Sanbila for freelance colorists

Grade R3D, BRAW and ARRI RAW in DaVinci Resolve from anywhere, no hard drive in the mail.

What slows down a freelance colorist

Editors send a locked cut by FCPXML, then the colorist waits a week for a 4 TB shuttle drive of camera originals to arrive.
The shuttle drive arrives with a broken file or a corrupt MediaFiles structure that breaks the conform.
Grading sessions on a remote rig mean redoing the project setup, reinstalling LUTs, recalibrating the reference monitor.
A revised cut from the editor means the colorist has to chase the new FCPXML and re-link clips manually.

How Sanbila fits a freelance colorist workflow

The editor finishes the cut and exports an FCPXML or AAF. Sanbila Smart Relink reads it, identifies every used clip and switches them to stream mode, mounted as a Sanbila-{projectId} WebDAV volume on the colorist machine. DaVinci Resolve opens the project, sees the R3D, BRAW or ARRI RAW originals at full resolution streamed from R2, and the Color page debayer node operates on the raw sensor data. The colorist grades from their own calibrated suite, the editor pushes a revised cut anytime, and Smart Relink keeps the WebDAV mount in sync. No hard drive ships, no media offline errors, no project re-setup between revisions.

Recommended plan

Freelance colorists running their own suite typically pick the Solo plan at 49 USD per month with 2 TB of cloud storage. The cloud storage matters less because the colorist receives projects from clients who already pay for Sanbila on Studio or Enterprise. Solo gives the colorist enough headroom for their own LUT library and graded master archive. Studio becomes relevant for finishing studios with 3 colorists collaborating on the same season.

Recommended workflows

RED RAW (R3D) editing workflow in DaVinci Resolve

RED Komodo, V-Raptor and V-Raptor XL produce R3D files at 300 to 700 GB per hour in 6K and 8K. DaVinci Resolve handles R3D natively, but the bandwidth still bottlenecks at the disk. Sanbila keeps the originals in cloud storage and lets Resolve open lightweight proxies during the offline cut, then switches each clip back to the original through a WebDAV mount when the colorist needs the raw debayer.

Blackmagic RAW workflow in DaVinci Resolve

BRAW is the codec DaVinci Resolve grew up with. Decoding is fast, debayer is clean, and the metadata roundtrip is the most mature in the industry. The catch is the disk. A URSA Mini Pro 12K at 8:1 still writes around 250 GB per hour, and the Pocket 6K stack on a documentary shoot fills a 2 TB drive in a week. Sanbila keeps the BRAW originals on Cloudflare R2 and serves a 1080p ProRes Proxy on your machine so Resolve plays back instantly, then streams the BRAW over WebDAV when you grade.

ARRI RAW workflow in Avid Media Composer

Long-form drama and broadcast post still runs on Avid Media Composer, and the source is increasingly Alexa 35 ARRI RAW at 400 to 900 GB per hour. The traditional SAN-and-MediaFiles workflow is expensive to scale and impossible to share between cities. Sanbila keeps the ARRI RAW on Cloudflare R2, generates 1080p DNxHR LB proxies on the editor's machine, and streams the originals back through the WebDAV mount when the assistant editor conforms the AAF for online.

Sanbila by the numbers

Real specs from the live Sanbila product, not marketing claims.

NLEs supported (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Avid)

Proxy presets — from 540p H.264 to 1080p DNxHR LB

File formats supported (MP4, MOV, MXF, R3D, BRAW, WAV…)

85%

Average disk savings vs editing on 4K originals

Egress fees on Cloudflare R2 — stream originals at zero cost

Parallel R2 connections on macOS (4 on Windows / Linux), 4 MB block cache

Freelance colorist questions

Can I grade in DaVinci Resolve Studio without local copies of the camera originals?

Yes. The WebDAV mount on macOS, Windows or Linux exposes the originals as a network volume, and Resolve reads each frame on demand. The Color page debayer runs on the raw sensor data and the export writes the master locally without ever downloading the originals.

Does ACES colour managed grading work through the WebDAV stream?

Yes. The colour pipeline is local to Resolve. ACES IDT, working space, ODT, all live in your local Resolve install. The streamed originals are debayered through your chosen IDT exactly as they would on a local copy.

What happens when the editor sends a revised cut three days into the grade?

The editor pushes a new FCPXML or AAF, Sanbila Smart Relink updates the WebDAV mount to reflect the new timeline, and Resolve re-conforms automatically. Your existing grade applies to the matching clips. New clips in the revised cut appear ungraded for you to dial in.