Do we need FCPX for Pro Video Formats?

Forgive me if I've got the wrong end of the stick.

I understand (maybe incorrectly), previously, we needed FCPX to be installed on Macs to enable certain Pro Video Formats to work in Resolve.

Is this correct, and if so is this still the case with Resolve 18? If yes - which formats aren't available until we do this?


Cheers

They all should work without FCPX.
You may just want to update pro formats through OSX updates.

OK great cheers

Resolve in most cases has own implementations (eg. DNxHR, AVC-I etc.), so it's not really OSX dependent.
In some cases it just plugs in into accelerated formats like ProRes, h264/5 etc.

Resolve in most cases has own implementations (eg. DNxHR, AVC-I etc.), so it's not really OSX dependent.
In some cases it just plugs in into accelerated formats like ProRes, h264/5 etc.

When you say plugs in, do you mean it uses the capabilities of the OS / platform rather than using its own software for reading/writing?

Hey

No, you misunderstood the point : you don't need FCPX, you may need codecs which come with the installation of FCPX by default, but you can install them without installing FCPX...
These are called ProRes, and you can find them here : https://support.apple.com//downloads/pr ... alsoftware

Great thanks Sam, appreciate the explanation - makes sense.

Thanks again both.

DR is handling all ProRes codecs other than ProRes RAW without those being installed with FCP-X.
Even if something were missing, getting Apple's Compressor would suffice. Plus, it can convert ProRes RAW into something digestible by DR.

ok good stuff, thanks.

Resolve in most cases has own implementations (eg. DNxHR, AVC-I etc.), so it's not really OSX dependent.
In some cases it just plugs in into accelerated formats like ProRes, h264/5 etc.

When you say plugs in, do you mean it uses the capabilities of the OS / platform rather than using its own software for reading/writing?

Yes. Resolve has native support for about all codecs.
On OSX only h264/5 encoding comes from the operating system. On new hardware also ProRes gets acceleration, but it's just to get more speed. None of those requires any extra installers though.

FCPX/Compressor installation adds ProFormats to OSX, but you can download these as separate installer as well. In the past there were some restriction (I think) when you had no FCPX/Compressor. Looks like now Apple removed any restrictions, so if you have no FCPX/Compressor you just install them from mentioned link and then QT X should open formats like DNxHR, etc. Resolve is not affected by any of it.

Some camera codecs don't work in Resolve unless Pro Video Formats is installed, as experienced by this user on an older Mac: 4K footage gone offline, proxies are OK

Here's a direct link to Pro Video Formats 2.2.3 which is currently the latest version: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2050

Looks like it was XF-AVC, so it's related to AVC format. It makes some sense as free Resolve has no native AVC decoder.
This suggests that you may be better off installing ProFormats. Resolve manual is still not very clear about codecs at all.

Thanks all,

So I think where we've landed is:

1. We don't need FCPX to be installed.

2. Resolve doesn't yet support ProRes raw so need a third party application (such as Compressor) to convert to a format that it supports.

3. On Mac's, we may need Pro Video Formats to be installed to support/enable certain codecs, others are handled natively by Resolve.

4. The codecs Pro Video Formats provides are as follows (copied from the webpage), not 100% sure which are handled natively by Resolve and which aren't:

Apple ProRes RAW and ProRes RAW HQ
Apple Intermediate Codec
Avid DNxHD® / Avid DNxHR® decoder
AVC-Intra 50 / 100 / 200 / 4:4:4 / LT
AVC-LongG
XAVC
XF-AVC
XF-HEVC
DVCPRO HD
HDV
XDCAM EX / HD / HD422
MPEG IMX
Uncompressed 4:2:2

Many of them are handled by Resolve natively.
Possible that only XF variants are affected.

This document details all the codecs supported in every version

https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/ ... c_List.pdf



It is still inaccurate for Windows (no 10bit mpeg4 support in free Ticket # BXU-560-89721). But that is irrelevant to you

This document details all the codecs supported in every version

https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/ ... c_List.pdf



It is still inaccurate for Windows (no 10bit mpeg4 support in free Ticket # BXU-560-89721). But that is irrelevant to you

Thanks - this is really useful.

I'm guessing 'Codec Passthrough' means Resolve relies on the OS codecs (such as the Pro Video Formats pack) to support that format instead of natively.

No.
Pass-Through means exporting without re-encoding if no changes are done to the video.
If you do cuts and apply processing on some parts and nothing on others those will be passed-through without re-encoding (if you export to the same format as source).

Resolve document says nothing about need for ProFormats etc. It's not very precise.

Ok cheers, makes sense