An additional feature to "Media Managment"

Hi everyone !

(First of all, please be kind, my english may not be perfect)
There is a feature we've been waiting for years that would help us (and, I think, a lot of small AV companies). It would be the ability to use "media management" mode, with H265 settings with Alpha export.

Let me explain: Almost all of our company's production flows are in Braw and we have limited resources for the tens of Terabytes of data we consume each year. So, one day we had the idea of compressing our oldest Braw rushes into H265 and we discovered that it was even possible to make them in 444 10 bit !

That's great ! Except that, when you use the transcoding function, all the rushes/assets etc. present on the timelines or used in the project are re-encoded and therefore all the effects that required Alpha Channel are gone. For example, we edit with video files that show logos or subscription reminders (for YouTube, for example) or lower thirds with the names of the participants, etc. Well, these moments, which are very numerous in each of our videos, turn into a big gray image that hides the whole background, because of the Alpha channels no longer presents.

Also, when we do these transcodes, some of our Braw were developed with specific settings like the Iso and white balance values may have been changed in post production for example. In this case, to my knowledge, there is no option to keep the RAW development settings and apply them on the file transcode. The transcodes will always be done at the source and the resulted file will be with grade applied from the original RAW without the Project Camera Raw settings .

In conclusion, it would be great to have these two options (at least from the media management):
- Be able to transcode to H265 with Alpha Channels.
- To have an option to take into account the Camera Raw settings before encoding.

Or, at least have an option to reject certain types of files and therefore ask Media Management to encode "ONLY BRAW" and move or copy the rest of the files to the desired folder, for example. This might be easier to set up at first, while allowing small structures like ours to keep our important rushes with a very good quality while saving on our expensive storage.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope with all my heart that I have not been boring or said something that has already been proposed !

In conclusion, it would be great to have these two options (at least from the media management):
- Be able to transcode to H265 with Alpha Channels.
- To have an option to take into account the Camera Raw settings before encoding.

I don't think H.265 can support Alpha channels. In general, that's kind of a high-end feature for which you need ProRes 444 or DNxHR 444. (Uncompressed graphic formats can do it, but the relinking is tricky because of timecode and file names.)

You can Media Manage and just trim Raw files like BRaw, and it can actually work very well. The trimmed BRaw files do retain the Raw settings from the Color page.

Graphics and things like that are tricky, and for something like that I would either manually relink the session to the smaller trimmed BRaw files (which I've done before) and kept any PNG, TIFFs, DNX, or other graphic files with alpha channels as they were in the original show. For Media Management, I'd basically turn off the graphic layers, perform the Media Management, then relink it and turn the graphic layers back on. It can work pretty effectively if the session is well-organized. It's the camera files that really take up all the space.

Ok, thank you for your answer. Actually I saw Apple is supporting H265 with Alpha but, the way I understood it, is by using ".mov" encapsulation of the Alpha and the video but not "directly" from the h265 codec. I belived it may be much complicated to implement this kind of possibility in Resolve, even on macOS.

Trimming Braw is a good idea, we've already tried it but it's not as efficient as re-encoding with a slight loss in H265 but we never tried to turn off the graphic Layers ! We will try that, it will help, for sure ! It is so simple and obvious that we had never thought of it ! Haha ! Thank you very much for your answer !

I don't think H.265 can support Alpha channels. In general, that's kind of a high-end feature for which you need ProRes 444 or DNxHR 444. (Uncompressed graphic formats can do it, but the relinking is tricky because of timecode and file names.)

In fact it is in principle possible to use h.265 with Alpha channels:
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/506/
https://larryjordan.com/articles/includ ... evc-video/
https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-me ... p/10630686

But not out of the box.

Apple seems to have created a spec for its own application of HEVC multilayer extension. So it isn't part of the core HEVC feature set but a custom, although open, extension by Apple.

I recommend to buy an LTO machine and do a double archive to tape and clear your drives.

I would not advice to use h.265. Neither archival nor consolidating should rely on a compressed codec (that's still not supported by many devices in 2023). In the long run you should invest in LTO anyway.