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‌— File names: When “Assist using Reel Names” in the General Options panel of the Project Settings is off (the default setting), this forces DaVinci Resolve to conform clips using file names when importing XML and AAF projects. File names can only be only used when conforming XML or AAF files, or when importing a DaVinci project; file names are never used when conforming EDLs.‌‌

— Reel Name: Only used for conforming if “Assist using Reel Names” is on in the General Options panel of the Project Settings. Assigning reel names to your media is not essential, but

recommended, and can make media management easier for certain operations, especially in EDL workflows. However, if you experience problems conforming clips with “Assist using Reel Names” turned on, you should try turning it off as one possible troubleshooting step.

How DaVinci Resolve matches media files to clips in an imported project depends on how you’re importing the project.

Defining Clip Metadata When Adding Media to the Media Pool

For workflows where you’re manually adding media files to the Media Pool when you’re editing from scratch in DaVinci Resolve, preparing to process dailies, or as a separate step before importing EDL, XML, or AAF project files and reconforming them to a higher quality set of media than what was originally used to edit with, the rules for how clip metadata is defined in preparation for conforming are a bit different.

— Timecode: Calculated using the “Timeline Frame Rate” setting in the Master Project Settings panel of the Project Settings.

— Reel Names: Determined depending on whether the “Assist using Reel Names from the” checkbox is on or off in the General Options panel of the Project Settings, and on which option you’ve selected. Reel names can be extracted dynamically, so any time you change this setting the reel names in the Media Pool update to reflect the change, or they can be defined manually, in which case you can set different clips to use different methods of reel name extraction.

— Clip Names: Read and stored, used for AAF and XML imports, but not used for imported EDLs.

How Reel Names Are Identified

The “Assist using Reel Names” checkbox in the General Options panel of the Project Settings is an extremely important setting for controlling how the conform process works. By default, it’s turned off, and reel names are left blank. This is fine for conform workflows where all you need is the file path or file name and source timecode to successfully identify which media files correspond to what clips. However, if you need more information than that to reconform the clips in your project, you can turn on the “Assist using Reel Names” checkbox to enable DaVinci Resolve to use one of four different methods to automatically define reel names for every clip in the Media Pool.

Automatically Defining Reel Names

When you use the “Assist using Reel Names” options in the General Options panel of the Project Settings, reel names are extracted dynamically. This means that any time you change the method of reel name extraction in the Project Settings, the reel names of all clips in the Media Pool automatically update to reflect the change. This can be seen in the Reel Name column that’s visible if you put the Media Pool into List view. For example, were you to change the “Assist using reel names” options from

“Source clip file pathname” to “Mediapool folder name,” the contents of the Reel Name column would visibly change. This is useful when you’re importing a project for which all clips use the same method of determining their reel name.

Manually Choosing Reel Name Definitions for Individual Clips

You also have the option of manually choosing the criteria for how one or more selected clips in the Media Pool have their reel names defined, using the Clip Attributes dialog. This is useful when there are certain clips in a project that need to use a different method of reel name extraction, or manually entered reel names.

To manually define reel names for one or more clips:

1 Select one or more clips in the Media Pool.

2 Right-click one of the selected clips, and choose Clip Attributes from the contextual menu.

3 Open the Reel Name panel of the Clip Attributes dialog, choose a new option, and click OK.

Once you’ve used Clip Attributes to change the reel names of clips, those clips no longer automatically update when you change the “Assist using Reel Names” options in the General Options panel of the Project Settings. For more information on using Clip Attributes, see Chapter 19, “Using Clip Metadata.”

Methods of Defining Reel Names

There are five options that are available for automatically determining how reel names are extracted from the source media when “Assist using Reel Names” is turned on, and one option in the Clip Attributes Reel Name panel for manually defining reel names. The use of reel names is critical in EDL and AAF workflows, but isn’t necessarily as important in XML-centric workflows.

— Source clip file pathname: Obtains the reel name by extracting it from each media file’s path. This makes it possible to extract a reel name from all or part of the file name, or from all or part of the name of any folder in the path that encloses that file. This extraction is defined using the Pattern field.

— Pattern: A code that defines how a reel name should be extracted from the source clip pathname. More information about creating patterns appears later in this chapter.

