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.
Why a fast NVMe is not the answer on BRAW
BRAW decodes well on a modern GPU, but it still reads from disk. With three cameras rolling 8K at 50 fps for a music video, you walk out with eight to ten terabytes of BRAW in a single day. Stack two NVMe drives in a RAID 0 enclosure and you still have to consolidate, label, sync and back up. The Pocket 6K Pro and the URSA Cine 12K push the bottleneck even further: the bit budget makes a single take exceed the read throughput of a USB 4 enclosure. The conventional fix is to generate optimised media or DNxHR proxies inside Resolve, which doubles the footprint and ties the project to one suite. As soon as the colourist takes the project home, the optimised media has to be regenerated.
BRAW on R2, ProRes Proxy on your SSD
Sanbila uploads the BRAW files straight from the camera card or the offload drive. SHA-256 deduplication catches the case where two cameras shared the same scene through a SmallHD link. On the client side, Resolve sees a 1080p ProRes Proxy at roughly 30 GB per hour, generated once, mounted into a Sanbila virtual folder through symlinks that Resolve reads as if they were native files. The offline cut runs full-rate on a MacBook Pro M2 or a Windows laptop with an RTX 3060. When the colourist is ready to grade, Smart Relink switches each clip used in the timeline back to stream mode and Resolve reads the BRAW debayer chain straight from R2 over WebDAV. Color Science Gen 5, gamut and gamma metadata are preserved end to end because the bytes on R2 are the same bytes the camera wrote.
Blackmagic RAW · DaVinci Resolve
For Blackmagic RAW in DaVinci Resolve, the recommended Sanbila preset is 1080p ProRes Proxy in .mov. ProRes decodes at full rate on Apple Silicon and on Windows under Resolve 19. The proxy stays around 30 GB per hour, fits a 1 TB laptop SSD for a long-form project, and the relink back to BRAW at grading time hands the original sensor data to the Color page debayer node. If your laptop is tight on space, the 720p variant is half the size and still plays cleanly in offline mode.
Grading on the original BRAW, no download
Sanbila reads the FCPXML or Resolve project export and identifies every clip that lands on the timeline. Smart Relink switches only those clips to stream mode, mounts the WebDAV volume, and rewrites the symlinks in the virtual folder to point at the BRAW originals on R2. The Color page debayer node reads the raw bytes on demand, applies your Color Science Gen 5 settings, and writes the export from Resolve without ever pulling the BRAW down to disk. After the export the WebDAV mount unmounts cleanly and the proxy folder stays ready for the next round of notes.
Five steps from card to deliverable
- 1
Mount the camera card or the offload drive. Sanbila scans the folder, hashes every .braw file and uploads to R2 in parallel using multipart uploads for clips above 100 MB.
- 2
Open the Sanbila virtual folder for the project. The 1080p ProRes Proxy files are already generated on your SSD and linked through symlinks that Resolve treats as local files.
- 3
Cut, refine and lock the picture in Resolve. The offline edit runs at full rate on a MacBook Pro M2 or a Windows laptop with an RTX 3060.
- 4
Export the timeline as FCPXML and run Sanbila Smart Relink. Used clips switch to stream mode, the WebDAV volume mounts and Resolve sees the BRAW originals at full resolution.
- 5
Grade and export from Resolve. The Color page debayer runs on the original BRAW streamed from R2. Nothing lands on the SSD permanently and the project archives back to the cloud.
Sanbila by the numbers
Real specs from the live Sanbila product, not marketing claims.
Common questions about BRAW in DaVinci Resolve
Does Sanbila preserve Blackmagic Color Science Gen 5 metadata?
Yes. The BRAW bytes uploaded to R2 are the same bytes the camera wrote, including the embedded RMD-equivalent metadata that Color Science Gen 5 reads. When Resolve opens the original through WebDAV, ISO, white balance, gamma and gamut load identically to a local mount.
Can I grade a music video shot on three URSA Cine 12K bodies in one project?
Yes. Each camera body uploads independently and Sanbila merges them in the virtual folder. Resolve sees the three cameras as one media pool. The multicam clip uses the proxies during sync editing and switches to the BRAW originals at the grade.
What happens if the colourist works from a hotel with shaky Wi-Fi?
Sanbila separates a 401 from a network drop and keeps the WebDAV mount alive across short outages. The block-level cache holds the last 4 MB blocks read, so a brief slowdown rarely interrupts playback. If the connection is truly dead, the colourist falls back to the offline proxies for the affected clips and re-grades on stream when connectivity returns.
Does the 1080p proxy lose the BRAW look the colourist relies on?
The proxy is for cutting and pacing decisions, not grading judgment. The proxy is a flat 1080p ProRes representation. The colourist always works from the BRAW originals through stream mode, so the look you ship at delivery comes straight from the camera sensor.
How does Sanbila handle multiple takes that share the same BRAW filename across cards?
The SHA-256 hash is computed per file before upload. Two takes with the same filename but different bytes coexist as distinct files in the virtual folder. Two takes with identical bytes are deduplicated to one upload, which saves storage on a multi-camera shoot where ProRes audio scratch tracks repeat.
Related 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.
ProRes 422 workflow in Premiere Pro
ProRes 422 is the codec broadcast and corporate teams pick when they need a clean intermediate without going RAW. A Sony FX6 in UHD at 25p writes around 250 GB per hour at ProRes 422 HQ. Premiere Pro reads ProRes natively on macOS and Windows, but the disk fills fast. Sanbila stores the originals on Cloudflare R2, generates a lighter proxy on your machine and lets Premiere stream the ProRes back for the final export.
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.