Ingesting Material

WIP

Creating proxies

When shooting in high-quality video formats or highly compressed formats, it can be difficult to edit the material. The solution is to create proxies for the footage. Proxies are versions of the original footage with lower resolution and in an edit-friendly codec.

DaVinci Resolve is a great software for creating proxies.

# Creating proxies with DaVinci Resolve (Colour Managed)

1. Project Creation

   First go ahead and open up DaVinci Resolve and create a new project for your film.

2. Project Settings

   Open up the Project Settings and make the Master Settings match the settings for the camera.

   If you for example shot in a resolution of 4096x2160 pixels and 25 fps, then select that here. At this moment we don't care about the aspect ratio or output resolution of the film. We just need to get the footage into the project. However, if you shot at a high resolution of 4K or greater, then you could choose to divide the resolution down to get it to 2K as the timeline resolution.

3. Colour Management

   Set up the colour management for your project according to the camera configuration used. See the section on colour management.

4. Bin setup

   Set up a bin structure that you like. You need to have a bin for each reel. A001, A002, etc.

5. Ingesting Media

   Import the media into your project by drag and drop or by going to the Media Page.

   On the Media Page in the Media Storage section to the top left, find the folder containing the reels. The bin for the reels can be automatically created by selecting the folders, right-clicking and selecting the option Add Folders and SubFolders into Media Pool (Create Bins). Make sure that you have navigated to the destination bin to where you want the reels to be added.

6. Creating Timeline

   Right-click the bin for the reel and select Create New Timeline Using Selected Bin. Give the timeline the same name as the reel, and click Create. All the takes of the reel should populate the timeline. Repeat the following and this step until you have a timeline for each reel.

7. Proxy Export Settings
   1. Go to the Deliver page.
   2. Start by selecting Individual clips as the render method at the top of the section to the left.
   3. On the Video tab, select the format MXF OP1A. This format is native to AVID Media Composer, which means that the files don't need any processing before editing.
   4. Select the Codec DNxHR and the Type DNxHR LB.
   5. Make sure the resolution is in the realm of 2K. Examples could be 2048x1080, 2048x1152, 1920x1080 and similar.
   6. Go to the Audio tab, and make sure the Sample Rate is at 48000, and the Bit Depth is at 16. However, if you plan on using the audio from the camera, select a Bit Depth of 24 instead.
   7. Go to the File tab, and at Filename uses select Source name. This will ensure that proxy files keep the same name as the originals so they easily can be relinked to the originals at export.
   8. In the File subfolder field, write %timeline name and press ENTER. This will automatically create a folder with the name of the timeline, for the export of the proxies.

   It'd be a good idea to save these settings as a preset. You can do that by clicking on the three vertical dots at the top of the Render Settings section. In the dropdown, select Save As New Preset and give it a name. Next time you can just select this preset, but check the settings, especially resolution as some settings are not saved in the preset.

8. Proxies Export Location

   Go to the top of the section to the left and click Browse. Create a folder called Proxies in your film project directory and click Select Folder. It's recommended that the originals and the export location of the proxies are located on two storage mediums. For example, an external hard drive and your AVID NEXIS workspace. Rendering the proxies will be quite faster doing it this way.

9. Queue Proxies Export

   Click Add to Render Queue at the bottom of the section to the left.

10. Start Proxies Render

    Once you have added all the reels to the render queue, click Render All in the Render Queue section to the right. You can also do one reel at a time.