How to edit 4k Video In Davinci Resolve
Edit 4K Videos FASTER on a SLOW Computer| Optimized Media | Davinci Resolve
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hey whazzup guys my name is Cameron
Gallagher and today I'm gonna show you
the optimized media workflow in DaVinci
Resolve 14 and 15 and how you can edit
your 4k video clips faster on your
laptop or not-so-hot machine so let's
get into it so one of the biggest trends
is that as we move towards 4k video and
things like raw and you know just these
massive files and codecs one of the
biggest problems is well I guess several
biggest problems is the ability to play
this back and edit it smoothly on any
machine now of course as things like
laptops get beefier it becomes slightly
easier but of course things like H dot
264 from the gh 5 are highly compressed
files that take up a lot of CPU power
and of course yes we have things like
GPUs we can plug in but a lot of the
times it's just too hard to get too much
power and one of the other things that
people forget about is hard drive speed
you know in this project right here we
have a lot of 4k clips but of course if
I'm playing this off a traditional hard
drive you know that's hard especially if
we're doing like a multicam sync or if
we have a lot of these clips playing at
once that takes a big toll on the
machine so the optimized media workflow
is basically a proxy workflow what it
does is it creates smaller easier to
edit with files that are going to be
attached to your clips automatically and
you can easily use them and it's just
awesome this is a shoot that we did for
a tattoo shop very cool place guys
awesome gonna do some really incredible
work but of course there's a lot of
Clips here and now I'm not gonna do the
optimization for all the clips cuz I'm
gonna wait but of course there is one
thing you could do now if you wanted to
do the traditional form of proxy you
know media management you'd come down to
file media management and you could do
transcode you can transcode all your
media choose whatever you want maybe a
lower resolution and then boom you can
import those edit with those and then
relink to all of your large media now
we're not gonna do that but i just
wanted to show you this because this is
really handy and media management has a
lot of cool stuff in it so definitely
check that out it can be really handy
alright so let's get into it what I'm
gonna do is I'm going to select a couple
Clips then I want to bring in
to this test folder and in this test
folder I have some clips here and
basically what we want to do is we want
to I mean of course normally in a
project you do this for all of your
clips but we want these to playback
faster so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
select all of these right click and
generate optimize me and up before we do
that I want to show you a cool trick
sometimes let's say you're in your
editor and let's say you have footage in
like a bunch of different spots so we
can see like in this scenario I have
footage in this test folder in this
footage folder what you can do if you
want to access all of these clips at
once come down here to smart bins add
smart bin and of course all of these for
me are from the gh 5 so I'm just gonna
write G H 5 and then what I'm gonna do
is I know they all start with P boom
grey smart bin now when I go down here
every single one of my clips including
the clips that are in the test folder
are now down here and you can see here
all the ones that are in our test folder
down here but of course they're all
being showed so what I would do then
then I click command a or control life
here on Windows and then generate
optimized media that's just a quick
little tip because I one time had a
project where I hadn't we had like 17
folders broken up in two days and it was
very confusing to get around but this is
just the easiest way so if you want to
grab all of your clips from all your
folders just do that but anyway we're
gonna go back to test we're gonna go
back to media so you can see this whoops
the first thing you have to do is come
to file project settings and then we
have to change what type of optimized
media we want and where we want to be
stored so I've already put my working
folders my cache location that is where
your actual optimized media is going to
be stored I put in a cache test folder
but of course you're gonna want to put
this wherever you want make sure it's
something that was going to stay with
your machine while you edit of course
but then we come to the optimized media
and render cache basically we can choose
our optimized media resolution so either
the original resolution whether it be 4k
or 1080 or whatever it may be half
quarter 1/8 1/16 so I mean if you're
working with like
hey footage you know you definitely
might want to go like 1/8 1/16
especially if you're on a laptop or
something like that for me
the MacBook Pro does pretty well with a
large resolution so I'm just gonna do
half because I don't really think it's
gonna make that big of a difference in
this project like grain if I had like
two thousand Clips yeah I'd probably go
like a quarter or something and then of
course we have our optimized media
format now if you're on Windows you may
want to do a DX HR or go pro cinah forum
