I Just Don't Get It!

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Mike Mas

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I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 1:55 am

I moved away from Final Cut Pro and IMovie and bought Resolve Studio and the Micro editor. I'm running a Imac 28 3.3 Ghz core I5 w/ 24 GB.

When I shoot 4K UHD @ 59.94 on my GH5 or DVX200, Resolve chokes on the footage so I have take time to optimize all the footage or its just not workable.

Today I dropped in an audio MP3 audio track and the whole editing system turned into a slug. The music track is off time and its not the same length as the original. I googled MP3 audio files on Resolve and from what I'm reading Resolve can unpack the audio and play video the whole thing is choking.

Here's the clincher - I can take the same two files; the 4K 60 frame video and the MP3 audio track and drop it in IMovie and its smooth as silk easy to edit and the audio and video plays and sounds perfect.

Somebody please tell me I'm doing something wrong - why is this big professional program choking when a simple program like IMovie works perfect?

Thanks In Advance!

Mike
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Tero Ahlfors

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 4:10 am

I would guess your GPU is not powerful enough to use Resolve with that kind of footage.
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Peter Chamberlain

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 6:48 am

Which year/model is your iMac Mike?

I'm sure iMovie could not open a 16 bit floating point EXR file so its an example of different apps being optimised for different uses. Lets see what can be done once we know what hard are and OS version you are using?
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 11:23 am

It makes no sense to have a high-tech editing program like Resolve that cannot deal with a tiny mp3 or wave file. We're not talking about a 20 gb files here guys, this is "One" 23.6 MB file. This is really a scar on Resolve especially when its equipped with Fairlight were its supposed to be a Music editing program right?

I spent 2 hours Googling thousands of hits were everyone is choking on one of the most elementary audio files. I have $1500 invested in Studio and the panel and I can do a simple edit when I drop in a MP3 audio file that is only 2 mins in length. Making it worse, I have to sit there and generate Optimized files to even see what my video is doing!

This is backwards engineering when you come out with an editor and can't play a common audio track - what is really a shame is the free program IMovie takes the same 4K @60 files & MP3 files and plays them and edits them absolutely effortlessly with no stuttering at all!

What's the deal!

Mike
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 11:38 am

Maybe next time do more research and buy software which suits your needs better.
Not a single software is perfect and not a single software does everything in most optimal way. You simply chosen wrong one for your needs.

Your machine is no near fast enough to use with Resolve and 4K. If you read this forum you would quickly realised this. With such a machine you should go back to iMovie and FCP- Resolve is not going work well on it.

Other than this- MP3 is not a editing friendly format. It causes a lot of issues, not only in Resolve, but in many NLEs (depending in its nature- CBR, VBR etc). Converting MP3 to wav takes seconds and solves all the issues.
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 11:45 am

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Maybe next time do more research and buy software which suits your needs better.
Not a single software is perfect and not a single software does everything in most optimal way. You simply chosen wrong one for your needs.



Thanks for your expert goofy reply - I'll be sure to check next time I spend a grand on a professional video editor that they can manipulate a complicated 26 MB audio file!

Please provide me your compiled list of video editors that cannot edit audio and video!

Thanks
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Tero Ahlfors

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 12:37 pm

Resolve isn't iMovie isn't Premiere isn't Avid isn't FCPX. All of these work differently and have different system requirements. Unfortunately Resolve is built on a grading platform that requires a lot more from the computer than other NLEs.

4K in Resolve requires a lot from the GPU and if the platform was an iMac it would probably work pretty well on the latest i7 version with the GPU that has 8 gigs of VRAM.
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 1:49 pm

I'm showing that I'm only using at most 55% during these activities.

I've edited a lot of 4 k material in resolve with no problem with this Mac. I found that by recording in my Atomos in Prores resolve edits fine so I don't need a new machine quite yet. What puzzles me is how a 26 MG MP3 file can choke the program makes no sense.

