Recommendations on how to bake speed adjustments into clips

[Stephen Barrante]

I need to transfer my project from Premiere for coloring in Davinci resolve. Unfortuantely the speed adjustments applied to particular clips are not captured in the XML file that is generated, and therefore they are not applied correctly in the edit inside of DR. 

I'm trying to find a straight foward way to "bake" the speed adjustments into these clips, without going through a repeating process of setting in/out points and rendering each section of the sequence. I have tried "render and replace" with little success, which was what I had hoped would work.

Each clip has the speed adjusted via the Speed/Duration setting. I'll select render and replace and the clip reimports, and then reapplies the effect, so it is basically ignoring the clip based setting. It does note that time-remapping doesn't apply to clips either, so I didn't try that approach.

Appreciate any suggestions that might streamline this process.... 

Thanks!

[PaulMurphy]

I recommend exporting these clips using the EDL format instead of an XML file. EDLs are better at managing differences between source and record in/out points, which helps transfer speed changes.

[R Neil Haugen]

Paul's correct. Premiere, Avid, Resolve all can look at timecode and speed settings and 'see' something a bit differently, so any time changes are always needing to be checked in the conform process. It's a more exacting and often longer process than anyone enjoys, of course.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, and most of them request an XML, EDL, and that all-important H.264 seqeuence export so they can overlay that on V2 in Resolve, and jump down the sequence checking in points, scaling, out points, and yea, time changes.

Some 'basic' time changes a going from 120fps to 24 fps for the whole clip segment ... can often 'come through' the conform.

But any speed ramping ... where the clip slows down or speeds up, will need manual adjustments. No matter where it started, and where you're working in.

It would be nice if the software people would get together and sort out a way to do this more automagically. But they don't seem interested. Ah well.

[Stephen Barrante]

Appreciate the quick replies, and helpful direction. Yeah, second the unification of formats across the applications... it's that "last mile" laudering that you get stuck on for hours. I'm going to give the EDL a try. For my purposes, i'm only using the Speed adjustment on the clip level (vs using an envelope), adjusting the speed from say, 100%->400%. We'll see how well that holds up!

[R Neil Haugen]

Use Speed/Duration and not Interpret Footage for speed changes.

First, it's what is actually intended for nearly all speed changes by the devs, and tends to get into EDLs better.

Second, Interpret Footage is more of a cadence-change thing, for going from 24 or 23.976 to 29.97 for broadcast use, where the "pull-down" stuff is required.

And yea ... many of the colorists I know will lay that H.264 on V2, try filling the XML, then try at filling the EDL, pick which is closer, and finish the conform.

There are hours of tutorials on conforming, on the professional sites such as MixingLight (note: I'm a paid contributing author there), Warren Eagles and Kevin Shaw's FXPHD and their International Colorist Academy video programs. Some of which naturally require a subscription as it is professional level training.

[Stephen Barrante]

Hi Neil - thanks for the followup. I'm actually using (attached) Speed/Duration for those adjustments vs Interpret Footage. I may end up doing a bit of a hybrid, as the XML worked so great. And then just bringing in the EDL to isolate any of the clips that have the speed changes.