Bruno Mansi

It's possible that the Avid codecs simply aren't installed. Head over to... http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/download/Avid-QuickTime-Codecs-LE

Are you referring to online/near-line/archival storage solutions or the types of interface?

Just bought and tested the Patriot 32GB Supersonic Rage Series USB 3.0 Flash Drive. Can recommend this product if you want a fast memory stick. Very decent write speeds of around 80MB/s, with read speeds of 160MB/s This was on a Win 7 laptop with the Rage's USB Device Policies (found in Device Manager- Properties-Policies) set on 'Better performance'.

I've had this happen occasionally with AAF linked media on version 12 when I chose the 'Automatically import clips' option. It seems that Resolve gets stuck scanning the media drives before finally crashing.Try bringing in your material to the media pool first, then importing the AAF without this option set.

Sorry, haven't tried using Resolve 14. Are you on the latest beta 4 release?

I would use AAF as my preferred export option from Avid to Resolve. It has better support for effects and multiple layers.

Take a look at Telestream Switch, which is available in Mac or PC versions. The player only app is very cheap. https://www.telestream.net/switch/overview.htm

Just to clarify the offer for those who might be asking the obvious question - No, it's not available to those who already have an active subscription or support plan. If you're lucky enough to have an old Avid dongle lying around you can reinstate it (for a years support) and get the Symphony option, all for $399, but otherwise it's the full $799 just for Symphony. For those interested in the discussion this has generated, head over to the 'Licensing Options' section of the Avid forums.

Nicholas. SpinRite (https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) has had a lot of followers over the years, as one of the best recovery tools. There's a couple of videos on the web site that explains some of the techniques it uses to try and recover data from disks. Of course, if your hard disk is completely dead (ie. platters not spinning or heads not moving) there's not much any software can do for you. In these cases, there are specialists who'll take your disk apart (for a price) and replace the problem components, or even move your whole disk platter assembly to another (similar) drive. If you search on YouTube, you'll find some videos of the procedure. The success of any of these methods rests on whether the surface of the platters remains largely undamaged. If the magnetic coating on the platters (which holds your data and is a very thin layer on the steel platters) has been scrubbed off by the heads impacting the surface, your data is now a pile of metal filings! You can sometimes see this if the air filter pad in the disk is visible from the exterior. It should normally look white in colour - however, if it's been heavily blackened, that's usually a sign of surface damage. Good luck!

Given that most people with dongles would have bought the Studio version at the old, higher price, it would seem to be bad public relations for Blackmagic to force them to pay again. It may be that they might introduce some sort of yearly subscription (similar to what Avid has) or upgrade option that allows you to keep up with current versions, but given how cheap Resolve has become, I can't see this costing even $100.

It's $995 for a full, permanent licence. This can be node-locked, or floating, so you can carry it around with you. With the one licence you not only get Editions for Avid, but also for Nuke, as long as they're on the same workstation.

Hi Melissa, I just checked this on my laptop (which is running version 12.5) and when I'm in the media pool and select one or more clips, right-clicking I can definitely see 'Relink Selected Clips', near the bottom of the list (just below 'Clear Poster Frame'). You don't mention what version you're running, so it's possible that Blackmagic have renamed this function in the latest (beta) version. I don't see 'Link Clips' when I right-click, but it sounds like it should be doing the same thing. As a further thought, I was right-clicking on clips that have media attached, so it's possible with clips where the media is offline, that the command is re-worded to 'Link Clips'. I'd give it go, as it sounds like the same thing to me.

Select the clip in the media pool that's causing the problem, right click and select 'generate optimized media'. Resolve will generate new media from that clip, base on the settings in the 'General Options' section of the project settings. I would choose a codec that is similar (or equivalent to) the codec you're rendering out to. Now go to the edit or color page and click on the playback options and set the 'Use Optimized Media if Available' option. If the original media is fine and Resolve created the optimized media correctly, you shouldn't see the 'media offline' flashes.

