Hi Guys,
Hey, have you guys been using DRX files in DaVinci Resolve? I remember running into a lot of issues with BLG in the past. How’s DRX holding up? Is it stable and reliable? I’m about to start a new project and considering incorporating DRX into my workflow. Is it really as smooth and simple as the Autodesk Learning Channel suggests, or are there any hiccups I should watch out for?"
Thanks,
I only tested it when it originally came out. I know @finnjaeger looked at it in more detail.
I would suggest you do some testing. The core color tools should work fine, but where the problems will come in is with anything that has keyframes, tracked shapes, resizes, etc.
Which then of course depends a lot on how your Resolve grade is built and what features it uses.
I can’t tell if this is more of a gadget feature (‘look what we can do’) or was built to support real production pipelines at big studios, and thus will get all the kinks worked out. I haven’t seen a lot of talk and coverage about it - Flame, or other tools that could use it like Nuke, etc.
agree.
Its more like a tech demo or like a “advanced LUT”
wouldnt use it as a core thing to lean on
It sort of works and with 2026’s dynamic token system linking it to shots is more seamless now. However, I’ve noticed quite a few things don’t come across too well and plenty of colorists have some sort of customization going on that might break things. But I’ve used it successfully to have a colorist do some sort of base grade. Like Finn said, lut-deluxe..
I haven’t used it in production but based on what I understand from my testing, the benefits are that it’s now possible to transfer grades in this way, and the negatives are that it isn’t quite on the same level as BLG since there is a lot different between the two workflows (Pybox vs OFX + Baselight back-end vs Resolve back-end).
It does look like BLG is a bit more flexible in that you can use a Gap TLFX Pybox across a whole sequence or use TLFX on a per-shot basis. DRX doesn’t currently support this workflow.
BLG had a number of years of development / testing to get where it is now compared to DRX. I think I remember beta testing BLG back in early 2018, so they’ve had a decent head start. I’m sure the devs would say something like the more you bring up these issues, the more possible it is to try to fix them for future releases.
Spatial and temporal alignment are complex.
Imagine frame numbers with or without handles.
Imagine resolution pre or post scaling/ reframing.
Now add animated grades and or animated masks.
It was never going to be easy.
But you may get more mileage using nuke or nuke render nodes.
I’m not saying it could or should not happen in flame but in 2023 there were no takers.
i think this is why BLG got such a bad rap. (well maybe it deserved some of it because it was slow AF) but most of the complaining i’ve witnessed was when this process was an after thought. If you did a test with the colorist BEFORE the job kicked off and got the resolution/timecode/colorspace/duration/etc planets aligned as well as avoiding some of the common pitfalls (eg: dont add film grain in baselight) it worked pretty good. Actually dont know how i would have got a few jobs done without it because of the short schedule.