17: Optimized Media Column

I notice the Optimized Media column is gone from the List view in the bins. This makes it impossible to know which clips already have OM generated, and which still need it.

Can't you still add it?

Would be good to have this back

On page 16 of the New Features Guide in the section about sharing OM between projects, it says:

Deleting optimized media from DaVinci Resolve now must take place manually, by removing the files in the CacheClip/Optimized Media folder in your OS. There is also currently no way to show which files in your project have been optimized and which have not.

...which is a bummer, but the new Proxy media does list a filepath.

So it seems to me like the new Proxy media is the old optimized media with a new name, and unchained from the .dvcc proprietary management. But then, I'm confused about what the new OM is. It's shared between projects, which is cool, but at the same time, Resolve doesn't know where, or even IF it exists?!?

*EDIT*

Ew. The new Optimized media is the old .dvcc, stuffed into a non-human-readable directory, and unlike before, *without* an info.txt file to identify it. There's no way to manage it from within Resolve, and no way to identify it from the Finder/Explorer, so if you're going to delete your optimized media, you're going to either take your chances with getting the right project, or delete ALL of it. It seems like they're pushing towards user-managed Proxies, which is what people coming from other NLE's are more familiar with anyway. C'est la vie.

I never trusted it 100%.

Can't you still add it?

It's no longer on the list of available columns.

That's a problem.

It would be less of a problem if Cineform was a Proxy option. (BMD? Hint, hint.)

Right, they must have changed the structure for OM.

Is there any reason to still use OM over Proxies? It seems like the new proxy workflow is a superset of OM. It's fairly straightforward to link to proxies from other projects, replicating the multi-project "advantages" of OM.

I don't understand why R17 still has the OM option. It can't be for backward compatibility since it doesn't recognize R16 OM files and the file structure is different. Even the workflow is slightly different since you can't delete the OM.

According to the "General Improvements" section in the new manual:

On the surface, Proxy Media and Optimized Media appear similar in function. Both options are designed to create lower bandwidth, easier to edit versions of source media. However, Optimized Media is managed internally by DaVinci Resolve, cannot be exported, and is not user accessible. In contrast, Proxy Media creates fully portable and independent media that can be easily managed by the user.

So it really seems like Proxies have several more advantages to OM and none of the disadvantages. Does anybody know why OM is still there? Can anyone think of a use case where using OM would be superior to using Proxies?

Is there any reason to still use OM over Proxies?

Cineform.

I'd like to join Jim here. Why, oh why is Cineform not offered for proxies as well?
It's there for OM and for Cache. so it shouldn't be too difficult to add that to the list for proxies. It's such an elegant and often underestimated codec.

Pretty please, BM, now that you fixed the problem with the resolution restriction, please go that last step too!

Strange. From reading the release notes it sounded like they were still going to have optimized media, but the new proxies seem to do basically the same thing, and the omission of the column in the media pool would suggest it is being replaced.

For now I'm having to regenerate everything as proxy media since I don't remember which files were optimized.

Still missing in 17.2.