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DaVinci Resolve – Photo

blackmagicdesign.com

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Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#161
post #152
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently used Resolve (just the free version) for a project. It was my first time seriously using the software but I ended up spending a lot of time with it - lots of timeline editing, keyframe animation, some simple Fusion compositions, and a fair bit of work in the Fairlight page, rendering out daily . I did all this on my beloved Arch Linux workstation, and frankly it was rock solid, apart from exactly one crash…

You encouraged me to try again and somehow, blackmagically ;) it works this time. It may be that recent DaVinci version has made some improvement. I'm so happy! Installation still requires workarounds and codecs support is limited, but having that aknowledged and accepted, the application is finally usable! PS. I don't know where the h264 (and other codes?) limitation come from, since ffmpeg has full support of it. O…

For those seeking quick solution for missing codecs, here are bash scripts that use ffmpeg to convert any input clips (including these problematic h.265/h.264) to format acceptable for DaVinci

  #!/usr/bin/env bash
  
  set -euo pipefail
  
  INPUT_DIR="${1:-}"
  TARGET_FPS="${2:-30}"
  
  if [[ -z "$INPUT_DIR" ]]; then
      echo "Usage: $0  [target fps (defaults to 30)]"
      exit 1
  fi
  
  if [[ ! -d "$INPUT_DIR" ]]; then
      echo "Error: directory does not exist: $INPUT_DIR"
      exit 1
  fi
  
  OUTPUT_DIR="$INPUT_DIR/conv"
  mkdir -p "$OUTPUT_DIR"
    
  EXTENSIONS=(
      mp4 avi wmv mpg mpeg mov
      mkv m4v flv webm ts mts m2ts 3gp
  )
  
  shopt -s nullglob nocaseglob
  
  for ext in "${EXTENSIONS[@]}"; do
      for file in "$INPUT_DIR"/*."$ext"; do
          filename="$(basename "$file")"
          name="${filename%.*}"
  
          output="$OUTPUT_DIR/${name}.mov"
  
          echo "Konwersja: $file -> $output"
  
          ffmpeg -y -i "$file" \
              -map 0:v:0 -map "0:a?" \
              -vf "fps=${TARGET_FPS}" \
              -vsync cfr \
              -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 1 \
              -pix_fmt yuv422p \
              -c:a pcm_s16le -ar 48000 \
              "$output"
      done
  done
  
  echo "Results in: $OUTPUT_DIR"
and then converting final exported video to h.265:

  #!/usr/bin/env bash
  set -euo pipefail
  
  INPUT="${1:-}"
  CRF="${2:-21}"
  PRESET="${3:-slow}"
  
  if [[ -z "$INPUT" ]]; then
      echo "Usage: $0  [crf=21] [preset=slow]"
      exit 1
  fi
  
  if [[ ! -f "$INPUT" ]]; then
      echo "Error: file does not exist: $INPUT"
      exit 1
  fi
  
  DIR="$(dirname "$INPUT")"
  FILE="$(basename "$INPUT")"
  NAME="${FILE%.*}"
  
  OUTPUT="$DIR/${NAME}_h265.mp4"
  
  ffmpeg -y -i "$INPUT" \
    -map 0:v:0 -map '0:a?' \
    -c:v libx265 \
    -preset "$PRESET" \
    -crf "$CRF" \
    -pix_fmt yuv420p \
    -tag:v hvc1 \
    -c:a aac \
    -b:a 192k \
    -movflags +faststart \
    "$OUTPUT"
  
  echo "Ready: $OUTPUT"

Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It includes native RAW support for Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Sony and even iPhone ProRAW. I guess everyone forgot that Pentax still exists.

Pentax sensibly decided to add native DNG capability a long time ago, the raw files work everywhere I've tried them. (Except DaVinci, which I couldn't get to do anything without freezing for minutes at a time this morning.)

Erf, I do hope they add support soon !

Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#163
post #152
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently used Resolve (just the free version) for a project. It was my first time seriously using the software but I ended up spending a lot of time with it - lots of timeline editing, keyframe animation, some simple Fusion compositions, and a fair bit of work in the Fairlight page, rendering out daily . I did all this on my beloved Arch Linux workstation, and frankly it was rock solid, apart from exactly one crash…

You encouraged me to try again and somehow, blackmagically ;) it works this time. It may be that recent DaVinci version has made some improvement. I'm so happy! Installation still requires workarounds and codecs support is limited, but having that aknowledged and accepted, the application is finally usable! PS. I don't know where the h264 (and other codes?) limitation come from, since ffmpeg has full support of it. O…

Great to hear!

I would guess the codec limitation might come from licensing requirements, as BMD would need to pay for h264/h265 licenses for Linux, and that can't really be sustainable for a free product. MacOS and Windows already come with licensed system codecs.

My project had ProRes source media, so there was no codec issue and everything worked very smoothly. I exported ProRes and used ffmpeg to transcode to whatever I needed.

I don't think I would have bothered trying to run Resolve on Linux were it not for finding that davincibox script. It was incredibly straightforward to install, and now I just start it by clicking on an icon like a regular application.

Have fun!

Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#165
post #70

Cautiosly looking forward to it. I shoot with A9 III (global shutter camera that makes 120fps _RAW photos_), and dealing with thousands of photos per shoot is a challenge. I don't use Adobe products and still looking for a good stack for photos processing, but it's an uphill battle. For culling there is nothing better than Photo Mechanic. Worth every penny. For editing, surprisingly, the best solution (performance/fe…

What are you doing with Photomechanic since the price raise, change to subscriptions, and deprecation of the Plus version? Are you using an old version or have you moved to the subscriptions?

Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#167
post #138
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short of it is that there’s no money in photography, compared to videography. Movies routinely have 8 or 9 digit budgets, with teams of hundreds of people who have to collaborate to make footage coming from dozens of different cameras look seamless and consistent. Meanwhile, $1M would be an insane budget for a photo shoot. You can see this in the actual skills of people working in the field as well. Anyone workin…

Fundamental misunderstanding of the market dynamics here. There are at least an order of magnitude more people making a professional salary as photographers (ie.: enough to justify a software purchase) than professional videographers. Outside of film, videographers are generally paid a day rate about half as high as photographers, with enormously higher equipment costs. Film - hollywood, streaming, TV etc, combined a…

[deleted]

Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#168
post #126

I wish they (authors of DaVinci Resolve and the Photo Editor) paid more attention to Linux platform. Theoretically DaVinci Resolve runs on Linux, but getting it run is a very bad experience on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 24.04. I even paid for the DaVinci license, as I read somewhere that for Linux it's necessary in order to have all codecs supported. It did not help. Fortunately there were no problems with refund. There are whol…

I'm not sure how much this will help you, but it should work for Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, so it probably works for Ubuntu as well https://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/1784/how-to-inst...

Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#169
I actually downloaded this and tried it. Am I the first one here to do that?

As someone who hasn't touched DaVinci products before (but a lot of experience with LR) - I am immediately confused by the integration of photo editing here. It feels very much like video editing software with photo editing tacked on. I can imagine that this would be much more intuitive for people who are already used to using DaVinci for video editing.

I can intuit from the interface that there are a lot of powerful editing opportunities here, but I feel lost in the software. I spent 15 minutes or so trying to figure out how to do simple masking, but I could not find any way to do it for photos.

Obviously this is just a beta and hopefully the workflow will be improved, but unless the photo editing features are extracted in to their own software package, I don't think it's enough yet to sway me from LR (and I want so desperately to be swayed)

Re: DaVinci Resolve – Photo

#170

I actually downloaded this and tried it. Am I the first one here to do that? As someone who hasn't touched DaVinci products before (but a lot of experience with LR) - I am immediately confused by the integration of photo editing here. It feels very much like video editing software with photo editing tacked on. I can imagine that this would be much more intuitive for people who are already used to using DaVinci for vi…

Isn't this aimed at people already using Resolve for video work who want to do still images too?
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