Thanks
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Peter Chamberlain

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 1:55 pm

Can you also confirm what version of OS you are using when you report the year of your iMac and model?
I'm also happy to review the MP3 if you wish to PM to me.
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Ulysses Paiva

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 3:08 pm

While I can play MP3s without a problem since v14, I think saying the program is optimized to work with high demanding tasks as reading EXRs and stuff and thats why MP3, consumer stuff, makes it chuck is a lame excuse. Just an excuse. It demans so much from a computer and still cant do a simple task? Even worse when every other program can do it, so its something perfectly doable and likely not hard to implement correctly.
"You should read before you buy..." Its like saying I bought a Ferrari and I cant go 50mph, it just deasnt handles it. You can only go past 100mph. What would you say to the seller? The same as Mike. I paid a lot more and a simple, minor task I cant do while other smaller cars can? When you pay more, you pay to have MORE, you dont pay more to have ONLY this or that. Again, I only see excuses. And mostly from users. BMD has been responsible on its feedback.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 4:03 pm

BM should simply remove MP3 support- it proved to be problematic in about every NLE. If people have VBR MP3 then you almost have guaranteed out of sync problems.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 4:12 pm

Mike Mas wrote:I'm showing that I'm only using at most 55% during these activities.

I've edited a lot of 4 k material in resolve with no problem with this Mac. I found that by recording in my Atomos in Prores resolve edits fine so I don't need a new machine quite yet. What puzzles me is how a 26 MG MP3 file can choke the program makes no sense.

Thanks


55% means all real cores which is already quite good. Rest 45% are threaded cores which give you maybe 10-20% performance boost. You have to understand how decoding of h264 works- some thing can't be multithreaded easily. Your machine is no near Resolve 4K requirements and definitely not for h264 files.

Resolve is not like any other NLE- it's quite special due to its origins and other abilities. Does iMovie or even FCP have such grading abilities like Resolve? Resolve comes from world of image sequences. Same with audio- convert MP3 to wav or AIFF and done.
If you google it you will find that about every NLE went through (or still has) problems with MP3 handling. It's just not a editing friendly format, specially VBR based files.
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 4:59 pm

Peter Chamberlain wrote:Can you also confirm what version of OS you are using when you report the year of your iMac and model?
I'm also happy to review the MP3 if you wish to PM to me.


Peter thanks for the reply, here's my machines information.

I've edited some serious pieces in Resolve and can appreciate the features it offers over other systems but I'm having a problem understanding the way it fails with a small MP3 audio file.

While I'll be the first to acknowledge my Mac is no speed demon, it be easier to slit my wrists than consider a PC. I'm hoping the new Mac,s will be my answer.

Thanks
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 7:16 pm

This my own temporary solution to my MP3 problem - I recorded the MP3 sound track on a low rez video track!

Regards
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 7:24 pm

Ulysses Paiva wrote:"You should read before you buy..." Its like saying I bought a Ferrari and I cant go 50mph, it just deasnt handles it. You can only go past 100mph. What would you say to the seller? The same as Mike. I paid a lot more and a simple, minor task I cant do while other smaller cars can? When you pay more, you pay to have MORE, you dont pay more to have ONLY this or that. Again, I only see excuses. And mostly from users. BMD has been responsible on its feedback.


Ulysses

Just another Goofy reply - Both yourself and Resolve needs to get up to speed - Not sure how long you've been editing my friend, but MP3 have been around since the early 1990's and is a worldwide standard for audio and sound tracks!

Using your terminology, like the Ferrari, if it only goes 50 mph, then its like Resolve's MP3 problem "Broken"

Regards Mike
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Dan Sherman

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 7:37 pm

Mike Mas wrote:While I'll be the first to acknowledge my Mac is no speed demon, it be easier to slit my wrists than consider a PC. I'm hoping the new Mac,s will be my answer.


Don't get your hopes up, everything I've heard is that while they will be better than the current generation, they will still be lagging far behind an equivalently priced PC. Gone are the days when Apple say at or close to the top of the high end consumer market with stuff like dual processor G5s.


