we're the importing all of those assets into the project using the Media tab in Resolve. I'm wondering, once we complete a project, an archive (or am i better using an export..) could be made of the project to the 'PROJECT NAME' level and then deleted from the main Database (backups etc of the whole server are handled by the SAN). If a file is imported to the project but not used in any timeline will it be excluded from an archive? Or like I said would an Export be more suited so that the project files/timelines/grades/caches are copied to the PROJECT NAME level but the original footage is kept where it was ingested to? I'm still not clear on what exactly is copied with Exports vs Archives vs Backups .__.

3. Perhaps a little more complicated: Shared Proxies and Caching. Can proxies be generated by the Database server/resolve host computer and then serve those to each workstation? Can the same be done for timeline cacheing? (I'm guessing this would be impossible in a collaborative system with changes being made on each workstation, or does each workstation submit changes that the server generates the timeline files for playback?).

The system will be windows based over 10GbE to a rack-based server/storage solution.

Thanks in advance!
Jonny

Project per feature film, per tv show per season and per TVC agency or year if that’s not your focus.

Update database only after backup and only with restored dB so your original is intact.

Make media path for each film, series, agency.

Thanks Peter, We are the agency technically (or rather the film dept within the larger creative agency). So week to week we might have projects from 3-4 clients running simultaneously, so i wonder if running one database per client would be unnecessarily resource heavy on a server/host computer?

So would it be more efficient to just to make one resolve database, make one project per commercial job and use folders in the home screen to organise all of the projects into their respective clients..?

Also, any idea about the possibility of shared cacheing by the server? Or is cacheing done locally by each workstation when changes are made and then pushed to the server to update collaborator's monitors?

Thanks for your help!