Blackmagic Forum

Recent arrival from Premiere..very experienced editor all things Adobe

My name is Craig Howard (aka shooter NZ on various forums) I come from a professional background.

I am trying to understand Resolve Database system so I can emulate how I project managed in Premiere.

Any assistance appreciated.

My file and project management system is:

I have a dedicated hard drive for PROJECTS eg Premiere Projects, After Effects Projects, PhotoShop Projects...etc

(I also have dedicated drives to O.S, MEDIA, RESOURCE FILES, EXPORTS etc..)

So in PROJECTS Drive I have Folders for every "project" in which the project file is saved as well as "copy as back ups" eg Jobnamexxx.ppj and iterations.

In Premiere I simply created a NEW Project and saved it to the Folder named as per my protocol.

Now I am trying to understand how I setup the Resolve DATABASE to do the above ..on my PROJECTS DRIVE.

Basically...does one Database manage multiple projects? What is the purpose of NEW FOLDERS? What is the purpose of NEW DATABASE?

Meantime..I will continue my research in this matter but hope someone will clarify it for me.

I am probably overthinking something here.

edit

I am still trying to find where the database is saved in my system!!!!

Resolve saves projects which can include multiple timelines, in a disk database stored on your system drive by default.

The project manager let’s you set up new databases and new locations for those databases. You can make a new DB per feature film, per client, per tv series, per year, etc, depending how many projects and how big they are and how often you archive them.

Craig Howard wrote:shooter NZ on various forums

Welcome Shooter. Nice to "see a familiar face".

Craig Howard wrote:I am trying to understand Resolve Database system so I can emulate how I project managed in Premiere.

My advice, abandon that goal. Resolve just works differently.

What I've done with my old Project drive from the Adobe days is turn it into a Database drive. I've created four databases on that drive - one for my company, two for other companies I shoot for, and one for Personal projects. Each database contains all the appropriate projects

Within each database, things can be organized in many ways. For my company, top level sorting is by type, such as Wedding, Stage, Corporate, etc. For the other two companies, top level organization is by year. You can have folders within folders to make things logical and easy to find.

Hope that helps some.

Yes, abandon the old Premiere ways.

BMD recommends putting the database on the fastest disk available, though in practice I've never noticed any performance difference between SSDs and spinning disks. In any case, you don't need a dedicated drive for the database(s). Take it for its 5 cents' worth, but I put the disk-based databases on the system SSD drive, and years later, no regrets.

Resolve creates what it calls a "local database" by default, which is also stored on the system drive. It's accessible via the Program Data folder on the system disk. You want to familiarize yourself with its structure, because you can copy and paste, in and out of disk-based databases, using the OS.

Note also that if you have dedicated folders per project on media drives, nothing is stopping you from saving a project backup or an actual copy of the project in that same folder. This means you can add that project to a new database at any time in the future. You don't need to retain the database itself. You can also backup the entire database and save it in that same folder. What you cannot do in Resolve is directly access a project outside an existing, functional database. The project file is not accessible on its own.

Peter Chamberlain wrote:Resolve saves projects which can include multiple timelines, in a disk database stored on your system drive by default.

The project manager let’s you set up new databases and new locations for those databases. You can make a new DB per feature film, per client, per tv series, per year, etc, depending how many projects and how big they are and how often you archive them.

Thank you Peter. Your help is appreciated.

Jim Simon wrote:

Craig Howard wrote:I am trying to understand Resolve Database system so I can emulate how I project managed in Premiere.

My advice, abandon that goal. Resolve just works differently.

What I've done with my old Project drive from the Adobe days is turn it into a Database drive. I've created four databases on that drive - one for my company, two for other companies I shoot for, and one for Personal projects. Each database contains all the appropriate projects

Within each database, things can be organized in many ways. For my company, top level sorting is by type, such as Wedding, Stage, Corporate, etc. For the other two companies, top level organization is by year. You can have folders within folders to make things logical and easy to find.

Hope that helps some.

Hey Jim...nice that you chimed in. Just like old times...

Thank you for your help and advice on this. Stand by...I will need more I am certain.

I am now boning up on CACHE Set up . Seems that Cache is what we knew as Render / Preview Files which we had options to where these were stored. eg I used to have them attached to the Project Files in Premiere.

Downloading the Resolve 15 User Manual...all 1 million pages of it for bed time reading.

Cheers
Craig - Shooter

John Paines wrote:Yes, abandon the old Premiere ways.

BMD recommends putting the database on the fastest disk available, though in practice I've never noticed any performance difference between SSDs and spinning disks. In any case, you don't need a dedicated drive for the database(s). Take it for its 5 cents' worth, but I put the disk-based databases on the system SSD drive, and years later, no regrets.

Resolve creates what it calls a "local database" by default, which is also stored on the system drive. It's accessible via the Program Data folder on the system disk. You want to familiarize yourself with its structure, because you can copy and paste, in and out of disk-based databases, using the OS.

Note also that if you have dedicated folders per project on media drives, nothing is stopping you from saving a project backup or an actual copy of the project in that same folder. This means you can add that project to a new database at any time in the future. You don't need to retain the database itself. You can also backup the entire database and save it in that same folder. What you cannot do in Resolve is directly access a project outside an existing, functional database. The project file is not accessible on its own.

Got it now ....thanks very much John.

Standby for more dumb questions from me...