Today I enjoyed flying my drone for the first time. I took some videos, imported them into DaVinci resolve studio.

I have noticed two issues.
1) fps isn’t 60 but 59.94. I always shoot and export in 60fps when using my BMCC6K-FF, so I want fps to be constant in timeline.
2) I’m sure I set video format to d-log-m, the footage looked normal.

I didn’t color grade footage here. I just added the videos, cut them and added bad music.

DJI drones usually takes shots at that frame rate. If you want to export at 60 fps, you can just override the frame rate in DaVinci when importing shots into the media store. If you don’t do that, when exporting at 60 fps a retiming is executed and, depending on settings, it may bring to unwanted results.

FabioV Posted at 8-16 02:21
DJI drones usually takes shots at that frame rate. If you want to export at 60 fps, you can just override the frame rate in DaVinci when importing shots into the media store. If you don’t do that, when exporting at 60 fps a retiming is executed and, depending on settings, it may bring to unwanted results.

Thank you for your input, Fabio. Overriding timeline frame rate when importing media will change the entire timeline’s frame rate. In that case I have no other option than shooting in 59.94 on my camera.

Setting Anti-flicker to 50hz would help in my case? It’s set to auto now.
Anyway, I’ll test mixing 60 and 59.94 in DR.

FF_Shooter Posted at 8-16 02:41
Thank you for your input, Fabio. Overriding timeline frame rate when importing media will change the entire timeline’s frame rate. In that case I have no other option than shooting in 59.94 on my camera.

Setting Anti-flicker to 50hz would help in my case? It’s set to auto now.

Setting Anti-flicker to 50hz would help in my case?

No, it won't help, the 50Hz setting is used in Europe to reduce lamp flickering as the power grid frequency is 50Hz. It has nothing to do with the frame rate when shooting.

You need to select the timeline frame rate as 60, then in the media, specify the frame rate in the file attributes not as 59.94 but as 60.
This way, your video will be interpreted without losing quality. This will result in your video speeding up by 0.1% (the difference is 60 and 59.94)
But this is completely unnoticeable.

Serg SSA Posted at 8-16 03:00
Setting Anti-flicker to 50hz would help in my case?

No, it won't help, the 50Hz setting is used in Europe to reduce lamp flickering as the power grid frequency is 50Hz. It has nothing to do with the frame rate when shooting.

Thank you Serg. I tried your suggestion, it worked well, however, I felt the motion is a bit jittery.

FF_Shooter Posted at 8-16 04:08
Thank you Serg. I tried your suggestion, it worked well, however, I felt the motion is a bit jittery.

This is probably because the computer can't handle the load. Reduce the timeline resolution, and then increase it again when outputting. You can check, render and see the result, there will be no jerking.

Serg SSA Posted at 8-16 04:37
This is probably because the computer can't handle the load. Reduce the timeline resolution, and then increase it again when outputting. You can check, render and see the result, there will be no jerking.

I appreciate your input Serg. My machine is capable of handling 8K60fps footage. It’s the issue of the 0.1% increment. It’s subtle but not as smooth as 59.94fps playback, especially when the drone is orbiting. Maybe when rendered the issue goes away.

I’ll make two separate videos for each fps and post them here to give you an idea.

Thanks again Serg.
Edit:

I imported drone's footage into 60fps timeline without altering footage fps, it played back much better than changing footage fps to 60.

I don't see the problem really, even in the orbits. The difference in frame rates would show up mostly if you were synching audio in a 60 fps timeline. Then the audio like from speech would be out of synch after a few seconds.
Can't help with the dlogm. I've never encountered the issue.

PintorMX Posted at 8-16 07:01
I don't see the problem really, even in the orbits. The difference in frame rates would show up mostly if you were synching audio in a 60 fps timeline. Then the audio like from speech would be out of synch after a few seconds.
Can't help with the dlogm. I've never encountered the issue.

I managed to get it right. I just import drone's footage without changing timeline's frame rate and keeping it to 60 fps, ignoring DR changing frame rate message once clips are imposed.

As for the d-log, it seemed normal, but it turned out to be d-log (cinelike).  I'm used to RAW footage to be washed out.

FF_Shooter Posted at 8-16 06:21
I appreciate your input Serg. My machine is capable of handling 8K60fps footage. It’s the issue of the 0.1% increment. It’s subtle but not as smooth as 59.94fps playback, especially when the drone is orbiting. Maybe when rendered the issue goes away.

I’ll make two separate videos for each fps and post them here to give you an idea.

I imported drone's footage into 60fps timeline without altering footage fps, it played back much better than changing footage fps to 60.

This can't happen even theoretically )
When placing a video in 59.94 on a timeline with 60 frames per second, approximation will occur and in fact it will be the same 60.
When interpreting 59.94 in 60, there will be no approximation at all, so everything will be the same at the output, only the total length of the video will be 0.1% shorter )

Serg SSA Posted at 8-16 07:24
I imported drone's footage into 60fps timeline without altering footage fps, it played back much better than changing footage fps to 60.

This can't happen even theoretically )

I’ll post videos later this evening. 4 eyes are better than 2

Thank you Serg.

I'm uplaoding a view now. To be homest, I couldn't spot any difference.

Here's my export settings, for your info.



And here's the video, 3840x2160, 4K, 60fps

Just a more detailed explanation: when you put into a 60 fps timeline a shot taken at 59.94 fps, DaVinci Resolve needs to generate a new frame every 100 frames, in order to compensate for the difference. This new frame can be calculated using different algorithms, that you can find in the project setting under the Frame Interpolation section (nearest, frame blend, optical flow), or for each single shot into the Inspector section Retime and scaling. Typically the simplest algorithm (algorithm) provides poor results (but consuming few CPU) and the most sophisticated (Optical Flow) the best results. But, depending on the shot, also the Nearest can deliver acceptable results. In some cases, when using the Nearest algorithm,  you can see some small bumps in the final video, in the fastest scenes.
In order to skip all these calculation, you just need to go to the Media page, select the clips you imported into the project, right click and open the Clip Attribute item. Here you can override the frame rate of the imported clips to 60 fps.
Now you just need to create a 60 fps timeline and work with the clips.
I'm using this method when mixing the clips taken with the drone and the ones taken with the iPhone, and the result is perfect.
At the beginning, when I was not aware about that capability, I used to set the Optical Flow algorithm, obtaining very good results, but waiting a lot during the generation of the cached timeline and of the final video.
   

FabioV Posted at 8-16 23:53
Just a more detailed explanation: when you put into a 60 fps timeline a shot taken at 59.94 fps, DaVinci Resolve needs to generate a new frame every 100 frames, in order to compensate for the difference. This new frame can be calculated using different algorithms, that you can find in the project setting under the Frame Interpolation section (nearest, frame blend, optical flow), or for each single shot into the Inspector section Retime and scaling. Typically the simplest algorithm (algorithm) provides poor results (but consuming few CPU) and the most sophisticated (Optical Flow) the best results. But, depending on the shot, also the Nearest can deliver acceptable results. In some cases, when using the Nearest algorithm,  you can see some small bumps in the final video, in the fastest scenes.
In order to skip all these calculation, you just need to go to the Media page, select the clips you imported into the project, right click and open the Clip Attribute item. Here you can override the frame rate of the imported clips to 60 fps.
Now you just need to create a 60 fps timeline and work with the clips.

Great information and advice, Fabio. DR isn't easy to master in short period of time. Mastering DR is a steep learning curve.