Feature Film Premiere Pro CC Workflow Difficulties

[kareokie]

Hello my lovely ML users,

I just finished shooting my first feature film and my post-production experience has thus far been rather daunting.

With over 20 hours of ML 5DMIII footage, it seems that all of the online tutorials I have watched / read may not work out for me.

Here is the workflow I had planned (I use a Mac with Mavericks installed):

1. Shoot ML
2. Dump Card, use RAWMAGIC to convert to CinemaDNG
3. Bring CinemaDNG into DaVinci, create proxies.
4. Edit proxies in Premiere Pro CC
5. Export XML
6. Import XML back into DaVinci and Colour Grade.

Ok, sounds simple enough right? Well, I see complications arise when I view every single tutorial. Perhaps I many of you awesome humans may be able to answer my questions.

How am I going to make 20 hours worth of Proxies? It looks like these people who create the tutorials only bring a couple of clips over to Premiere and head back to DaVinci... not 20 freaking hours worth of footage.

When I made proxies for a couple of clips to check them out, I noticed that my proxies were exported along with a FCPXML file. Does this mean that the only way I'll be able to bring my entire Premiere timeline back into DaVinci is to create all of my proxies in one go? It looks like I will not be able to just create proxies on a whim, then just re-link any of my original cinemaDNG files in DaVinci afterwards.

This step is very confusing because without creating all of my proxies at once, which is problematic because we have footage from 3 cards on a hard drive that crashed that we are getting recovered now. What happens when we get back the recovered footage but I have already made all of my proxies for my cards that weren't lost?

Lastly, will my professional colourist (Technicolor) be able to take my master drive which has all of my cinemaDNG files and an XML and open it up on his DaVinci system? Does he need a DaVinci project file as well?

Thank you so much for your kindness and consideration bros. This has been stressing me for a while and I hope to get some closure here.

Can any of you please help me out? What workflow would you chose? How could I do things differently? Easier?

Again, Thanks everyone

[sergiocamara93]

Hi there kareokie, I think I might be able to help.

The XML roundtrip is not an easy process (yet) with ML files but there are two workflow options I've tried with several projects and they have worked pretty well.
Option 1: A really fast computer, editing directly in Premiere CC.
- You don't create proxies, you edit directly in Premiere the CDNG files, the audio syncs automatically if you are using MLV (with some minor frame glitches you might need to manually adjust it). You can also sync dual audio with the "Multicam clip option". But:
a) You need a fast computer that can play the files without lagging (you can try and see what's your performance with a couple of clips)
b) You will have to divide the film in different short sequences. There's a bug in CC, in a timeline with about... 5 minutes of RAW (at least if you use Multicam clips with audio) it will start collapsing. And by that I mean a kind of buffering-lagging when you hit play in any clip. You can avoid it rendering the whole timeline and the audio but it's a crappy way to work. If you use this option, you don't need to create proxies and it syncs back and forth Resolve without any issues whatsoever, but Premiere can be picky with RAW sometimes.
c) If you use Multicam clips to sync the audio you need to collapse them (there's an option right-clicking the clip in the timeline in the submenu of Multicam) before exporting the XML or Resolve WON'T link them. And the audio will not go into Resolve, but that's a minor issue that shouldn't worry you.
d) When you finish you just have to export a XML or EDL and Resolve should import the files perfectly, all of them. With aligned cuts.

Option 2, the one you've tried: Proxies roundtrip
a) Open Resolve, go to your Project preferences (the little gear icon on bottom left), and look for the option to use the folders as reel name, without that it won't link the files when you import them back. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read this article (images in the "Abridged version" section).
b) Now you import the dngs into Resolve (they don't need to be CDNG if you are in Resolve 10, you can convert them to 14 bits DNG and you will save some disk space - but these won't work with Premiere)
c) You go to your render/export/deliver tab and select "FCP Roundtrip" preset, you can change after that the file format, but you need to select it because you do need the XML file that is generated.
d) You import the batch of proxies USING THE XML file generated in Resolve (you import the XML and the video files should come along, renamed to .DNG and with their reel names in their metadata). Each batch of clips you generate need to be imported this way, but it should not be problem if you import several XML files of different proxy-exports, which is what you wanted (I've done it, it works just fine). You don't need to use the timeline that comes from Resolve, you can create a new one as long as you use the clips that were imported with the XML.
e) You export your XML/EDL back to Premiere once you are finished and it should match the cuts. Thought, in my experience, this method can lost some clips or even force you to relink them in Resolve if you missed any of the steps.
IN ANY CASE:
1) I recommend you to do a test edit with the workflow you choose and do the roundtrip a couple of times to be sure of how it works and that it does what you want (try speed effects and several cuts with different clips to see if it's working)
2) ALWAYS export an Offline edit from Premiere (if you choose option 1 and edit the CDNG in Premiere the render will take a night or so for a feature, give it 12 hours, the RAW rendering is terribly slow). Import your edit in the Resolve project that you created to generate the proxies (you should generate all your proxies in the same Resolve project, just to be sure) and import your Offline edit (the final render from Premiere as the Offline clip - right click in the pool window in "Import"). Once you import your XML/EDL in conform, all the clips should link. Check with the offline to see that the cuts match properly (especially in the end, any sync issues are better detected over time).
3) Give the Offline render (really important to do this), the XML (if you give them several files, mark the one that is the final cut), the DNGs and a copy of your Resolve project to your colorist. Advise him about the reel name issue, he will need to be aware of this when importing the files or the XML might not import right.
4) If you have a postproduction house, or a colorist, you might want to ask them to create the proxies and XML and advise you about the workflow. They might have a specific way to handle the roundtrips with Premiere and you want to know these things before you start editing.