Mike Mas wrote:This my own temporary solution to my MP3 problem - I recorded the MP3 sound track on a low rez video track!

ugh, that's not helping your audio quality any, just use ffmpeg and convert it to a wav file.
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Craig Marshall

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 7:41 pm

This thread looks very familiar. A few years ago, new Lightworks users experience similar problems - poor software performance with heavily compressed H.264 and MP3 files. Several of these professional 'legacy' programmes were developed at a time when Professional users brought in I-frame and/or DPX material but now, the 'seat' price has dropped and the user-base has widened and when today's Professional videographer brings in highly compressed acquisition codecs from Consumer and Prosumer cameras, there's an ugly snarl up.

As others here have advised, Resolve demands a powerful, well configured machine and seems happiest with uncompressed or I-Frame codecs so the solution may well be to use alternative software when working with acquisition codecs or follow the path of least resistance and transcode. Mp3 may be a popular Delivery format but I would not call it a Professional editing audio format.
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 7:49 pm

Mike Mas wrote:
Ulysses Paiva wrote:"You should read before you buy..." Its like saying I bought a Ferrari and I cant go 50mph, it just deasnt handles it. You can only go past 100mph. What would you say to the seller? The same as Mike. I paid a lot more and a simple, minor task I cant do while other smaller cars can? When you pay more, you pay to have MORE, you dont pay more to have ONLY this or that. Again, I only see excuses. And mostly from users. BMD has been responsible on its feedback.


Ulysses

Just another Goofy reply - Both yourself and Resolve needs to get up to speed - Not sure how long you've been editing my friend, but MP3 have been around since the early 1990's and is a worldwide standard for audio and sound tracks!

Using your terminology, like the Ferrari, if it only goes 50 mph, then its like Resolve's MP3 problem "Broken"

Regards Mike


Standard for what? Final delivery? Industry standard for audio in masters is wav or aiff, not MP3 or AAC.
Have you actually used masters with MP3 audio a lot? Have you not experienced de-sync or other problems in different NLEs? Fact that iMove plays such file fine is still not end of possible problems.
There tis most likely some bug in Resolve with MP3 decoding, but this is somehow even different matter.
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Jack Fairley

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 8:08 pm

What's stopping you from converting your mp3 to wav with some other software? Should be very quick.
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Gary Coombs

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 9:00 pm

Here's an excellent free site that can be used to convert all sorts of things including what you need to do. I've used it many times and keep it in my utilities bookmark. It works very well.

https://www.online-convert.com/
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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostTue Oct 10, 2017 11:51 pm

Jack Fairley wrote:What's stopping you from converting your mp3 to wav with some other software? Should be very quick.


This has been the recommendation for editing as long as I can remember, it is super simple. MP3 has always been problematic in many programs. Always convert to a 48,000kHz WAV or AIFF.

Only relatively recently have some programs been "ok" with editing with mp3 files.

Perhaps BM could add a feature like "extract audio" for video. - to create a .WAV for .mp3/other audio files?
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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 12:25 am

mattfezz wrote:
Jack Fairley wrote:What's stopping you from converting your mp3 to wav with some other software? Should be very quick.


This has been the recommendation for editing as long as I can remember, it is super simple. MP3 has always been problematic in many programs. Always convert to a 48,000kHz WAV or AIFF.

Only relatively recently have some programs been "ok" with editing with mp3 files.

Perhaps BM could add a feature like "extract audio" for video. - to create a .WAV for .mp3/other audio files?


That's a feature I would like. Especially since I made a project last year with a mp3 music track that I manually placed marks on to align still transitions to the music. Now I want to move that from the iMac to my Linux machine (where resolve does not decode mp3 at all) and I can't find a way of doing it without losing the audio track marks.
Resolve ought to be functionally consistent across platforms really, so projects can be transferred without such problems.
I didn't notice the mp3 performance problem on my iMac, which is same model except for having the 395X 4G GPU, but I only have HD material.
Resolve should probably just automatically transcode audio tracks to WAV and be done with it.
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 1:55 am

Gary Coombs wrote:Here's an excellent free site that can be used to convert all sorts of things including what you need to do. I've used it many times and keep it in my utilities bookmark. It works very well.

https://www.online-convert.com/


Thanks for the link Gary - I've been using Audacity for over a decade now ( http://www.audacityteam.org/) it works great. While there are a few work-around's to get the MP3 audio to work without buying a PC, Blackmagic really needs to fix the problem. BM is trying to recruit new users with their free editor and 99.9% of them are using average computers like my 2015 IMac so all the comments everyone need a better computer is not going to cut it.

