Archiving projects in transcoded h.265 with baked in grade

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to archive some big projects (2-3TB) into h.265 for longterm storage, and not sure of ideal workflow. I want to keep the project structure and timecode synced timelines (3-cam and 3 audio tracks) but essentially with only a sort of 'proxy' media.

What are my best options?
Options 1: Media Management transcodes everything well, but doesn't bake in the grade and colour management. If I'm converting to h.265, I assume its best to bake that in.
Option 2: Create proxies within resolve, h.264 is the only option. Again, doesn't bake in the grade.
Option 3: Export Individual Clips and try to relink. I tried this in h.264, but it won't relink despite same name (except the .mp4 ending).

Any advice? Many many thanks!!

I think your objective is...less than ideal.

Archive the original media.

I think your objective is...less than ideal.

Archive the original media.

In many cases that's a complete and ridiculous waste of storage... less than ideal.

Unless you have servers growing on trees and don't mind the meaningless electronic waste, I'd need 50TB to pile up projects that I (most likely) will never need to touch again. SOME projects, yes, that fits the budget, otherwise its either compressed storage or just whiping it hoping it'll never be needed again (most likely anyway).

Plenty of projects don't need days of 4k raw footage after the post production look and everything has been finalised for HD delivery. Some just need a compressed final version of all the media, just in case the odd small edit is maybe needed some years down the line.

Perhaps just keeping the proxies is the easiest option then, matches the delivery resolution anyway, and this is not for future proofing. Or exporting individual clips and resyncing everything before storing it away.

I'd probably not bake the grade in and generate H265 10bit PQ 12 files with NVENC using ffmpeg for that use case.

I'd probably not bake the grade in and generate H265 10bit PQ 12 files with NVENC using ffmpeg for that use case.

Yeah that sounds sensible, I'll give it a try. Thank you!!

projects that I (most likely) will never need to touch again.

But if you do, and that "if" is the whole point of the Archive, then having the original media is ideal. Having highly compressed transcodes with baked in grading is...less than ideal.