I hope this clarifies some of your doubts. If you have any questions I'm happy to try and help, and good luck with the project.

[core_32]

Totally agree with sergiocamara93
Also, from my experience I would suggest to keep the copy of all card contents on another hard drive.

[kareokie]

Hi Gentlemen,

Thank you so much for getting back to me!

I am going to attempt option #2 tomorrow and get back to you gentlemen.

I agree Re: Drive Backups and such.

It is important to note that I shot dual system audio and did not even use a guide track while shooting RAW on the 5D3.

As for right now, my footage is stored over a number of drives:

All of the original cards (pre-RAW conversion) are double backed up across an array of drives.

I have bought two 8TB Raid Drives that we have been RAW-Converting the cards to.

We will likely make proxies onto the 8TB Raid Drives, but transfer them to our 1TB Rugged drives for editing.

Film school taught brilliant file management, although this RAW Workflow takes a bit to wrap your head around. I am slowly getting it although it  should take some tinkering.

sergiocamara93 and core_32, thank you so much for the support. May have some questions later, would it be OK to shoot off a PM if I ever get stuck?

Thanks again guys, seriously

[anandkamal]

hi friends.. am on the process of following the above instructions. Really helpful.. thanks a lot. Will ask if there is any clarifications.

I am using PC, so for proxies I choose DNxHD 36, but even then rendering occurs in only 5 to 6 frames per second. Why is that? any settings need to be changed?

My computer details:
32GB RAM
GTX 780 3GB
intel i7 4770 3.40GZ

i have lots of files in computer, every hard drive is full.. will dat be a reason?

[DFM]

... but transfer them to our 1TB Rugged drives for editing.

Trying to cut footage on an external drive is the worst idea. Premiere Pro will happily work with extremely high-density native footage but it *must* be able to read the file data fast enough, and with cDNG that means hundreds of MB/sec sustained throughput across the entire system.  Studio-level work with Pr is done on purpose-built workstations with an internal or bus-linked RAID unit (minimum 6X for HDD, 4X for SSD). Relying on a single i7 is also introducing a bottleneck; pretty much everyone in HW runs Xeons. Even though they're older technology, Xeons were designed specifically for pushing mountains of data around. A lot of people go with HP's Z820 series if they don't want to build something in-house, and there are places such as LightIron who'll rent DI/PP services for a feature. It's not cheap - a decent 6K-capable workstation is around $5000 plus storage - but nobody made a feature film with pocket lint.

See http://adobe.ly/1t6gp5O for an in-depth explanation of what matters (and what doesn't) when choosing a workstation for Pr+Sg.

[andy kh]

option 1 is the best. after cutting in premiere pro, final footage of your 20 hrs footage wil b like 2-3 hrs so u wil find it much easier for color grading n other works

[anandkamal]

guys what raid device should i buy for editing? I have approximately 9TB footage.

[DFM]

You presumably don't want to have all 9TB online at the same time (given that would require more than 40TB of array space with spinning disks).

Your goal is to get the maximum throughput to your CPU, so there are a bunch of options:

- Internal SATA3-SAS RAID controller card with a bunch of drives plugged in - cheapest and fastest but you need a big tower case to fit it all in. Cards run around $50 to $200 depending on spec.
- eSATA connection to an external RAID box - fastest generally-available external option for Windows as you can't use Thunderbolt. Most new motherboards have an eSATA port, or buy a card for $20.
- USB3 connection to an external RAID box - headline speeds sound OK but you'll rarely get them, this is really a last-resort.

RAID boxes for studio work aren't cheap, in the way a Lear jet isn't cheap, but if you build your own from a bunch of bare drives and wiring it can be done for decent money. To minimize cost, work out the least amount of online footage you need at a time - for example if you can make do with 2TB online, a 4-way RAID with an internal SATA3-SAS card would be around $600 using 2TB hybrid drives.

As a comparison, here's a commercial unit rated for DPX sequences (same channel throughput as for HD cDNG): http://www.g-technology.eu/products/g-speed-es-pro.php

[anandkamal]

thanks DFM...

@sergiocamara, i follow option 2:

i selected fcproundtrip, but fcpxml could not be opened in premiere (i am on PC).... So i exported a normal xml...
1) it opened in premiere, but with importing two audio files for every video file
2) roundtrip did not link any file after importing xml from premiere into resolve after offline edits. it shows "timecode extents do not match any clip" and the reel name is blank

just followed ur instructions.. bt wat am i missing?

[hugoruck]

I did the FCP XML Round-Trip doing all the steps exactly as it's said, but once I grade the clips and deliver the FCP XML Round-Trip to Premiere PRO CC, I have this message when import:  "This project contained a sequence that could not be opened. No sequence preview preset file or codec could be associated with this sequence type".
Already checked the codecs and have it all the ProRes family.
Please, if anyone knows how to fix this problem.
Thank you so much.