Just think how good your eyesight would be with this display..! http://www.necdisplay.com/p/large-screen-displays/x981uhd-2

Have you tried creating optimised media of the offending clips on the timeline and seeing if this cures the problem?

Most of us take the accuracy of today's digital cameras for granted, but in the world of photo-chemical photography, processing labs had to go to great pains to ensure consistent results, so I'm a bit surprised that Marc experienced variations as high as 25%. I can only speak about still photography, but in the late 1970's I worked as a technician in a school of photography, and we had daily checks on our processing baths. This would typically involve maintaining the temperature of our colour developers to within a quarter of a degree centigrade and running control strips through the developing process. These control strips would then be measured using a densitometer and the results used to determine how much replenisher was to be added to the baths. As Marc pointed out, this could be different for each process (eg. E6 or C41) or batch of emulsion from the same manufacturer. I'm sure cine film processing had it's own set of problems, as processing long lengths of film would likely mean the beginning of the roll would develop slightly differently to the end of the roll without some corrective action. Just as an interesting side note, there was this rumour going around that people's eyesight would improve after spending around six months working full-time in colour developing labs. It was said that those suffering with age-related short sight (presbyopia) would benefit from the extended periods of working in total (or near-total) darkness. Never noticed any difference myself, but then I was young and had good vision at the time.

I'm afraid I find this tutorial on the 'perfect' skin tone a huge over-simplification, and that ultimately, it's the mood the director/DOP/colourist are trying to achieve that will determine the exposure, not some number in a plugin. The author of this tutorial completely ignores darker skin types. What about black actors?? Below are some powerful movie images that have benefited from ignoring Mr AK's advice.

An update from Day May, the president of Blackmagic. Seems as if the $299 software 'key' will be tied to a single machine and not transferable. If you look at the video, he says that the cheaper price was to allow people to buy multiple licences if they want to run Resolve on more than one machine.

I'm not sure what you think I said that the Prime Focus compositors would disagree with. I have only a basic knowledge of Fusion and have never said it was worse than Nuke - that was the comments that other contributors to this thread have made. Whether Nuke's dominance in the market is due to it's performance or to the Foundry's marketing strategy, the future looks less certain for Fusion. If it does get absorbed into Resolve, then I cannot see how it will get the same development as part of a $299 package compared to the cost of Nuke. As you said, in many ways, DS was a great bit of software. What killed it was being bought by Avid, who put no development into the software and chose not to market it's capabilities. Is the same thing happening with Blackmagic and Fusion? With all the hoopla about Resolve 14 and the new aggressive pricing, Fusion seems to have had little attention.

At the most basic level, software licences are usually tied to a machine, so if you wanted to move from (say) your main workstation to a laptop, you couldn't do this without a second licence. There's a number of ways software licensing can be managed so that one licence can be moved, and the method of moving a licence depends on the manufacturer. The usual way is to deactivate the licence on one machine and then activate it on another. Often this done using an internet connection so that the company's licensing server can do the necessary switch, but if you can't get an internet connection or the server's down then you'll have problems. Other issues with software licensing can happen if you have a workstation go bad or fail to start. Without a working computer you won't be able to deactivate the licence to transfer it, so it then means having to call support for them to manually deactivate. Other times a hardware change in your workstation could cause your licence to fail, as your unique machine ID is often created from the particular hardware ID's (eg. MAC addresses) in your workstation. With a dongle, all these problems go away. Assuming your dongle doesn't 'go bad' (I've never heard this happening) or you don't damage or lose it, you can happily have Resolve on as many machines as you want, and you're simply carrying your licence in your pocket.

Just seen a video where Bob Caniglia from Blackmagic state that new purchases of Resolve (at the $299 price) will no longer ship with a dongle, but with a software licence key. Those already owning dongles will get the free upgrade, but it's unclear at the moment if there will be any option to purchase a dongle with any future release.

