(Soft piano music)
- What's up everyone.
Welcome back to the channel.
My name's Joshua Kirk and, in this video,
we're going to be talking about video editing proxies,
how to set them up and how to utilize them within our
DaVinci Resolve workflow to create the best
editing experience possible.
Now, there are a lot of misconceptions around proxies.
I think a lot of people think that they're reserved for
sort of the lower end tier productions or people
with really slow computers that just don't have the money
to optimize their computers,
and that's simply not true.
Proxies are utilized in almost every single
professional production around the world.
Every single Hollywood film that's been shot recently has
all utilized an online, offline workflow,
or, in other words,
proxy workflows for their video editors.
So what is a proxy?
Well, a proxy, when it comes to film production,
is when you have your camera original file and you create
a copy of that file that is smaller that DaVinci Resolve
will utilize and playback smoother than the camera original.
Now, often the camera original footage,
for example, in this case,
where I'm filming on the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K,
has a really huge camera original file.
Because it's Blackmagic RAW, and it's 6K,
the files are chunky and don't often
play back really smooth within the timeline.
So, in this case, and many others,
there's no point looking back at that 6K footage
within your timeline,
cause you're simply just not able to absorb
all of that information.
And so that's where I can create a proxy of this 6K file and
create a 1920 by 1080p ProRes 422 LT file
that plays back so much faster within the timeline.
And then, when I go to color grade
or do any visual effects work,
I can then re-link back to the original media
when I need to.
So, at its foundation, a proxy workflow is simply utilizing
the best codec possible for each stage of the
post-production process.
Obviously, when we're capturing,
we want to capture the highest quality image possible.
When we're editing,
we don't need to view that high quality original.
We simply need a reference to understand what the footage is
showing us so that we can make editing decisions.
That's why we transcode into a proxy format for editing,
and then when it comes to color and post-production at
the end of our pipeline,
we obviously want to re-link back that original media so
that we have all of that original information to work with
when we're color grading and doing visual effects shots.
Now let's answer the question.
Why do I need to utilize proxies within my workflow?
Now, there could be one of three reasons that you
need a proxy.
One would be that you have a really slow computer and you
simply just can't play back the camera original footage.
The second reason might be that you don't actually have
access to all of your camera original footage at one time.
So, if you've shot a project,
perhaps a documentary that has
10 to 20 to a 100 terabytes worth of data,
it's very difficult to often access all of that data
all at one time.
Unless you have a really big server that you can access,
that data might be scattered across multiple drives.
and, oftentimes, it's hard to have all of them plugged into
your computer at once.
And that's where proxies come in,
because you can create a copy of all of your original data
in a smaller form factor and a lower resolution.
And, oftentimes,
you can consolidate hundreds of terabytes worth of raw data
onto a single hard drive for editing.
This helps the portability of the project and
also flexibility to collaborate between multiple editors.
The third great thing about proxy workflows is that the
proxy workflow is optimized for your system performance,
which also means that there's incredible advantages when it
comes to rendering dailies and rendering draft reviews
for your director or producer.
We're going to look at this within DaVinci Resolve
very soon,
but when you're rendering,
you can select to render from the proxy files
instead of the original media,
which increases the speed of your renders.
Hopefully all of that has convinced you that proxy workflows
are a good idea,
and they are utilized throughout the industry
every single day.
Even for this YouTube video right now,
I'm utilizing a proxy workflow.
So, how do you get proxies, how do you create them
and how do you set them up within DaVinci Resolve?
There are two main ways to create proxies.
The first one is to create them in camera.
A lot of cameras have the option to be able to create
proxies as well as record their original media.
So the cameras are creating two files,
the camera original
as well as a lower resolution proxy file.
This is awesome because it's nicely organized
on a single disk.
The second way, if you have a camera that can't create a
proxy within the camera,
is to use an external recorder,
such as the Atomos Ninja V to capture
a lower resolution copy of your footage on
an external recorder.
Now, if you've captured a whole lot of content that you're
just struggling to edit,
and you don't have proxies available,
there is a really simple way to actually get the computer
to create these proxies for you within DaVinci Resolve.
But first, let's have a look at setting up
the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K
with an external recorder,
the Atomos Ninja V,
to utilize a proxy workflow.
So, here we have the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K
connected to the Atomos Ninja V recorder.
Simply go ahead and attach the HDMI cable between the camera
and the recorder,
and you'll get your image fed into the recorder.
