BMCC Raw Workflow w/ Resolve

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Sarah Walton

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BMCC Raw Workflow w/ Resolve

PostSat Mar 22, 2014 7:51 pm

I've shot a good amount with the BMCC in ProRes and finally would like to make the step into that beautiful domain of RAW BMCC CinemaDNG. I had a few questions:

    - Are normal internal hard drives fast enough to edit RAW? Are External FW800 HD's able to?

    - I know the workflow to edit RAW in Davinci Resolve is to first import the clips, make proxies, edit the proxies in your NLE of choice, then round trip back to Resolve for final color grading. But after the grading is done, do you then export your "master" from Resolve itself or do you then once again export into FCP/Other NLE and go from there?

    - Is it possible to edit the proxies in your NLE and then be done with it? Or is it essential to round trip back to Resolve in order to maintain RAW quality.

    - Does HD speed matter so much if the editing process of RAW clips is done mainly through ProRes proxies anyway?

    - Should you be editing your Raw 2.5k CinemaDNG in Resolve or your NLE in 1920 x 1080 as seems to be the default settings?

    - Finally, when exporting your master for web or as a file format, what settings do you choose? Do you try keeping it in as high resolution as possible? (2.5k) or do you export as 1080p (1920 x 1080)?


Thanks very much to all in advance for any help that may be offered, and please excuse my total noobness with working with Raw!
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Alexander Arndt

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Re: BMCC Raw Workflow w/ Resolve

PostSat Mar 22, 2014 9:13 pm

ok so the first question is for me, if you shoot in ProRes why would you edit RAW?
second you dont need actually roundtripping, you could do everything in resolve and export the actual cut and grade as TIFF 16BIT files and add than actuall everything else elsewhere, this goes also for dpx.
and for the endless discussion of if that would be running etc etc,. ssd's are in fact much faster as normal hdd's as we use, dont count scsi and maybe cluster rack drives from servers, i dont know.
you have a actual mode for prores footage in davinci, that give the prores more punch if you witch to raw ill think it bleaches more out. so just for that.

this also could send to post-production?
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Dustin Boswell

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Re: BMCC Raw Workflow w/ Resolve

PostSat Mar 22, 2014 11:10 pm

You can edit the proxies in an NLE and be done with it, however its suggested to roundtrip to Resolve as you have more control over the grade of the footage, and I've found that it's easier to export higher resolutions through resolve. The

For the Web you are going to want to output for 1080P max, depending on which platform you are running you may need to increase the compression to h264 for the space restrictions.

You can edit RAW from External HDs, I have done so with RED files, so I'd assume you can with BMCC footage. I suggest though that you never modify the original files (You may have to Transcode to your particular NLE and save those compressed proxies to your hard drive to conserve space), then when you go to deliver you can bring it into Resolve to grade it & deliver at your desired file format.

as for the Internal Hard Drives, you can edit RAW so long as they aren't crappy IDE Drives (IDE has been phased out at this point, so I wouldn't worry too much about it). I would suggest personally that if you can that you convert your boot drive to a solid state. It's more important that you have better CPU/GPU/Memory.

So long as your drives are nice quick 7200RPM drives you shouldn't have a problem.

Hope I helped!
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Dustin Boswell
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AdrianSierkowski

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Re: BMCC Raw Workflow w/ Resolve

PostSat Mar 22, 2014 11:18 pm

This would probably be your easiest workflow for high quality:

From original raw make some offline material-- DnX or ProRes, but make sure the format you pick works well in your NLE and maintains the same timecode.
Edit in your NLE.
Take that timeline into Resolve, either with an XML or an EDL, and in resolve relink to the original RAW.
Do your color corrections off of the RAWs in 2.5K
Once your done with the color correction, shoot out a DPX sequence, for a master, and make a HD downcovert (ProRes would be good here).
From the ProRes HD make all your online stuff. I wouldn't put 2.5K up online since no one will be able to download it.

You'll want to work off of a RAID, for both speed and data redundancy.
Adrian Sierkowski
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David Chapman

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Re: BMCC Raw Workflow w/ Resolve

PostSun Mar 23, 2014 2:46 pm

atmos82 wrote:I've shot a good amount with the BMCC in ProRes and finally would like to make the step into that beautiful domain of RAW BMCC CinemaDNG. I had a few questions:

Are normal internal hard drives fast enough to edit RAW? Are External FW800 HD's able to?

You can, but not in realtime. An internal SSD may only playback at 12-15fps instead of 24. That's why people export intermediate files (ProRes or DNxHD) to edit with and then relink to the large files after the editing is complete.

- I know the workflow to edit RAW in Davinci Resolve is to first import the clips, make proxies, edit the proxies in your NLE of choice, then round trip back to Resolve for final color grading. But after the grading is done, do you then export your "master" from Resolve itself or do you then once again export into FCP/Other NLE and go from there?

Resolve is built to do your final export out, but some may choose to export a long, final move out and bring that back into their NLE to add final tracks. I would get my final out of Resolve and drop final audio tracks there.

- Is it possible to edit the proxies in your NLE and then be done with it? Or is it essential to round trip back to Resolve in order to maintain RAW quality.

Proxy files are low-quality for speed. You don't want to keep proxies in your edit when exporting a final. It's like saving all your Raw images as Jpeg-low quality and then making prints from them.

- Does HD speed matter so much if the editing process of RAW clips is done mainly through ProRes proxies anyway?

No, it doesn't matter in this case. Proxies should play fine (and fast).

- Should you be editing your Raw 2.5k CinemaDNG in Resolve or your NLE in 1920 x 1080 as seems to be the default settings?

Resolve has editing capabilities, but as I pointed earlier, you probably won't have realtime performance to edit takes, cuts, etc. Unless you are on a new Mac Pro with a Thunderbolt raid (Promise), you won't be getting realtime (with CinemaDNGs).

- Finally, when exporting your master for web or as a file format, what settings do you choose? Do you try keeping it in as high resolution as possible? (2.5k) or do you export as 1080p (1920 x 1080)?

Keep a master file, perhaps ProRes422 or ProRes422 HQ and use that as your source to make all your other compressed versions. Those versions depend on the settings that online players want (Vimeo, YouTube, etc).
David Chapman
Just another creative dude with a camera.
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Christian Horne

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Re: BMCC Raw Workflow w/ Resolve

PostSun Mar 23, 2014 7:17 pm

This is a good workflow if you are using FinalCut or Premiere pro


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