personally I would not do the
uncompressed that's just a little too
much but what I like to do is either pro
res LT or I believe if you're on Windows
I'm pretty sure it's d NX h r lb can't
swear to that but I'm almost positive is
so anyway I'm gonna click on the proxy
and what that's going to do is then when
I make these optimized media files
they're going to actually render a half
resolution so roughly two and a half K
or whatever it may be pro res four to to
proxy now the great thing about being on
a MacBook Pro is that proxy files of
course run or excuse me not just proxies
pro res files runs so much better on a
MacBook Pro so when I actually do this
not only is it taking some weight off
just in general because it's this much
smaller file and of course it's half the
resolution but it's also a much better
codec that my computer can actually you
know break down now there's also a
render cache format render cache is
basically it's a little much data too
but pretty much what it is is inside
your timeline if you turn it on it'll
render every single part of your
timeline so that way when you go back
and you play through it's kind of like
transcoding what's in your timeline we
don't worry about that right now so
we're gonna click Save and now we can
finally make our generate optimized
media right click generate optimize
media and boom here we go now there's a
big advantage and disadvantage to it
taking up your computer like this as we
can see we cannot go and edit anything
so the disadvantage is that like in
Premiere where you have the proxy
workflow where you can easily go in and
keep editing obviously your computer is
stuck to generating optimized media but
the advantage to that is one of the
things that I notice about Premiere in
particular is that when you were running
a proxy workflow in the background while
editing
you're editing way slower but your
proxies are now being made ten times
slower so the advance to this is
although yes it takes up time because
you have to walk away from your machine
basically at the same time it does it
way faster then premiere did I actually
did about two thousand four K clips that
were roughly all over a hundred and
fifty megabytes you know clips
themselves and DaVinci Resolve did all
of those Clips in roughly seven hours
and Premiere Pro he took I think like 36
hours so I mean that's just a little
ridiculous but so for me it takes way
less time so for me to have to just walk
away and do something else really isn't
that big of a deal
draining obviously if you have a massive
project I would recommend doing it
overnight but in this case it's not bad
takes me you know a couple minutes and I
go walk around get some coffee drink
some tea if you're into that whatever
your uh whatever into so when it's done
what we're gonna have is we're gonna
have now pro res LT versions of all of
these clips so the cool thing is nothing
changes our clips are here just as they
were before we can throw them in the
timeline and do whatever we want we
could stack them up and I'm not gonna
really do that but let's just see if I
can get this to play right and we'll
mute so you're not deaf but it should be
able to play back it looks like we're
not dropping any frames and mind you
that's several Clips playing over top oh
yeah and if this was a chat to explore
that would not slide let me make this
smaller yeah so now all of these are
basically pro res LT files they are half
the resolution and of course if you
really want until you come up to
playback you can delete all of your
optimized media which is kind of handy
like if you're done with a project then
you know you don't need to edit anymore
I would personally just delete it
because you know depending on what file
size or how many Clips you
I can take up a lot of space this is
that render cache I was talking about if
you do smart cache it'll basically I'll
show you click on it smart cache may not
do it for this timeline but oh yeah
so it'll see its red right there and
then as it plays through and as it
renders that it turns blue so basically
that way when you go back now the blue
section would work perfectly fine
obviously this is playing back fine
because we have optimized media but in a
case where you didn't want to use
optimized media render cache is a great
way to get a little bit extra and if you
wanted to you could even come down to
proxy mode and turn down half resolution
1/4 resolution that's again great if you
didn't make optimized media the best
thing about optimized media is that you
have control and that you can go in and
get exactly the the codec you want and
the frame rate or who's not the frame
rate the size you want and all of that
and that's actually one of the best
parts to is it just easily assumes the
frame rate and does it the same so if
your projects is 23.976 all of your
clips are gonna be generated to 23.976
if they're 60 frames all gonna be 60 so
it keeps the the frame rate of the clip
and it just you know it does everything
like that so that's cool too but anyway
that's pretty much it that's the way to
generate optimized media and edit you
know some big files on a small computer
so hope you guys enjoyed this video I do
have some more videos coming soon to be
sure to subscribe like and comment below
and I'll catch you guys soon
