![]() One of the most important parts of mastering an offline-online workflow is to make sure that the folder structures for the Original Camera Negatives ( OCNs ) and the proxies are identical, and that those folders are tightly organized. So, always double check to make sure your gear can handle this workflow.Īs long as the proxies you transcode out of Resolve have timecode that matches the timecode in the original digital negatives from the camera, each post-production application should properly be able to switch back and forth between the online and offline formats as they’re needed. In Premiere, you can check the properties of a format in the QuickTime container, and it’ll show you that there’s a timecode stream. Different cameras will list in their technical specs whether or not they capture with SMTPE-compliant timecode. ProRes files wrapped in their native MOV container, or DNxHR files wrapped in MOV, MXF OP1a, or MXF OP-Atom, all contain timecode, but you’ll need to check the exact specifications. Just like your clip has a video stream composed of still images in a particular sequence, and an audio stream composed of audio samples in a particular sequence, any professional format that contains SMPTE-compliant timecode assigns each frame a particular hour, minute, second, and frame, according to the SMPTE 12M-2 standard. Timecode is not just the particular count on your media that shows up in the source monitor. Image from set of “The Suitcase.” Directed by Abi Damaris Corbin. So, if you want to use an offline-online workflow, you first need to be familiar with which formats can and cannot contain timecode. This can be a bit confusing, because in many post-production apps, the clips display a count that looks like timecode, but it’s not actually timecode. The MP4 container, a very common container for H.264, is not capable of storing timecode. Unfortunately, not all video file formats can hold timecode. If Resolve doesn’t have timecode, all in and out points will be arbitrary. ![]() Resolve might place the clips into the sequence at the correct in and out points, but there’s no guarantee that the points for all clips will be correct. Without timecode, Resolve has no way of knowing what parts of each clip were used. Relinking the imported timeline from the XML to the online clips inside the Resolve projectīy default, without timecode, that timeline inside Resolve will have pretty much no way of identifying the proper in and out points for each clip in the timeline.Importing a folder of original digital negatives into a Resolve project.Doing the offline editing inside Premiere, with the timeline referencing offline media.While Premiere Pro can assign a kind of “fake” timecode inside of a Premiere Pro project, it won’t translate properly into Resolve via an XML.Ī typical offline-online workflow involving Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve consists of: ![]() While Premiere Pro is relatively good at keeping track of clips that don’t have timecode, Resolve more or less requires it. Timecode is the glue that holds an offline-online workflow together. RELATED: Sign up for advanced notice of the most comprehensive workflow guide ever! From capture to delivery, everything you need to know in one 100,000+ world guide. My experience is with DaVinci Resolve for dailies and conform, and Premiere Pro for offline editing, but the insights should translate to other NLEs and color-grading applications. What follows are some battle-hardened warnings for offline-online workflows. I’m a big advocate of the offline-online workflow, and although it’s robust and efficient, it has lots of moving parts and can get quite complicated in practice. The modern digital dailies process serves to separate technical work from creative work by preparing proxies that are color-corrected, synced to dual-system sound, and in a format that’s easy on the CPU and GPU without taking up much disk space. Original digital negatives can be large, processor-intensive, use gammas and gamuts not intended for direct viewing, and are often not yet connected to dual-system sound. Editors could freely cut up and splice these “offline” reels just to make the edit decisions, and then the editing decisions reflected in the workprints could be methodically conformed back to a fresh copy from the original camera negatives.Įven though modern, digital, file-based workflows prevent degradation of the “original digital negatives,” there are still good reasons to adopt an offline-online workflow. ![]() Reels of film straight from the camera would be duplicated to other reels and cut into workprints. Offline-online workflows date back to the film days, when it was important to preserve the original camera negatives as pristinely as possible.
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