[SOLVED] CinemaDNG dilemma?

[mageye]

I have a little problem. I used RAWMagic to convert my captured *.RAW files to a CinemaDNG sequence. I am happy with the conversion and generally have had no problems with the files that RAWMagic creates.

The great thing about the files coming out of RAWMagic is that they can be graded in After Effects and Davinci Resolve. Wonderful.

After capturing lots of little *.RAW files and converting them to CinemaDNG my hard drive just filled up and I had so little space I needed to do something. Obviously I could just delete lots of the files that I created but I wanted to keep some (in fact most of) the footage. I just needed to keep the size down if possible.

I then thought I would try and use Adobe's DNG Converter and see what happened. I converted each folder at a time and found that they were taking much less disk space, with no apparent loss in quality (there is a lossy compression that I decided NOT to check). So, having shrunk all of the CinemaDNG sequences, I checked to make sure that they were still good to edit with.

I was able to use them just fine using Adobe Camera Raw to import them into After Effects. It was fine. Most of the grading that I have done so far has been done with just ACR.

However something that I want familiarise myself with is DaVinci Resolve. It's something I would like to learn. This is where I have a problem.

Before I did the little Adobe DNG Conversion I was able to import the CinemaDNG sequences into Resolve. Now what happens is they still appear in Resolve but they will appear really blurred. I was wondering what was happening and then I looked a little closed and find that all of the files that I have converted will only import at a resolution of 256x144 (8bit).

These files are still at the original resolution (in this instance 1880x1058 (16bit)) because if you import them into After Effects through ACR they will import fine.

What is going on here?

Also is this reversible? or am I going to have to accept that I will not be able to use them in Resolve?

Does anyone know of a workaround that can make them conform to what Resolve is expecting?

Or is it game over for me and Resolve? (unless of course I am willing to sacrifice lots of disk space)

Any help (or enlightenment) on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

EDIT: I just thought that I would mention here that DaVinci Resolve's (9.1.5) 'improved DNG handling' addresses the above problem so now I can happily use the compressed DNG files with Resolve.

[mvejerslev]

Probably (I'm guessing) Resolve uses some full-res proxy preview file embedded in the larger files (hence the difference).

[Andy600]

It sounds like you have converted Cinema DNG files back to DNG and you are probably just seeing scaled thumbnails as if the raw file was converted to normal DNGs.

Your best option to retain quality and keep files sizes smaller is to transcode to Cineform (PC) or Prores (Mac) although I'm not sure if Resolve Lite can read Cineform unless it's the Pro version. DNxHD also works with Resolve.

Raw footage will take up huge amounts of space and that's the trade-off for quality. I had to buy a new drive purely for ingesting footage but once I have transcoded my files (after CC in resolve) I delete the CDNGs.

[muddmanrich]

Resolve Lite can read Cineform, but it can't output.  Andy600 what is your workflow?

[ptaylor999]

I would try downloading and installing Resolve 10 lite. Then import your new DNG sequence and make sure the resolution is set to Full in the Raw tab. This resolution setting is new to version 10 and forces the res to whatever you like - Full, half, one quarter. Don't know if this will solve your problem but it's worth a go.