R3D Trimming Problems in R15: New discoveries!

As many of us are now well aware, the Resolve 15 Media Management tool has great difficulties in trimming R3D source clips. A trimming operation will often abort with a non-helpful "Failed at:" error message at the bottom of the Media Management window.

This is such an annoyance to my workflow that I've been trying to find a way to duplicate the issue for BMD support, and I think I'm coming closer to the source of the problem!

When I import a XML file from a Premiere Pro sequence, many of the R3D files have clip names which for inexplicable reasons, reference a randomly chosen "span" of a multi-file spanned R3D clip. For example a long R3D clip containing 7 individual spanned files will be referenced using the clip name "A001_C002_0422QB_003.R3D", instead of referring to the first file in the span. When the Resolve Media Management tool tries to trim these R3Ds, it seems to fail, because it's not finding the expected timecode extents in the physical files, because the _003 R3D has a different internal timecode than is referenced by the xml import.

To work around this, I just do a "reveal in Finder" on all the offending clips, then drag the _001 files into the Media Pool, then do a Force Conform on any R3D clip that does not reference the _001 spans. After doing this, the trim operation works flawlessly.

Hope this helps some of you who have been tearing their hair out about this issue since R15 was originally released.

I’m assuming that is an XML coming from Premier Pro.
Does anyone have the same Media Management issues with AAFs coming from Avid? It would be helpful to know for trouble shooting as well as BMD’s coders.


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I’m assuming that is an XML coming from Premier Pro.
Does anyone have the same Media Management issues with AAFs coming from Avid? It would be helpful to know for trouble shooting as well as BMD’s coders.

Yeah, the issue is part Adobe, and part BMD.

Its Premiere that is actually importing some of the R3D spans using non "_001" clip names. I'm not sure, though, if this is something that the offline editors are causing by the way they import the R3Ds into their projects?

However, Resolve still translates the Premiere XML on import just fine. It's just the Media Manager that seems to choke on the non _001 spans when you ask it to trim the source R3Ds.

My only workaround is to avoid trimming clips on projects with spanned camera media (like R3Ds), and instead just media manage the entire clip.

The exception for me has been MXF files with the Sony F55 and ProRes with Alexa, and those trim just fine with zero problems. Canon files are still a problem because of the spanned-clip issue.

Even on a pretty large feature, we can easily whittle down (say) 20TB of 4TB files down to maybe 4TB, which to me is not that difficult to deal with. I agree, it would be nice to get it down to 1TB, but I can live with this.

My only workaround is to avoid trimming clips on projects with spanned camera media (like R3Ds), and instead just media manage the entire clip.

This has also been my lame workaround, ever since Resolve started becoming flaky with the trims.

But it drives me crazy, because it's no longer the exception that DPs just let the camera roll during multiple takes. So I often end up having to collect 1-2 TB of data, just for a simple :30 commercial spot!

Encountering this quite a bit in a current project, and ordinarily wouldn’t mind taking the whole clip... but in this case, dealing with 1.5 TB per Act is getting out of control.
Examining the Media folder, all I have are 001’s —- drag in the real clip?
Or another thing I’m seeing is the editor has “compounded” many original R3D source files in FCPX...
jPo, CSI

I wonder if modifying the xml before import can help?

I usually get aaf from avid so I don’t know how this file looks like.

Can you post a xml example?

Or another thing I’m seeing is the editor has “compounded” many original R3D source files in FCPX...

At or near the top of the list, we tell editors to commit all the compound shots and not give us any to deal with on down the line in post.

Reviving this thread to report that this issue still exists in 16.2.2 on macOS.

I have since discovered that if you right click on the non _001 clip-span in the Media Pool, then select "Reveal in Media Storage", you get an "Unable to find media" error.



However, if you select "Reveal in Finder" the specific clip-span is properly revealed in the Finder window.



Hopefully this helps narrow things down for BMD engineering.