— Media Pool folder name: The reel name is obtained from the name of the bin in the Media Pool that encloses that clip. For example, in a stereoscopic workflow you might want to export offline stereo media with the “Left” and “Right” bin names in which they’re organized as reel names. Another example would be organizing VFX being incrementally processed in individually named bins, such as “VFX_Tuesday_10-12.”

— Embedding in Source clip file: Useful for file formats where the reel name is embedded within the media file itself. Blackmagic RAW and other digital cinema cameras, QuickTime files created by Final Cut Pro, and DPX frame files are formats that can contain reel name header data.

— Source clip filename: If there is no defined reel number, often it’s easy to just use the Source clip filename.

— User Defined: This option is only available when you manually alter the Reel Name for one or more selected clips in the Media Pool using the Clip Attributes dialog. Choosing User Defined lets you type any string of text you like to use as the reel name.

An additional checkbox is available, “Extract reel names from EDL comments,” which is primarily useful for legacy workflows in which you conform an EDL exported from Final Cut Pro 7 to camera original R3D media.

— Extract reel names from EDL comments: Some media file formats, such as R3D, have reel names, obtained from the file names, that are longer than the eight characters that are allowable in a standard EDL. This option allows DaVinci Resolve to extract reel names from appropriately formatted EDL comments, such as those output from Final Cut Pro 7.

Using the Pattern Field

If you’re using the Pattern option to extract the reel name from a clip’s source file pathname, you have the option to create your own search pattern, enabling you to have DaVinci Resolve extract the reel name in highly specific ways to accommodate more exotic workflows.

Extraction patterns are interpreted from right to left, deciphering each clip’s file path element by element starting with the file name, and then considering each enclosing directory’s name to the left. Each extraction pattern consists of a series of text characters and “wild card” operators in unique combinations corresponding to the length and names used in the file path.

Here are a series of search characters that may be used.

If you’re trying to create a new extraction pattern for a unique workflow, there’s a test dialog you can use to try different patterns out before applying them to your project.

To test the extraction path:

1 Turn on “Assist using reel names from the” and click the Test button next to the current Pattern in the General Options panel of the Project Settings. The “Specify Reel Extraction Pattern” dialog opens.

2 Type the extraction patten you want to test into the Pattern field.

3 Using whatever method you prefer, find the file path of the media file that you want to test the extraction pattern on, and copy or type it into the Sample Path field.

4 Click Test.

5 If the reel name that appears below is correct, then click Apply to copy the extraction pattern into the Pattern field of the General Options panel of the Project Settings. If the reel name that appears is not correct, modify the extraction pattern and try again.

Examples of Reel Name Extraction Patterns

To better understand how this process works, below are several examples showing the various methods of reel name extractions. The / is used as the separator between control parameters.

Example 1:

This example shows the reel name stored within the parent folder name of the clip.

— Pattern: */%R/%D

— File path: vol0/MyMovie/Scans/004B/Frame[1000-2000].dpx

— Reel name: 004B

Parsing takes place from right to left so to analyze this pattern start at the right end. In this case the %D matches to the file name “FrameNNNN.dpx” where NNNN is the frame number in each file of the clip. Moving left of the file name, the /%R/ section of the string is next. This specifies that the reel name will be the entire name of the parent directory immediately above the file. Then the

* at the beginning of the string says match any pathname in front of the directory name that has the reel name. This string would find the parent directory regardless of how many levels deep it is nested on the directory path.

Example 2:

Here we see the reel name stored in the parent folder name of the clip and prefixed with the reel name.

— Pattern: */????%R/%D or alternatively */Reel%R/%D

— File path: /vol0/MyMovie/Scans/Reel1234/Frame[1000-2000].dpx

— Reel name: 1234

In this example both of these extraction patterns produce the same result. They are also similar to the first example. The reel name is still in the parent directory name but in this case it will have the fixed characters “Reel” prefixed in front of the reel name. The first pattern with ???? would actually match with any 4 characters in front of the reel name. The second pattern is more specific and would only match the word “Reel” in the directory name.

Example 3:

This example shows the reel name stored within the parent folder name two directory levels up.

— Pattern: */%R/%D/%D

— File path: /vol0/MyMovie/Scans/004B/134500-135000/Frame[1000-2000].dpx

— Reel name: 004B

This example is again similar to Example 1. The difference is that in Example 3, the reel name is the directory name two levels above the clip. In Example 1, the reel name was in the directory name only one level up.

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