Who edits in Resolve? Who edits BIG projects in Resolve?

[kye]

I edit in Resolve and am starting to out-grow my home-grown approaches.  For example, I'm currently editing a project that has 37 scenes and (currently) 1500 clips.  I'm at the start of my edit process and will cut this down severely, but am finding things un-wieldy.  

I'd google tips from documentary-makers on how they handle absolutely huge volumes of clips, but it seems that no-one is editing large projects in Resolve (and is admitting it online) so the advice typically revolves around PP or FCPX which have different editing features.

[BTM_Pix]

36 minutes ago, kye said:

I edit in Resolve and am starting to out-grow my home-grown approaches.  For example, I'm currently editing a project that has 37 scenes and (currently) 1500 clips.  I'm at the start of my edit process and will cut this down severely, but am finding things un-wieldy.  

I'd google tips from documentary-makers on how they handle absolutely huge volumes of clips, but it seems that no-one is editing large projects in Resolve (and is admitting it online) so the advice typically revolves around PP or FCPX which have different editing features.

Are you using the Cut page ?

 

[FranciscoB]

I'm finishing a documentary project with 3 episodes in resolve. It's heavy with over 2 years of footage and with a 2015 pc laptop. 4k Sony a7s II files. Always with playback on half resolution and color correction disabled until the final touches. It's been working for me even tough its not a flawless performance. But that's mainly due to my old pc and not resolve. Had to leave premiere in the middle of the project as it was too unreliable. Did some xmls and never looked back. My main issue was learning Fairlight audio tools. The rest is solid. Never bothered with the cut page. I hid most of it and just work with media, edit, color and deliver. 

[Geoff CB]

Working on a long documentary in Resolve and previously did a 25 minute doc in Resolve. Really all about organizing the footage and tagging as you shoot in the media page. I've gone all in on resolve at this point for projects. Just got the editor keyboard and it is awesome.

[buggz]

My simple school event projects are sometimes very long takes, 1.5 to 2 hours sometimes, though, not any with many clips like you have.

Shot with GH5 HLG anamorphic opengate mode.

I do edits and then transcode the Resolve outputs.  Takes a long time, but works.

[bjohn]

That is a big project indeed.

I've been working on a documentary for a couple of years, 100% in Resolve, and have another year at least to go before it's done, but I don't have thousands of clips.

Somewhere along the line, I think starting in v. 16, Resolve started creating automatic smart bins for your keywords, so this is a great way to organize footage -- very similar to what Final Cut does.

One of the things that makes Final Cut so powerful as an editor is the "favorites" feature, which is a super-fast and efficient way of creating selects. And Final Cut allows you to establish multiple favorites per clip. You can't entirely reproduce this workflow in Resolve but you can sort of come close, using one of two techniques:

1. Subclips: open a clip from the media pool into the Source Viewer and select in and out points. If you now hit the keyboard shortcut option-b, it will turn that in/out range into a subclip. You can add keywords, other metadata, and flags to that subclip just like any other clip. And of course you can create multiple subclips per clip. The main caveat with subclips is that you have to remember to set the in and out points a little wider than what you actually need, otherwise you'll have no handles. If you forget to do this, no worries: just right-click on the subclip in the media pool and choose "edit subclip" and you can add handles that way. That's going to be time-consuming for thousands of clips though.

By default, subclips have the word "subclip" added to their clip names, which allows you to easily discover them through filtered searches. All subclips with the keyword "beach," for example, are easily discoverable and you can even set up smart bins with those filters so the bins populate automatically. Create a smart bin to search for all clips with the word "subclip" in their clip name and you instantly have the equivalent of Final Cut's "Favorites" collection. All your selects for the entire project will be in that smart bin.

2. Duration markers: You can convert any in-out range to a duration marker. There didn't used to be a keyboard shortcut for this, but now there is: shift-command-m. Like subclips, you can have multiple duration markers per clip. You can't add metadata to a duration marker, but you can give it a name, a description, and assign marker keywords to it; when you assign marker keywords a smart bin for those keywords will automatically be created (or if you use existing keywords the duration marker will be added to those keyword smart bins). One caveat: I always use the media pool in list view rather than thumbnail view;  if you use thumbnail view the smart bins for marker keywords will appear empty. So if you use duration markers with marker keywords, be sure to use list view in the media pool. I like working that way anyway; you can enable a filmstrip above the list, similar to Final Cut's list view.

Of the two options described above, I think subclips are the simplest and fastest.

In general, with Resolve as with Final Cut, I invest a lot of time entering metadata that allows my footage to self-organize into smart bins, before I ever drop anything into a timeline. It's worth it.

I'd also highly recommend the free BMD training book on Advanced Editing in DaVinci Resolve. It's for version 15, but not that much has changed since then (I never use the Cut page, which is obviously not covered in that guide). I learned a lot of useful techniques and approaches from that book and am still working through it. The Resolve manual's chapters on editing, which were written largely by Alexis van Hurkman, are also quite useful.

[Geoff CB]

3 hours ago, bjohn said:

The main caveat with subclips is that you have to remember to set the in and out points a little wider than what you actually need, otherwise you'll have no handles. If you forget to do this, no worries: just right-click on the subclip in the media pool and choose "edit subclip" and you can add handles that way. That's going to be time-consuming for thousands of clips though.

 

This is probably my absolute #1 issue with Resolve that needs to be fixed. 

[fuzzynormal]

12 hours ago, kye said:

it seems that no-one is editing large projects in Resolve (and is admitting it online)

I've never took a deep dive into Resolve.  Is their media management is weak?  

There's real no reason why cutting a doc on FCP, PP, Avid, or Resolve should be any sort of hassle.  Doc editing tends to be (and I think should be) very straight forward.  

Organizing media during an edit is kind of the main thing for me.

[bjohn]

18 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

I've never took a deep dive into Resolve.  Is their media management is weak?  

Not at all. It's excellent. However, one big advantage that Final Cut has over other NLEs, including Resolve, is roles. If you assign roles and subroles to all your audio, it'll drop automatically into the right lanes when you edit clips into your timeline. It's the same amount of work in the end: either you spend time assigning roles and subroles at the beginning in Final Cut, or when you're editing clips into the timeline in Resolve you use the track selection controls to make sure the audio lands in the right tracks when you edit a clip into the timeline. But the advantage of Final Cut's approach is that you can more easily sustain creative flow because you just focus on the story without worrying about the mechanics of ensuring everything goes where it's supposed to go.

But as a traditional track-based editor, Resolve gives you total control, you just have to plan a bit more and think things through, especially once you've got clips in the timeline and you start trimming and moving things around.