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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Coloring a Feature Film

Alright, so I'm running into a problem. Trying to Media Manage out of Davinci, the project is set up properly...tried it tow ways:

1. Copy only used media files - The projected number was like 2TB, so we plugged in a 5TB drive and let it go to work and it failed overnight due to space. Shit.
2. Copy and trim used media - Fails after a few minutes every time.

It seems like my only option now is to either get something like....a 12TB drive to do the "Copy only used media" properly, and the trims are out of the question. The trims that it goes through (only like 3-4) are fine and cut to what we need, so it's really confusing.

Can anyone shed any light as to why it keeps failing? I wish there was a detailed log or something....
 
Seems it was a nesting issue with the trims. I decomposed it and it worked to do the trims.

Will deliver and hope it all works!
 
Before delivery why don't you try conforming this on your end using the media managed project and the drive you are going to send out? Also on set LUTs and looks rarely survive contact with color (there are exceptions) as the colorist, like a editor, looks at the material with fresh eyes and hopefully brings something new to the table. There are some DP's who really can nail the look on set and have experience with a LUT provided by a colorist they have a relationship with or a post house and then the work is really about improving the image in more subtle ways. Most projects however really do need a lot of help and are actually harmed by the idea that they need to stay close to the on set LUT.
A good way to decide how much change is needed is to watch a trailer for a film in the same genre and see how far or close your film is from that, or to watch a scene in premiere with a rec709 lut on a la projector and count how many shots have matching issues or need help. If the film looks like a trailer with the on set LUT and has few matching issues your DP is amazing and you really should stick with the on set LUT. If not.....
 
Copy only used media files - The projected number was like 2TB, so we plugged in a 5TB drive and let it go to work and it failed overnight due to space. Shit.
The most recent version of Resolve (12.5.4) has improved the accuracy on estimated drive space, and I notice that as media management is going on, the numbers start going up. I'd guess when it's about 10-15% done, the numbers on the screen are correct.

2. Copy and trim used media - Fails after a few minutes every time.
Yes, that's what I warned you. There is another fatal flaw where if the timeline is missing a trivial file, like a 5-second title or a 10-second audio clip, the whole media-management process just shuts down. There needs to be an error that pops up and says, "error detected, file missing, continuing" and then give you a list of errors at the end of the process.

One 3rd-party alternative to Resolve's internal media management is Nikolai Waldman's Resolve Collect, which has some advantages over doing it within Resolve:

http://www.niwa.nu/2013/06/collect-source-files-with-resolve-collect/

Drives are cheap -- your production and your time are not. You could do the projects in reels, which is how I usually work (and most shows I know in LA work), and at the worst, if you were low on disk space you could just go reel by reel and get half of it done, then either buy more storage or offload it to super-cheap drives and then wipe the fast storage and do the rest of the film.

I do see 8TB Thunderbolt RAIDs all the time for maybe $500, so this is not an earth-shattering expense these days, provided your system can work with Thunderbolt. I've had some pretty convoluted, crazy projects in the past, and none of them have gone anywhere near 8TB for a feature, and that includes several 5K & 6K projects. I have far more problems with missing effects and weird speed changes, stuff like that, but not with the media itself.
 
Ended up being the nested sequence (one in particular) that was screwing it up. Colorist said the project loaded up fine, so I'm hoping for the best.
 
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