Another Win for resolve // conform RANT

You load in hundrets of wonky XMLs from editors from HELL that add timewarps to everything, still frames, nested sequences, whatever other garbage the editors left for you to clean up… so “the usual”

its 99% one click and done, repos, timewarps everything it even supports nested sequences, animated crops YOU NAME IT.

its a XML, its open, we can read it , its not a binary format using proprietory math or other garbage.

WHY is Flame not the Absolute BEST at this? at this point I really have to stop blaiming premiere for doing “non standard stuff”. its not premiere, its Flame , something is inherently broken.

We dont get ANY AAFs anymore, nobody uses avid, that stuff is dead in my world.

→ Oh ther eis a timewarp let me just add 10000 frames to the virtual handles so your sources sequence is broken

→ haha you want a reframe? let me just break all the actions

→ nested sequence, let me replace that with nothing

list goes on and on and on.

I am honestly considering writing my own python tool that can properly read premiere XMLs and then generate new flame tiemlines for it, if i have to see one of my artists sitting there a full day for something a FREE SOFTWARE can do with a SINGLE CLICK I am going to start throwing wacom tablet out of the window(again) .

Its a waste of life in all honestly yes we cant properly finish in resolve because resolve is COMPLETELY STUPID. but i am every week asking myself the question if Flame is even worth it, and if I rather just hire a full-time dev for the same money we spend on Flame to fix resolve/nuke and make that work for us instead.

Flame has to be the BOSS at conform, the absolute pinnacle of it by the money it costs. this is not acceptable.

Sorry for the rant. Flame on…

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That’s what happens when a popular tool’s bugs become the de-facto standard.

But all the current editorial trends and wiz-bang stuff happens in Premiere. So no avoiding it.

It’s like all the available partners are alcoholics. So your only choice to marry is to pick one of them. And you know they won’t get better, until they decide that the level they dug to is rock bottom. You can only sit down, watch, and be patient and supportive.**

That siad, Flame should get better at that. We were fighting the same problem in Mistika a while back. The solve is that you turn every broken XML into a support case, attach it, and have the devs fix the software so that this XML would get imported correctly down the road. Won’t be in time for your project, but one by one, the corner cases and madness will get dealt with. Game of whack-a-mole.

If we only complain here, nothing will change.

And in defense of the devs, Adobe does some pretty whacky shit. So unless they get good test cases, it’s not easy to insure compatibility.

**Analogy only. I’m totally happy, 25yrs and counting :slight_smile: Improved the requirements after the first go around resulted in wipe and re-install.

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Man i was literally registering for a mistika trial on my other browser tab.

What is the future of finishing TVCs… so far nothing on the market checks all my boxes . flame is closest or least broken .

Adobe mis-using the old FCP7 XMLs from 1995 is a big problem, they could have just invented their own thing and documented it (LOOOL)

how is there no better way to export edit data from the most used editorial tool in our industry.

also xmls generated by resolve arent really THAT much better.

I dream of the day someone creates something new thats MADE for finishing commercials in 2025, not some stuff from 1994 not some 2 dev-team thing in spain e.t.c

My hope is on OTIO as a way to share editorial data and being able to read it in any system, that is the promise and well, hopefully will happen soon.

But you are right, 100% right, Flame has to be the total BOSS at conform, otherwise, it is hard to justify.

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this is what it comes down to.

OTIO is a blip on the night sky, our hope!

Omitting
Timewarps
Isn’t
Optimal

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I seem to remember someone did some conform tests from Premiere a few years ago (it may have even been the dev team posted on here or Facebook Logik). Out of all the tools they tried, Premiere was the worst which says a lot. Flame was the best at the time getting most of it to just work, though there was still a fair bit to tidy up. In the end though, it’s hard to make things work well when what you are given to work with is a pile of crap. I’d be targeting my anger towards Adobe more than Autodesk in this case. Good luck with either…

I do have to say though that conform in Resolve has improved heaps (from Resolve 14.5 onwards) in that time and I know quite a few places for longform who have moved from finishing in Flame to Resolve, mainly from a lack of support for features that are needed at mastering time. It’s a real shame as I think there is a MASSIVE opportunity for Flame that has been missed. If conform was awesome and you could deal with all the modern mastering requirements then Flame could become ‘The Tool’ for it. Sadly, alas it is not. The reason being, Resolve does all of it for nix so why spend development time on it. I still think that getting proper support for Atmos, proper audio tagging on output, metadata editing on output, support for formats such as IMF & DCP, would open back up that market. There is also lack of support for several necessary codecs/media formats. There is a gap in the market for a fully realised mastering & authoring tool. Flame could easily become that tool if the money was spent on developing what is missing or if they even created a separate tool that could network across in the background like Episode used to do (that was so awesome) to master anything/everything created in Flame. Can’t see it happening though.

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And then there’s conforming mixed frame rates in flame. Total disaster.
I can take an aaf with mixed frame rates into resolve or avid and they both work correctly.
In flame any segment with a frame rate different from the sequence has a source tc offset. Assume this is something to do with flame converting frames to timecode using the wrong time base.

This will not get better with a feature request.

Turn each case into a bug / support ticket. That way they will get some traction.

And they’re bugs after all.

I had a conform problem with specific Panasonic files. Took until the next dot release but got fixed.

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thats not a bad idea, tbh.

Flame first needs to fix the tl action bug .

it actually laods repos correctly they are juat all corrupt,. been waiting for YEARS now to get that fixed.

And if you want to see your fury increase by 100%, try to export xml’s from flame to resolve

It’s a losing battle. Every sofware thinks it’s doing it right.

Let’s hope the gods give us see otio in flame.

Yea this is literally a crime that flame cant ouput proper xmls/edl whatever…

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We receive AAF’s for conform. Time warps, repos, resizes, animated crops all come across spot-on.

As for XML conform, my understanding is Black Magic has a developer/partnership/relationship who the fuck knows what it is with Adobe that gets interchange “bugs” sorted-out.

I rarely get or use XML for conform. When I do it’s independent films, small project stuff.
That being said, I wholeheartedly agree Flame should be “The Boss” of conform.

My wish is for an OFX interchange between platforms that just works.

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lucky - i have not gotten any avid edited project in probably 2 years now and even before that it was thinning out :frowning:

As i underatand avid → flame works super well

It works seamlessly. I’m “fortunate” that at this point everything I finish is cut on AVID.
I think Premiere is more commonly used in Europe.

I just wish there was a universal exchange of metadata for OFX. That would tie up the loose ends.

i’m not so sure OTIO is going to be the knight in shining armor here. Unless i’m mistaken the functionality we are hoping for (one EDL to rule them all) depends on all of the software companies agreeing to standardize the math behind TWs and how repos, nested comps, freeze frames, blah blah blah are all created.

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+1 for AAFs if its an option honestly. In my world of episodic tv >90% is still cut in Avid and I’d say the only things I get from them that don’t match from the conform are stabilizes and roto shapes.

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sadly

Premiere and resolve AAFs are nowhwee close to avid AAFs :frowning:

Is washing Premiere XML through Resolve still a thing? Did it sometime last year and still made a difference on TW.

sometimes its better sometimes its worse, usually going via resolve aaf worked for twarps, sometimes not… seems to depend on god knows what