As a result of workflow changes brought about by the pandemic, Howard Bargroff, a re-recording mixer at Sonorous Trident, in the middle of a number of ongoing tv projects had to change to an online model of mixing and delivering audio, and look at delivering a number of solutions very quickly including producing all the deliverables. Howard’s experiences have led him to suggest that it would be so much easier if all DAWS had a Deliverables page. Over to you Howard…

Thanks, COVID

Last year, thanks to COVID we were thrown into total chaos when members of our team had to take systems home and started mixing from there, staying in contact using a number of online platforms (Whatsapp/Zoom etc). In the act of keeping the post-production wheels turning, we found ourselves having to use software and systems we had never considered using before. Amongst all this turmoil, DaVinci Resolve was one of the programs we discovered, thanks to a recommendation from the lovely folk at Jumbuck.

Why Use DaVinci Resolve?

Why did we even need to start using DaVinci Resolve? Thanks to Apple’s impenetrable approach to operating system versions, when we bought a new Mac recently, we were forced into using macOS Catalina as the default operating system. It's a great OS, but was the first macOS to only support 64-bit applications, which meant we had to retire our go-to QuickTime converter solution; MPEG Streamclip.

Around the same time, we started to find the Pro Tools Bounce To QuickTime function started to become a touch unstable on some of our larger sessions, in an annoyingly unpredictable way. This generally meant, that when you needed to get a QuickTime out of the door quickly, Pro Tools decided to beachball at the start of the bounce and hang for longer than just playing the mix out (sod’s law meaning this became more likely to happen the closer to the end of the day/week we were).

So, necessity being the mother of invention, we started using Davinci Resolve to embed audio into QuickTimes and convert picture codecs on difficult-to-play QuickTime files. Both of these processes were the fastest we’d ever seen (the joys of 64-bit perhaps?), as well as being really easy to set up, manage and deliver.

As Resolve is primarily a picture platform, you can pretty much convert any flavour of QuickTime to any other flavour - meaning you can hit some of the crazier specs that get asked for these days (uploading QuickTime files to Pix perhaps?!

The software is organised into a series of sensible pages, each one tailored for a particular task, although generally for audio work you only tend to use a handful of them.

Media Page - This is where you can collect all the media assets you are using for the project. Very simple to use, either importing files or dragging and dropping them into place.

Edit Page - This is pretty much what it says; it's where picture and sound get lined up into a master timeline. This really is the workhorse page for lining up exported Pro Tools sound to be embedded into QuickTime files. It’s also a very familiar layout if you're used to working within Pro Tools.

Fairlight Page - This is the audio mixing page (Blackmagic bought out Fairlight a few years back - hence the name). A very nicely laid out audio platform, with a simple soft mixing desk built-in. This page even boasts a built-in Leq meter, ready to go.

No complicated plugin or additional content needed, just to get basic functions, simply balance it all up and go. You have to be a bit careful as to how you manage stereo versus mono BWAVs generated from Pro Tools (we tend to work in mono BWAV world, rather than using poly-WAVs because most of our delivery requirements require multi-mono audio files), but it was all pretty simple to manage within this page.

Deliveries Page - This is an absolute marvel of software-common-sense (see above). This is a dedicated page where you decide what you want to export and in what format. It assumes you may want to make lots of different deliveries, possibly at different positions on the timeline in a smart and organised way (maybe all that new CGI that the director wants to watch quickly?) You can add tasks to a queue, export all the files to different places, stack up list of jobs to do, then set the computer going and pop out for a coffee/pint, leaving the computer to the task it’s best suited for - multiple repeated tasks.

This is something I’ve never seen in a DAW before (but would happily be pointed in the direction of one that does do this) - and one of those common-sense features that once you've used it, you quickly integrate it into your workflow.

Resolve Is Also Useful For…

Within Resolve, we then quickly discovered a bunch of other useful tasks for audio people…

• inserting timecode on poorly turned over QuickTimes

• adding forgotten watermarks

• inserting new CGI into timelines

• and much more…

Even occasionally even making small picture edits that become apparent as you are mixing (a small bit of revenge for all those online picture departments - "oh yeah the timeline changed during the dub - didn't anyone tell you? Annoying that, isn't it".

It's a program that really feels like operators have had a hand in the design, which means most tasks can be achieved without the need to turn to manuals again and again.

It's such intuitive software you seem to almost teach yourself, as you are using it. I think the last time I used a piece of software this simple, it was the Akai DD8, (showing my age), where I never really had to look at any documentation, given it was such a brilliantly thought-through product.

There you have it. It would be great if other DAW manufacturers would take a leaf out of DaVinci’s book in the way they have designed Resolve, especially with regard to the Deliveries page. It makes the Deliverables tasks so much more streamlined.