Why does Davinci Resolve not like my Sony a6000?

Rehdarh

Rehdarh

Active member
I have a Sony a6000, and from what I gather I am shooting in some format called AVCHD.

When I try to import my Sony a6000 files into DaVinci resolve, it does not accept the audio from those files.

From my research, there is no answer other than to buy a Mac, or to give my files a new "wrapper." There are programs out there, one suggested by someone on this forum in a thread like this one, that will do this, all the while apparently maintaining the file's quality reduction. It seems wherever I look that is the only answer.

But the reason I made this thread is because this just seems so stupid. Here we got one of the more popular consumer cameras on the one side and a color grading authority on the other, and in order for them to be sufficiently compatible I have to either buy some converter program, or somthing like this? http://brightland.com/w/mp4tomov-for-windows/

I mean what the hell?

This seems at least to me to be a signifigant enough drawback of the Sony a6000 that it would be somthing I would have read about in weighing the pros and cons of getting the camera.

I'm interested in knowing what you guys do; do you even use DaVinci Resolve? If you do, do these "new wrappers" really not effect video quality?

Thanks guys
 
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AVCHD has always been a pain. That application is $2, what have you got to lose for trying it out?
Yes, you're only multiplexing the files, not rendering them, so there should be no loss in quality. You could probably achieve whatever that program is doing at zero cost with enough tinkering with something like ffmpeg. Have you considered splitting the audio out as a .WAV and importing that separately into Resolve and combining them manually? That might be feasible for projects with few clips.

EDIT: Here're some threads which might be helpful:
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=37632&start=50
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=859
 
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If I were you, I'd shoot in XAVC instead of AVCHD with the A6000. It is a higher bit rate (50 instead of 24)
and gives better quality anyways.
 
Are you using the newest version of Resolve? I think this issue has been fixed. I'm editing a7rii footage with audio no problem. To get better playback turn on Smart Render in Resolve. It will transcode the footage while you edit so it plays back smoother. Similar to what FCPx does.

Also agree shoot XAVC not AVCHD. Just transcode the footage and edit.
 
Thank you for the advice.

I have tried to find how to get XAVC for my sonya6000 but I can't seem to find it? Do you know how I get it?

This is obviously a noob question.
 
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I think it is worth transcoding to a first quality DI codec, Prores, DNXHD/HR, or Cineform, for editing and finishing. Unless you have a really powerful workstation, AVC in any form is not very efficient for direct editing. XAVC i-frame runs better than long GOP AVC codecs, but neither is as efficient as one of the DI codecs. You will not lose quality moving to one of these like you sometimes do just recompressing to some other wrapper or version of MP4.
 
Razz16mm said:
I think it is worth transcoding to a first quality DI codec, Prores, DNXHD/HR, or Cineform, for editing and finishing. Unless you have a really powerful workstation, AVC in any form is not very efficient for direct editing. XAVC i-frame runs better than long GOP AVC codecs, but neither is as efficient as one of the DI codecs. You will not lose quality moving to one of these like you sometimes do just recompressing to some other wrapper or version of MP4.
Click to expand...


Thanks - is MOV a quality codec?
 
AndrewGentle said:
AVCHD has always been a pain. That application is $2, what have you got to lose for trying it out?
Yes, you're only multiplexing the files, not rendering them, so there should be no loss in quality. You could probably achieve whatever that program is doing at zero cost with enough tinkering with something like ffmpeg. Have you considered splitting the audio out as a .WAV and importing that separately into Resolve and combining them manually? That might be feasible for projects with few clips.

EDIT: Here're some threads which might be helpful:
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=37632&start=50
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=859
Click to expand...


Well I bought nothing from that site apparantly since no installation of anything happened after I bought the service. I'm closing in on 6 hours trying to figure this out. I thought that downloading that would make it easy instead of dealing ffmpgs and uncompressed zip folders and other things I don't understand
 
Rehdarh said:
Thank you for the advice.

I have tried to find how to get XAVC for my sonya6000 but I can't seem to find it? Do you know how I get it?

This is obviously a noob question.
Click to expand...

Hit the 'Menu' button. First Menu has a picture of a camera. There are 7 pages of submenu's....
but the settings you want are on the very first two pages of these submenus. Go to the very bottom
setting on the submenu 1 page. It is called 'File Format' and has a film strip icon in front of it. Go to that
and switch it from AVCHD to XAVC. Next go to page two of the submenu's under that same
first menu with the picture of the camera. The setting at the top of the page is 'Record Setting'. Set that to
either 24P 50M (24 fps), 50P 50M (50fps) or 60P 50M (60fps). The 50M is referring to the bit rate and is
more than twice the bit rate of AVCHD. Done!
 
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Enable XAVC-S in the menu.
You need a faster 64GB memory card in order to do that.
Don't even look at AVCHD codec.
It's nothing compared to XAVC-S.
Good luck
 
Also, in the media tab of Resolve, right click on your clips and choose the "clip attributes" option. There, instead of the default "auto" for levels, manually select "data". If you leave it in auto, you will lose some information in the highlights because of the weird way that sony cameras record 16-255 levels.
 
Rehdarh;1986651431But the reason I made this thread is because this just seems so stupid. Here we got one of the more popular consumer cameras on the one side and a color grading authority on the other said:
http://brightland.com/w/mp4tomov-for-windows/[/URL]

I mean what the hell?
Click to expand...

DaVinci Resolve is a professional program. It doesn't like consumer video formats like AVCHD. As others have said, it can be done with a proper workflow.

One way is to import the files form the camera using Sony's own software, Catalyst Browse, which ingests the footage as self-contained files without the complex file structure you seen when importing direct form the card.
 
Rehdarh said:
Thanks - is MOV a quality codec?
Click to expand...

MOV is a file container. It can hold any number of different codecs from low end web streaming garbage to uncompressed 16 bit Prores RGB. Resolve and other post software work just fine with MOV wrapped codecs. Which codec is a different matter. AVC long GOP codecs require a lot of processing power to decompress for editing, mostly CPU and lots of RAM, not GPU.
Editing a DI codec is so much more efficient since the processing overhead is much less.
Note that Resolve has a pretty steep learning curve, the manual is up to 1200+ pages now.
 
deltoidjohn said:
DaVinci Resolve is a professional program. It doesn't like consumer video formats like AVCHD. As others have said, it can be done with a proper workflow.

One way is to import the files form the camera using Sony's own software, Catalyst Browse, which ingests the footage as self-contained files without the complex file structure you seen when importing direct form the card.
Click to expand...

From what I read Catalyst Browse "transcodes" my footage - does that mean there will be a quality reduction?
 
Dont stress yourself and use the brightland software. Its effectiv, simple and cheap.
I did it, when I use the A6000, now with the 6300 I dont need it anymore.
Benn
 
benn said:
Dont stress yourself and use the brightland software. Its effectiv, simple and cheap.
I did it, when I use the A6000, now with the 6300 I dont need it anymore.
Benn
Click to expand...
I followed this video to a T: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcdTIDHm4KM and it worked the first time, insofar as I wrote in my CMD prompt: ffmpeg -version and a bunch of instructions came up. But I deleted FFMEG for a number of reasons that I don't want to get into. Now, when I try to install it again, nothing comes up after the command. It says it does not recognize the command. I've re-done it a million times and still no cigar.
 
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