This IS the Avid L2: [Avid-L2] Re: [Editing-List] Avid to Resolve for IMF creation audio? New Insight

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

[Avid-L2] Re: [Editing-List] Avid to Resolve for IMF creation audio? New Insight

I wanted to share what I learned about the Netflix Resolve IMF workflow today with everyone. Thanks Mark for the info. I was confused about the Fairlight linking but today I get some clarifcation from netflix.

My initial test was done with Poly wave files 5.1 and 2.0. In the QT world that would be like interleaved vs. discreate audio tracks with the Poly wave being a single track with all the sub channel. Since I was working with poly wavs they came into Resolve as a single linked tracks one 5.1 and one stereo.

Netflix clarified for me for their test I will be given separate tracks for L,R,C,Lfe,Ls,Rs,Lt and Rt. It is by linking in Fairlight that they become a single .mxf one for 5.1 and one for 2.0.

Part of the Onboarding involves an audio fix which requires replacement of one track.

The other thing I learned that helped me understand better is that once you make an initial IMF that then becomes the base for all "Supplemental" exports with patches. Basically for a fix you make a new timeline and cut in the existing IMF first then insert the patch fix. Then Resolve only has to render the new stuff and augment the Content Play List to point to the new fix section for the patch area. It starting to make sense to me now but there is more to learn about Resolve and the IMF world. Initially when they mentioned patch fixes I thought I would be cutting it into the initial sequence but clearly that is not the case. The reason seems obvious to me now but during our video call with Netflix I had to ask about it as they didn't specifically mention cutting in the original IMF before making a fix.

I'd almost rather learn to sprinkle ferric oxide on 2 inch tape and do a manual splice but you know it's hard to upload a Quad tape directly to the internet.

---In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, <cutandcover@...> wrote :

First - Resolve has no real function to split poly WAVs into discrete tracks. But you can edit a poly WAV onto a mono track and assign which channel of the poly WAV you want playing on that mono sequence track. It's not pretty.

You shouldn't need to bother with that to accomplish what you want here though. I just recently completed the IMF onboarding for Netflix and subsequently delivered a feature, so I know a small amount about this, but enough to get it done.

When building the sequence, you should (as a rule) create two Fairlight Mix Busses. Bus 1 (which is already made for any sequence) should be set to 5.1 and Bus 2 (add a new Main Output Bus) should be set to Stereo. Now you can edit in your poly WAV for the 5.1 mix onto sequence track 1 and in the Fairlight mixer assign it to Main Output Bus 1 (the little number buttons on the track mixer), and edit in your stereo WAV onto sequence track 2 and assign it to Main Output Bus 2. When you play down, you can toggle between listening to the 5.1 or the stereo in the Fairlight page.

Now when you go to the Deliver page, you choose the Netflix IMF preset, and make sure that in the Audio tab, you have 1 Primary Audio output set to your Main 1 (5.1) and add in another Primary Audio output and set it to Main 2 (Stereo).

When the IMF is rendered, you will see one MXF which is video and two MXFs for audio. The 5.1 is interleaved in a single MXF, and the stereo is interleaved in another MXF. You can QC this back in Resolve.

Happy IMFing…

On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 3:44 PM John Moore bigfish@... [Editing-List] <Editing-List@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I've been testing making an IMF using the Netflix preset in Resolve 15. It seems to work but I'm curious about audio tracks being discrete or interleaved if that is the proper term in this context.

In my test I took the DPX exported Rec 709 out of Avid and in Resolve told the clip attributes it was video not auto or full so the video levels are fine. Then I had two multichannel wave files for 5.1 and 2.0. I think the proper term would poly wav files. I brought those into Resolve and cut them into the timeline with 5.1 as first track and 2.0 as track two. The resulting IMF shows 8 channels in the proper order according to the Resolve audio meters. My question is if the IMF format is like QT .mov files with audio tracks being discrete, individual mono tracks, or interleaved, multichannel tracks? Does this create problems down the line for servers, encoders, playout devices. In Avid land with .movs I defaulted to mono tracks for .movs as that worked best for the delivery pipeline.

I'm novice in Resolve world so I don't know if Resolve has a function to split poly wavs into discrete tracks like Avid does with converting a stereo audio clip into dual mono.

Anybody playing around with IMFs? I use the term play loosely here. I just keep telling myself this is just fun fun fun!!!

John Moore Barking Trout Productions Studio City, CA bigfish@...