All of Blackmagic's competition users are have a riot laughing about this MP3 problem. my friend Casey Faris put up a video on converting MPs to Wav for Resolve and those animals beat him up in the comments, its a tough group out there!

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 2:09 am

Resolve Media Management will convert your mp3 files to wav on Mac OSX. I'm not sure about Windows 10.
It's really quite easy so should not be much of a problem.

Also there is an option to extract audio from video files in the Media page. This might help with some slower systems that struggle with mp4 or H264 audio formats.

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Marc Wielage

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 4:26 am

Ulysses Paiva wrote:While I can play MP3s without a problem since v14, I think saying the program is optimized to work with high demanding tasks as reading EXRs and stuff and thats why MP3, consumer stuff, makes it chuck is a lame excuse. Just an excuse.

I would flip this around and say if you're going to use a professional program like Resolve, you should avoid using highly-compressed consumer formats like MP3s, particularly formats without timecode. Those are a nightmare in any post situation: sound, picture, VFX, conforming, editing, broadcasting. Compression is bad -- avoid it whenever you possibly can.

Resolve does do well with professional compressed formats like R3D and XAVC and so on, and I've had very good luck with them. A lot depends on available hardware and it's fair to say that you really need to follow the published config specs from Blackmagic in order to have the program working optimally.
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Peter Cave

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 5:00 am

I also think that many users are unaware of what DaVinci Resolve has evolved from. The BMD team are really trying to retrofit full editing & audio features into grading software. They do not have the benefit of years of EDITING and AUDIO development that competing software has already been through. It will probably take another year or two before it is fully developed and on par with other editing software.

As an editor who has been doing this since the days of tape, my advice is to get used to finding solutions for issues with software & hardware. No amount of complaining gets the job done or fixes the issue quickly.

Mike, I agree, it would be great if we did not have to deal with these kind of issues.
That's why I own and use Resolve, Avid, FCPX and Premiere. NONE of them are complete solutions for everything I need while editing. The one thing that HAS got worse is project interchange between software manufacturers. I stopped doing specialised grading work and went back to editing/finishing because of interchange issues from editing apps and Resolve. Every manufacturer wants you to be loyal to them and use only their products so they don't have much interest in easy interchange with a competing product.
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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 5:25 am

Mike Mas wrote:BM is trying to recruit new users with their free editor and 99.9% of them are using average computers like my 2015 IMac so all the comments everyone need a better computer is not going to cut it.


Just because they want new users doesn't mean they should dumb the system down for the masses, who can't even be bothered to read the system requirements. Nor should they make it a bloated mess by implimenting every edge case requested by whiney end users.

The fastest way to kill an application is to listen to end users to much.
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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 5:43 am

MP3 is a delivery format like mp4 8bit, period. Both of these will quickly fall apart if you try to work with them, not just liste or look. Any filtering or sweetening of mp3 will bring out it's deficiencies, just like trying to grade heavily compressed 8 bit 420 will look ugly. (Please note that I did not write H.264 in general, since it can be of higher quality, like 10 bit I-frame only.)
Maybe AI can help you. Or make you obsolete.

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Ulysses Paiva

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 6:42 am

Mike Mas wrote:Ulysses

Just another Goofy reply - Both yourself and Resolve needs to get up to speed - Not sure how long you've been editing my friend, but MP3 have been around since the early 1990's and is a worldwide standard for audio and sound tracks!

Using your terminology, like the Ferrari, if it only goes 50 mph, then its like Resolve's MP3 problem "Broken"

Regards Mike



Mike, you misunderstood. I was agreeing with you. I said you chose Resolve because it can do MORE than a cheaper program can and not because it can do ONLY what a cheaper program CAN'T.
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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 6:47 am

Peter Cave wrote:Resolve Media Management will convert your mp3 files to wav on Mac OSX. I'm not sure about Windows 10.
It's really quite easy so should not be much of a problem.