I'm guessing that's why most serious compositors choose Nuke. Also Fusion costs virtually nothing, whilst Nuke costs thousands of dollars, and that pays for a lot of development. My feeling is that Eyeon would never have sold Fusion to Blackmagic if they felt it could have successfully competed against the Foundy's products. I suspect Fairlight were in a similar situation, and couldn't see a way of emulating the success of Protools. We've now seen the reason for Blackmagic acquiring Fairlight, it remains to be seen what they're going to do with Fusion. I can't believe they bought it simply to take it apart and completely re-write it, unless they felt the 'Fusion' name was worth paying for. They'll either do what Tom suggests and re-use the code, or they'll integrate it into a Resolve tab. Will the software improve along with the rest of Resolves features? Difficult to answer this given that they can't be making much money on the sale of Resolve, especially since they've just knocked around 60% off the price, and they hadn't done that much with Fusion at it's higher price. I'd like to be a fly on the wall in their boardroom to find out how they justify the economics of practically giving way Resolve for nothing. Is it a case of 'get them hooked' and then sell them the hardware? I think we have to accept that Resolve is no longer primarily a grading tool. It might be to some of us, but to Blackmagic it's just one tab in a suite of tabs. The color page will get no special privileges or development rights over the edit or Fairlight tabs. Compare this to what Filmlight have done. They're fighting squarely in the Colourist's corner, producing new tools that (I think) will seriously challenge Resolve's domination. Part of the reason they can do this is that they charge real money for their products so that they can properly develop their tools for their target users. As some have stated in the various Colourist forums - they fear the repercussions of the falling purchase price of Resolve. They still remember what happened when Apple did a similar thing with Final Cut X. I feel they might have a point!

Wow, a bit harsh! I've played a little with Fusion and to be honest, I don't find it any slower than Nuke. Both suffer from a lack of any real-time playback, but given what these programs are trying to achieve, they're always going require a lot of computing horsepower. I think your comment highlights the problem companies like Blackmagic and Adobe have when trying to 'please all of the people all of the time'. Users say they want to do effects work inside Resolve, so we get plugins. Then we want better effects and compositing/paint features, so here comes Fusion Connect. Then we demand full integration, so up pops a Fusion tab. Now users are complaining about the software being bloated or that we don't need all this compositing stuff. There's been lots of comments on the various forums about the wisdom of having the Fairlight tab within Resolve. Some love the integration, others would prefer the applications kept separate. Software designers know this, so they have to decide on the best compromise, considering all the knock-on effects of choosing a particular approach. Adobe have so far kept their main pieces of software separate, relying on dynamic linking (and now 'Motion Graphics Templates' and the 'Essential Sound Panel') to try to achieve that experience of seamless integration. Resolve seem to be going down the other route of putting all their 'eggs' in one 'basket'. If we assume this trend continues, we may well see a future Resolve with a Fusion tab. Neither approach is right or wrong, but just adds to the diversity of software out there. Ultimately, this gives us the choice of which approach suites our needs better.

There's been the odd rumour going around for a few years that Blackmagic would be interested in buying Avid. I never gave it much credence, but seeing how quickly they acquired Fairlight and managed to fully integrate it into the Resolve toolset, I'm wondering how well they could integrate Media Composer. With all the interest this new version has generated, I think it's the pure Colourist who might feel there's been less attention given to their wish list. There's a couple of things that will please (the increased performance and new plugins), but there's no doubt that there's more waves (excuse the pun) going around the audio community about this release than in the grading community. It does seem as if there's a perceptual shift in the way Blackmagic wants us to regard Resolve. Rather than it being primarily a grading tool, it's now a fully featured post production suite that included advanced colour grading. Even on their web site, the Resolve page is titled as 'Editing and Colour Correction'.

Just in case anyone wants a rundown of the new features, The Blackmagic web pages now have a 'What's New' video on the Resolve pages - and have slashed their prices on the Studio version!