Sending to Baselight

What you need

• Baselight 7 on macOS, installed in /Applications/Baselight, with the FilmLight Python that comes with it. Tested with Baselight 7.0.2.
• A license that includes Baselight. Resolve, Flame and Baselight are licensed separately. A key that names no finishing system sends to Resolve only.

Baselight does not have to be open: the send starts it when it is not.

Choosing Baselight

When your license covers more than one finishing system, a switch at the top of the results page's findings list picks where the timeline goes. Choose Baselight and the list describes what Baselight will carry, clip by clip, and the send button reads Send to Baselight. The choice is saved with the timeline.

Export… is hidden while Baselight is chosen: it writes a package for Resolve. The switches under the timeline are grayed out too. A Baselight send takes the cut as it was edited.

Where the cut lands

The send window asks where the scene is saved:

• Database host is the Baselight database the scene goes into. localhost is this Mac. Choose the host a grading suite opens its jobs from, and the conform is waiting in that suite's Job Manager with nothing to import. The hosts in Baselight's Job Manager are listed, and any other can be typed.
• Baselight job is the job the scene is filed under. Pick one, or type a name and the job is created. It starts on the Premiere project's name.

Both are remembered for the timeline. The scene is named after the sequence and the time of the send, such as REEL 1 09-28 15:00. A second send in the same minute adds 2, so a send never replaces an earlier scene.

The send panel follows the conform: Preparing conform package, Starting Baselight (when Baselight was closed), Placing the cut, Applying the edit. A reel of a few hundred clips takes a minute or two. It ends on Sent to Baselight with a summary: how many picture events arrived and in which job and scene, any clips that arrived offline, and that the scene is open on the Baselight timeline, with Baselight brought to the front. The Project Hub then shows the timeline as Sent to Baselight.

Each send keeps what it conformed from in a folder beside the Premiere project, named after the project with _baselight on the end.

What arrives

• Picture: every clip on every video track, in its stacking order. Position, scale, rotation, crop, opacity and flips carry. Photos arrive the right way up, and RED takes and numbered image sequences arrive whole, under the names the camera gave them.
• Nested sequences opened out, with the nest's own motion and opacity carried onto each of its clips.
• Timing, frame for frame: speed changes, reverse, freeze frames and speed ramps, and footage at another frame rate played at the rate of the cut.
• Transitions: cross dissolves, including between retimed clips, stills and footage at another frame rate, and fades and dips to black and to white. Where a dissolve runs past the end of a clip's media, its last frame is held, as Premiere holds it. Any other transition arrives as a dissolve of the same length and alignment, and the results page names it.
• Solids: color mattes and black video, with their framing and opacity. A see-through black clip, such as a caption box or a fade through black, shows as much of the picture beneath as it does in Premiere.
• Blend modes: all of Premiere's, from Multiply and Screen to Hue and Luminosity, including over a faded or scaled-down clip and past the end of the picture beneath.
• Markers as Baselight marks, each in the nearest Baselight color, and the sequence's start timecode, so a note timed against your edit points at the same frame in Baselight. A drop-frame cut counts in drop frame there too.

What does not arrive

The results page lists each of these on the clip it affects before you send:

• Sound. Baselight takes the picture only.
• Titles, graphics, adjustment layers and captions.
• Effects and grades: Lumetri and the other video effects, and opacity masks. The grade is the colorist's to make in Baselight.
• The exact look of a see-through clip over other picture. Premiere mixes it in linear light and Baselight as the picture looks, so a partly see-through clip over another shows a little differently. Black clips are matched, as above.
• Your reference render. Add it as a track in Baselight to compare against it.

Offline media

A file that is missing arrives as an empty strip in its place, under the file's name, so the scene still holds the whole cut. A render stops at the first such strip until it is relinked in Baselight, and the send's summary names the offline clips.

If something goes wrong

• "This machine is missing …": Baselight, its conform tools or FilmLight's Python is not where Baselight installs it. Install Baselight 7, then send again.
• "Baselight's database on … did not answer": that machine is switched off, unreachable, or its name is misspelled. Check the Database host in the send window, then send again.
• "Baselight was started but is not answering yet": Baselight took more than three minutes to open. Let it finish opening, then send again.