If you mean the transcode function, I could not get that to do anything on audio only tracks. Only seemed to work for clips with video, any audio clips selected get ignored. Is there some trick to it I'm missing?
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Ulysses Paiva

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 7:07 am

Marc Wielage wrote:
Ulysses Paiva wrote:While I can play MP3s without a problem since v14, I think saying the program is optimized to work with high demanding tasks as reading EXRs and stuff and thats why MP3, consumer stuff, makes it chuck is a lame excuse. Just an excuse.

I would flip this around and say if you're going to use a professional program like Resolve, you should avoid using highly-compressed consumer formats like MP3s, particularly formats without timecode. Those are a nightmare in any post situation: sound, picture, VFX, conforming, editing, broadcasting. Compression is bad -- avoid it whenever you possibly can.

Resolve does do well with professional compressed formats like R3D and XAVC and so on, and I've had very good luck with them. A lot depends on available hardware and it's fair to say that you really need to follow the published config specs from Blackmagic in order to have the program working optimally.



Marc, I understand and agree. Thats what you should IDEALLY do. But sometimes you just need to be able to deal with far from ideal materials in a professional enviroment. Recently I had to edit and deliver a video where the client gave me really crappy compressed footage. We decided to go on location and shoot some extra shots with our BMD cameras but the client wanted a lot of takes from the footage he provided. I was even receiving videos from Whatsapp for Christs sake! And also cell phone footage. Needless to say I did my best to leave out all those crappy material out from the editing choices but the client demanded some specific takes from that and he was paing me to do that! Imagine if I would say to him "I know you can edit these footage on your Macbook's iMove like you showed me in our first meeting but my program which is the best in the industry can't". The video ended up with a mix of various kinds of footage sources, but thats what he wanted. And in the end the overall result was not bad (I did manage to use as little as I could of the low quality stuff).
That's why I say a better/bigger program should do more than the smaller ones can do, not only what they can't.
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Charles Bennett

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 12:22 pm

Just an observation. Using vers 14.0 free on PC. All clips MP4 1080 50p. Tried dropping an mp3 onto the timeline. No problems at all. Plays back exactly as expected. So, Resolve having no problems with mp3 audio here.
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Uli Plank

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 3:30 pm

There are quite few versions of mp3. Plus, the first thing to check is if they are in 44.1 kHz.
Most NLEs don't like that…
Maybe AI can help you. Or make you obsolete.

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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 3:34 pm

Biggest enemy are VBR based files.
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Charles Bennett

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 3:51 pm

The mp3 I used is an MPEG Layer 3, 192kbps, Stereo 44.1kHz.
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 4:39 pm

Thanks for all the reply's guys!

I've been at this for a while now, while I've shot just about everything made from the ground at one time or another, my main expertise is professional drone work. ( http://www.rotory.com ) in fact, I designed the worlds first aerial drone in the early 80's. One of my first employers was the National Enquirer Magazine, to fly aerials over movie stars homes in Miami and LA, to get candid shots. My more serious endeavors was designing large 12-18 ft rotor span drones for military front line surveillance.

As the art of commercial aerial photography advanced, so did my editing requirements, which is the reason I made the move from Final Cut and invested in Resolve and their panel. I wanted to get on board with an editor that I could stay with. My post is to only bring attention to BM that this trivial problem is a scar for Resolve.

Suggestions from some users that our work stations are too slow & junk is not the solution to the problem, its a design problem. There is no need for users to spend another ten grand to use a 26 MB audio file. As I mentioned, there are numerous programs available that can handle large 4K@60 video files that are not even optimized along with MP3 files.

Regards - Mike
www.rotory.com
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Andrew Kolakowski

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 4:53 pm

Just use those other programs if you are going to have many MP3 source files. Problem solved.
You don't even know what exactly cause such a problem for Resolve with your file. You should be more patient as this can be very specific problem.
There are not many 4K files with MP3 audio- it's rather rare file, so let BM fix it.
MP3 is past and now became free standard as Fraunhofer didn't bother to extend patenting.
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Cary Knoop

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 5:25 pm

One would assume Blackmagic makes hard choices as to what Resolve will and will not support and not try to please everyone, especially not those who use the software without paying for it.

