"Media Offline" and choppy playback

Hi all,

Having a nightmare with some footage from my DJI Osmo handheld gimbal. It just isn't playing with Resolve.

When selected in the media page or edit page the footage will say "Media Offline", even though it clearly isn't missing the path or anything. When you play or preview it, the audio will play and some frames will flash up, but mostly it just says "Media Offline" in red. The FPS counter also goes a bit crazy starting at ~1-3fps, then jumping to ~40fps before settling at 24fps (which is the clip frame rate), but even when it settles it still only flashes up odd frames.

I've tried creating optimized media from the footage, changing my graphics card from CUDA to OpenCL, forcing a different framerate, no joy. I could transcode it, but I really don't want to lose quality and create duplicate copies of perfectly good footage, and I don't want to have to spend hours doing that for ALL my raw footage before even getting to the edit stage.

The footage is 1280x720, 24fps, H264 so really shouldn't be causing a problem. I realise this might be a problem with how DJI writes the codecs, but the footage works absolutely fine in Premiere, VLC, Media player etc., it's just Resolve that has an issue.

I've done a screen cast of the playback so you can see what happens and I'll try to upload it here.

Strange, I too am getting the red 'Media Offline' error message from any file (either MP4 or MOV) taken with my DJI Inspire 2 X5S camera. I can import the raw (DNG) files from the SSD with no error but the same MP4 or MOV files imported from the SD card show 'Media Offline'.
This only seems to have happened since the installation of Resolve v15.
Any fix for this or does an upgrade to version 16 fix this issue?

I'm using Resolve 16 beta 6 and it's still happening. In the end I am having to transcode with ffmpeg (trying not to lose too much quality) and then it works fine.

I wouldn't rule out it being a problem with how DJI does the MP4/MOV encoding, but it's weird that only Resolve has a problem with it - as I say, Premiere Pro, VLC, Win Media Player all played my files fine. I would have hoped a powerful editor like Resolve would be more tolerant of different media, even if the encoded was bad. @Red Tyke - Are you sure Resolve 14 used to handle it ok?

Really annoying!

Any other DJI owners having problems?

Long-GOP H.264 is not good for post, because it was intended as a delivery codec. There's a lot of reasons why transcoding to DNxHD or DNxHR works a lot better for editing and final color.

Whether it is good for post or not a lot of people use it and Resolve should read it. I have also had the same problem. It should not be rocket science to figure this out. Devinci needs to fix this.

@Marc Wielage I totally agree, but that is all my Osmo outputs and the real issue was that I couldn't even get the footage in to Resolve in order to transcode to DNxHR, I had to use FFMPEG, which is ok and actually very good for transcoding delivery files to every format under the sun, but I really didn't want to have to use it as the FIRST step in my workflow.

p.s. if anyone is interested, here is the original video file straight from the camera: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cd325mvphv9oi ... 4.mp4?dl=0

and here's a screencast of the error in action: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iimex3cq0vg1l ... r.mov?dl=0

Perhaps Blackmagic would like to take a look at the original file format supplied above and either let us know if it is an encoding error on the part of DJI, or a decoding error on the part of Resolve? The Inspire 2 that @Red Tyke is using is a high end drone used in numerous Hollywood films, so it really is in Blackmagic's interests to figure this one out!

Checked the clip with Media Info which tells me it has Variable Frame Rate, something that does not play well with Resolve. This is why you need to transcode it first. Is there no way to set the Osmo to record with Constant Frame Rate?

Hi

As Charles Bennett mentions, you have a problem that your recording is with variable fps and maybe your computer!

I can play the clip, in Davinci Resolve 16, without problems !

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FlM4edZ4mQ&feature=youtu.be-

@Ole Kristiansen @Charles Bennett thanks for taking a look.

As far as the Osmo settings go, there is nothing that says "variable/constant". It gives me the option of 24/25/30/48/50/60 fps at 1280x720 (and other flavours up to 4k), so that suggests the output frame rates should be constant. Maybe there's a firmware issue.

My laptop is a bit old now, but still a good spec - Dell XPS, i7, 16gb DDR3, HDD and SSD, NVidia 950gt, Win 10. I know Resolve prefers 32gb RAM, and I have had issues with Fusion running out of memory with some tasks, so I'll start saving for an upgrade at some point.

Ole, good to know you can play that file no problem. Want to sway computers with me?! Or maybe buy a malfunctioning DJI Osmo?!

In all seriousness, it's good to have this forum to help troubleshoot. It is now clear to me that I need to look at the Osmo settings in more detail, check the firmware, and maybe get on to DJI support, so thank you all.

However I do still think BM should try to make Resolve a bit more tolerant of different formats. Obviously we'd all love to record everything on Ursa Mini's or REDs, but sometimes all we've got are Osmo's and our smartphones. Even if Resolve could have told me what the issue was and allowed me to transcode to an edit friendly, constant fps format natively before letting me edit that would have been good.

Out of interest, can anyone recommend a better way of transcoding to DNxHR or Cineform outside of Resolve? I don't have access to Adobe Media Encoder/Compressor, so is ffmpeg my only option?

You can use Handbrake to make a mp4 file with constant fps !

What kind of model is your dji osmo ?

I can play that clip just fine at 24 fps.