Help with Editing Workflow

[yiomo]

In an other forum recently, I asked about some syncing problems I had from a Pluraleyes export to Resolve. It was solved after converting my footage from A7s and Gopro to Prores422.

I searched about the whole transcoding approach and it seems that in many forums people are divided whether it is worth it or not. My macbook pro mid 2015 seems to be working fine with editing hd footage from the original files of the above mentioned cameras. So to transcode or not is quite debatable it seems. And then there is the big question: what should I transcode, every single clip or just the ones that I am interested in using. And would that mean I would have to go through every single clip and mark it? What if i leave something out that could still be used?.. Furthermore, I haven't transcoded all the footage and I have already maxed out my HD and would need to make a purchase.

So, all the above made me thinking and I came up with a workflow about which I would be very interested to hear your views. It would be like this:

Original --> Prores Proxy for the editing --> edit --> after locking the edit convert to Prores422 (LT or standard or HQ) for color grade and distribution.

This way I would save money because Proxy needs less HD space and I would also delete it afterwords. In this way I would only have the Prores422 as the finished work and not several terabytes of useless footage.

Do you think it is an overkill? It is definitely easier to convert EVERYTHING in Prores but I wonder why would I want to keep full HD drives lying around filled with useless footage. I would still have the original 1st gen camera files..

[Shirozina]

Transcoding to ProRes is not lossless -  use a proxy workflow to get footage you can easily manipulate in your NLE  but still generate your final output from the original footage. That’s the whole point of a proxy workflow.

[Don Kotlos]

Transcoding will almost always lead to information loss. Depending on the codec it can be tiny or very large. 

Thus, if you are working with Resolve I would use the built-in proxies: Generate optimized media. 

You can control which clips are transcoded,  the quality of the proxies & have them removed at the end. Also the final render always runs on the original media optimizing quality. 

 

[sondreg]

35 minutes ago, Shirozina said:

Transcoding to ProRes is not lossless -  use a proxy workflow to get footage you can easily manipulate in your NLE  but still generate your final output from the original footage. That’s the whole point of a proxy workflow.

Its true that Prores 422 HQ technically isn't lossless, but this only really applies if the original footage was shot higher than the bitrate of the Prores 422 HQ codec (180Mbps at 24fps, 220mbps at 30fps).

[yiomo]

From both of your replies I take it that it is better to color grade the original files, in this case of A7s xavc-s and Gopro h264, than covert them to Prores and do the grading there?

What about  the "built-in proxies: Generate optimized media." Does this exist in Resolve 14 too? I have found this link  but did't have time to watch it yet.

 

[sondreg]

https://timeinpixels.com/2015/07/all-you-need-to-know-about-caching-in-davinci-resolve-12/ I found this article useful a while back about using optimized media in Resolve. I haven't had that needed it yet as all I've done is in HD, but looks pretty straight forward.

I'd recommend you transcode it to ProRes and use that in your edit & grade, as it will run smoother for your computer and there won't be any quality difference. XAVC is a pain to work with in terms of performance.

[Don Kotlos]

18 minutes ago, yiomo said:

From both of your replies I take it that it is better to color grade the original files, in this case of A7s xavc-s and Gopro h264, than covert them to Prores and do the grading there?

For editing/grading, it doesn't matter so you are better using the proxies to optimize performance. Only for the final render you should use the original media. The Optimized media workflow in Resolve takes care of that. 

18 minutes ago, yiomo said:

What about  the "built-in proxies: Generate optimized media." Does this exist in Resolve 14 too?

Yes

[Shirozina]

9 hours ago, sondreg said:

Its true that Prores 422 HQ technically isn't lossless, but this only really applies if the original footage was shot higher than the bitrate of the Prores 422 HQ codec (180Mbps at 24fps, 220mbps at 30fps).

Not true - bit rate is just data rate and not data quality. I've seen Sony XAVC from my A7R2 (not even log) and even 10 bit internal from my GH5 fall apart in grading when trying to transcode to 422HQ (banding appears in the skies) when I had wrongly assumed that Prores was making copy without any data loss. Transcoding to a lossless codec works but the data bloat is unworkable (which shows how much compression is used even in ProRes). 

[yiomo]

Thank you all ! I am going to delete the ProRes converted files that have filled my HD, will create Proxies to work with while editing, and do the grading from the original files.

I have one last question. What is the difference of generating optimised media vs transcoding to Prores Proxy?

[sondreg]

@Shirozina That's weird! I know ProRes is a DCT-based codec but I didn't expect it to compress when converting <180mbps bitrates. Now we know!

 

@yiomo Generating optimised media within Resolve gives you control over your proxies within program & will export original footage unless you tell it not to. Whereas transcoding means you have to manually relink the footage and make sure you export the right media. They both do the same but the latter requires more manual labor.

[fuzzynormal]

On 11/3/2017 at 3:07 PM, Don Kotlos said:

 with Resolve I would use the built-in proxies: Generate optimized media. 

I attempted Optimized Media (aka: proxies) last year with Resolve and it bombed spectacularly.  Missing clips, failed encoding, crashes, etc.  This was with the freebie version on a decently beefy PC system.  

I was trying to make a 1080p edit from .mp4 4K footage.  Anyone got testimony regarding Resolve's "optomized" transcoding reliability these days?

Eventually, I'd love to get onto Resolve to edit, but can't do it without practical proxy editing.  In the meantime, Premiere is my desk.  Which is pretty "meh."  Works, but not in love with it.

[Don Kotlos]

2 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Anyone got testimony regarding Resolve's "optomized" transcoding reliability these days?

Worked fine with 14 beta for me, only problem was that you couldn't do anything while the proxies were generated. 

2 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

In the meantime, Premiere is my desk.  Which is pretty "meh."  Works, but not in love with it.

I feel you