If Resolve becomes a trick of all trades and master of none I fear that soon their status will be reduced from professional software to just another video editor.
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Jean Claude

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 5:53 pm

Why does Mike not put a link with one of these clips (Mp3 and others)? even a test clip?
Can we make a comparison? It's so much simpler. What else ? :(
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Dan Sherman

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostWed Oct 11, 2017 7:11 pm

Mike Mas wrote:Suggestions from some users that our work stations are too slow & junk is not the solution to the problem, its a design problem. There is no need for users to spend another ten grand to use a 26 MB audio file. As I mentioned, there are numerous programs available that can handle large 4K@60 video files that are not even optimized along with MP3 files.


Mike,

You have repeatedly shown in this thread that you don't know what you are talking about.... It's not a design problem its a business decision, if you knew anything about development you would understand that.

The 4:2:2 10 bit out of the GH5 wasn't initially supported, but BM decided to add support, most likely because the shear number of people who will be using it made financial sense.

All the mainstream lossless codecs, audio and video, have dozens if not hundreds of flavors, and no NLE supports them all, because it would be a waste of time and resources to do so.
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Peter Cave

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 2:05 am

John Morris wrote:
Peter Cave wrote:Resolve Media Management will convert your mp3 files to wav on Mac OSX. I'm not sure about Windows 10.
It's really quite easy so should not be much of a problem.

If you mean the transcode function, I could not get that to do anything on audio only tracks. Only seemed to work for clips with video, any audio clips selected get ignored. Is there some trick to it I'm missing?


I checked again. You are correct, my apologies. I usually use Quicktime Player Pro 7 for mp3 conversions and I had not done a thorough check.
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John Morris

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 2:42 am

Peter Cave wrote:
John Morris wrote:
Peter Cave wrote:Resolve Media Management will convert your mp3 files to wav on Mac OSX. I'm not sure about Windows 10.
It's really quite easy so should not be much of a problem.

If you mean the transcode function, I could not get that to do anything on audio only tracks. Only seemed to work for clips with video, any audio clips selected get ignored. Is there some trick to it I'm missing?


I checked again. You are correct, my apologies. I usually use Quicktime Player Pro 7 for mp3 conversions and I had not done a thorough check.

No worries, thanks for responding.
I'd be happy if I could at least just tell Resolve to use a different media file for that audio clip. "I know I told you to use Music.mp3, but please use this Music.wav file instead, its the track really, I promise!". I tried a few exporting importing tricks, editing xml in the middle, to no avail. Maybe resolve identifies media with a fingerprint or hash. I know it would be less time for me to admit defeat, replacing the audio clip and redo all the marks again, but its the principle! :-)
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Marc Wielage

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 3:13 am

John Morris wrote:I'd be happy if I could at least just tell Resolve to use a different media file for that audio clip. "I know I told you to use Music.mp3, but please use this Music.wav file instead, its the track really, I promise!".

If there's no timecode in these files, all bets are off in terms of editing and replacing files (and this goes for picture as well). That's a big problem with MP3s and MP4s in general. They're also very hard to jog with in an edit, because the material is compressed in such a way that individual frames kind of don't exist. This article explains why MP3s are bad for all editing programs (though the article specifically cites FCP):

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/aiff-m ... l-cut-pro/
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood
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Craig Marshall

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 7:10 am

I found that a couple of the free music tracks on Eric Matyas' site, http://www.Soundimage.org suited a long form documentary I was shooting so I commissioned Eric to produce a series of longer, custom versions for our project based on his free MP3 samples.

Eric's MP3s sound fine but when he sent over my specified custom 48khz .WAV files and we played them back on our digital near field studio monitors, the difference in sound quality between the compressed MP3 and the broadcast .WAV was like Chalk & Cheese.