Over on the camera, click the menu icon,
and you want to click monitor HDMI and choose the
clean feed option.
Now, over on the recorder,
you can choose your record options
and cycle through all of your codecs.
So you've got ProRes RAW, DNx HD, and all flavors of ProRes.
I like to use the LT compression because it's
a good compromise between image quality and image size.
As you can see here,
when you click record on the camera,
it also records automatically,
syncing the time code on the Atomos recorder.
So, what this is doing is recording all of
your Blackmagic RAW 6K files on the Samsung T5 drive
out of the camera.
And all of your proxy ProRes LT files are recorded
on the Atomos drive.
Okay, so you've captured your camera original footage
in camera,
in this case, Blackmagic RAW
and you've captured a proxy within an external recorder.
Lets now head in to DaVinci Resolve and I'll show you how
to set all of this up and create a proxy workflow in
our timeline.
So here we are in DaVinci Resolve,
and we're looking at
this YouTube video's timeline currently.
So I have my original Blackmagic RAW clip shot on the
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K,
which you can see here.
But what I want to do is attach the proxy that I recorded on
the Atomos Ninja V as a separate file.
So, simply, all I've done to start this project is to
drag in the original Blackmagic RAW clip.
And then what I want to do,
and I can see here, under the proxy column,
that there is none attached.
If you can't see this simply right click and go down and
add proxy view here.
You can also scroll right to see all of the parameters
to do with that individual clip.
Now, all I need to do is simply right click on this clip
and choose link proxy media.
Now, you can see here that the .mov file is
the ProRes LT proxy that I recorded within the recorder.
And I'm going to select that and click open.
And you can see here, under the proxy,
that now a 1920 by 1080P proxy has been attached to
this Blackmagic RAW original.
The second step is to choose playback and use proxy media,
if available.
If I go ahead and uncheck use proxy media,
if available,
it's going to load the original Blackmagic RAW 6K clip
into the timeline.
So now, if I'm using proxies,
you can see how quick the playback is on this timeline.
Now, in a nutshell, the proxy workflow is that simple.
You're taking your original camera raw footage,
you're right clicking and choosing link proxy media
and finding that proxy media within your file structure.
But, if you don't have a proxy already recorded on set,
you can simply right click on your original file
and choose generate proxy media.
Now, what this is going to do is bring up a generation box,
which I'll cancel here because they don't need
to create a proxy media for this file.
But what this is doing is it's rendering a proxy based on
the optimized media and render cache settings you
have selected within your project settings.
So bring up project settings,
using the gear icon on the bottom right-hand side,
and scroll down to optimize media and render cache.
Under proxy media resolution,
you can choose the size of your proxy.
So if you have an original 4K clip,
half is going to downsize your proxy to 1080P.
And proxy media format,
you can go ahead and choose your flavor of ProRes or DNxHR.
I don't recommend using H.264 or H.265
as a codec for your proxies.
I found that ProRes 422 LT works great for me.
And then, if I scroll down to proxy generation location,
I simply just need to choose a location on my drive that
DaVinci Resolve will use to generate the proxy media into.
After I've clicked save,
and then on my original clip,
right click and choose generate proxy media,
it is now going to take my original Blackmagic RAW footage
and generate a proxy for that file using
the settings I've just set.
Now, as you can see,
it's taking about 20 to 25 minutes to generate this.
And that is the huge advantage to generating proxies on set
using an external recorder.
I don't have to wait for this to generate because
I already have a proxy file in my folder structure
next to my original clip.
Well, there you have it,
hopefully that has helped you understand
what a proxy workflow is
and how you can utilize that within your own productions.
Now, just remember that the goal of this is not to
get bogged down in all the details and understanding all the
technicalities behind the scenes as to what is going on.
The goal was simply to create
the best, smoothest editing experience possible so that,
as editors,
we can get lost in the story and not have to worry about
technical glitches.
There's a thing called Flow,
which I'd love to create another video on,
but you want to maximize your state of flow
when you're editing.
You want to be able to be lost and
completely immersed in the story so that you
can make the best decisions possible.
And, when the computers just aren't performing,
when there's glitches,
when the timeline's not playing back smooth,
it wrecks that state of flow.
So let's get into a flow by creating proxies for our
workflow and get lost in the story.
As always, please like, subscribe and comment on this video.
If you'd like to see more,
then I will see you in the next video.