The O.P. probably need to reassess his opinion of MP3 as a 'professional' music file.
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Peter Chamberlain

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 12:02 pm

Mike, as per my PM, I’m happy to review your particular MP3 file that’s causing you problems if you would share, even via PM. I’ve tested some MP3 on my older iMac and they work.
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Micha Clazing

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 12:37 pm

I don't think Blackmagic needs or wants to be defended by its users. Looking at Peter's replies, they seem more than happy to take responsibility and fix the issue. Stop making up excuses for them, they never asked for it & don't need it.

Audio is so trivially low-bandwidth that you could decode and cache a million MP3s to uncompressed in memory on the fly and still have plenty of memory and processing power left over. Once the audio is cached you can play it forwards, backwards, jog, fast forward, whatever you want with no issues. I'm getting a bit tired and fed up with all these "consumer formats are bad and that's why you can't use them in Resolve" arguments. If you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut. The average Resolve user is sitting on teraflops worth of processing power and gigabytes of high speed memory, and you're bickering about decoding an audio format designed in 1993?

A bug is a bug is a bug. Blackmagic are on it and will fix it. End of thread.
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John Paines

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 12:44 pm

John Morris wrote:I'd be happy if I could at least just tell Resolve to use a different media file for that audio clip.



That would usually be possible --swapping music.mp3 with music.wav and retaining the marks-- if both files were recognized by Resolve in an existing project. There are a few ways to do it, though (unlike, say, Premiere) you can't simply point to a replacement file, regardless of name and TC, if any, and effect a universal change throughout the project. The trouble in your case seems to be that Resolve Linux won't recognize the mp3 at all, so there's no way to perform the substitution inside Resolve.

EDIT: on second thought, did you try force conform between the off-line mp3 clip on the timeline and a .wav file in the media page?
Last edited by John Paines on Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Charles Bennett

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 12:49 pm

Bottom line, if you are serious about the audio side of of your programme you don't even consider using an mp3 for anything.
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Marc Wielage

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 1:02 pm

Micha Clazing wrote:Audio is so trivially low-bandwidth that you could decode and cache a million MP3s to uncompressed in memory on the fly and still have plenty of memory and processing power left over. Once the audio is cached you can play it forwards, backwards, jog, fast forward, whatever you want with no issues. I'm getting a bit tired and fed up with all these "consumer formats are bad and that's why you can't use them in Resolve" arguments. If you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut.

Did you read the article link I posted above? Are you aware that MP3 files actually sound bad -- on top of the known editing problems I cited? To cling to MP3s for pro use in post is arrogant stupidity that's off the scale.

I don't have a problem with somebody shooting wedding videos or little student films and throwing in an MP3 here and there. If that's the case, use a free converter to externally convert the file to WAV -- preferably a version with embedded timecode -- and it will at least function in any editing program. It still won't sound great, but at least it will play.
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Mike Mas

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Re: I Just Don't Get It!

PostThu Oct 12, 2017 1:13 pm

Dan Sherman wrote:
Mike Mas wrote:Suggestions from some users that our work stations are too slow & junk is not the solution to the problem, its a design problem. There is no need for users to spend another ten grand to use a 26 MB audio file. As I mentioned, there are numerous programs available that can handle large 4K@60 video files that are not even optimized along with MP3 files.


Mike,

You have repeatedly shown in this thread that you don't know what you are talking about.... It's not a design problem its a business decision, if you knew anything about development you would understand that.

The 4:2:2 10 bit out of the GH5 wasn't initially supported, but BM decided to add support, most likely because the shear number of people who will be using it made financial sense.

All the mainstream lossless codecs, audio and video, have dozens if not hundreds of flavors, and no NLE supports them all, because it would be a waste of time and resources to do so.


OK genius, It appears you're confused! Your comments about it being a business decision is comical because all its doing is killing Resolves business.

Use your wisdom and explain why I can put the same 4k@60 files and a MP3 in a IMovie and it plays and edits fine, I don't even have to optimize the video, yet if I place the same files in Resolve timeline it chokes. Don't give me all the capability lecture about what one program has over the other, this is just a simple example of just playing two files in the timeline.

Read my Lips - there is not one logical reason Resolve should "choke" on a tiny 26MG MP3 file, its Broke!

Regards Mike
www.rotory.com
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