Vub Upgrades - Offline to Online

Please note, the ability to upgrade a vub is currently not available. At the time of writing (2025-03-18) if you want a vub at either standard or professional you need to create a new shot in DeepEditor.

Follow this guide to understand the process of taking your draft vub in the offline to a professional vub in the online.

A Professional Quality Vub is one of the two tiers of online quality media DeepEditor is able to create. Professional vubs are suited for broadcast and commercial projects. Supported codecs include DNxHR (up to HQ 10bt) and ProRes (up to 422 HQ 10bt). 

A few things to cover before diving in...

• You have an understanding of DeepEditor, the visual dubbing process and you’ve created a vub at draft quality.

• You understand the difference between offline and online editing.

• You know the difference between proxy and raw media and their characteristics.

• You have a Professional token.

Step One - Draft Vubs in the Offline Edit

Draft quality vubs are designed to prove out the idea of a vub. In the offline edit you’ve identified the source and driving data, they have uploaded to DeepEditor, you’ve seen the vub in the wider context of your timeline and you are happy with the output (maybe you’ve refined the draft just to help sell the idea of what you want to achieve)

You and the production team have agreed the vub has solved the problem or enhanced the narrative and you want it to feature in the picture locked version of your offline edit, and thus eventually the online edit and the finished production that will be seen by the audience.

As an example the draft source file name would be: demo01_sc01_0010_john_source_proxy_DNxHR_SQ_1920x1080_2398_rec709.mov

Step Two - Conform and Online Res Media Processing

The offline edit has locked and you now need to upgrade your draft vub to match the requirements of the online edit.

As you leave the offline edit and head into the online, the conform is where you’ll gain access to the raw camera media. It is likely you have left Avid and you are now working in DaVinci Resolve. Once you have conformed your sequence and you are accessing the raw files, you can create an online version of your source media.

Similar to when you were processing your media in the draft phase of your vub, you need to export out your source file at the specifications of your online edit, resolution, frame-rate and colourspace should all be considered.

As an example the original source file name would be:  demo01_sc01_0010_john_source_original_DNxHR_HQ_3840x2160_2398_rec2020.mov

Step Three - Online Res Media and DeepEditor

As mentioned at the top of the article, the ability to upgrade a draft vub to another quality is currently not available. For this step we need to create a new shot in the DeepEditor project. 

Once the shot has been created you can follow the same process as when you were creating the draft vub. The new source file created in step two can be uploaded to the source drag/drop. Be sure to select the correct color space when uploading to DeepEditor.

For driving data you can use the same file from your draft (the duration and frame count should be the same in both draft and source versions) or perhaps there's a new driving data file (maybe the dialogue has been reviewed by the audio production team or the actor has recorded a new performance)

Once your source, driving data and training data* have uploaded to the media library, in the Generate Vub section when you select your vub quality settings, choose Professional. 

From here all the exports will match the resolution, frame-rate, colourspace and codec of your source (up to DNxHR HQ 10-bit or ProRes 422 HQ 10-bit). Please note the video file displayed to you during refinement will be a proxy version of your source media, but rest assured all your exports will be at your online resolution.

*Step Four (Optional) - Training Data 

When creating your new shot with the online resolution media, you will notice in the media library there is the option to add training data. Here is a quick run through of what training data is, and how it can be utilised.

Draft vubs are created with offline res media with just the frames from the source, so you may have encountered artefacts in your draft vub, particularly with the teeth, tongue, lips or skin texture. 

With training data, you can add additional video files of the same actor, in the same makeup and lighting conditions. We find good training data comes from earlier or later in the take or from other shots in the same scene. Take a look in your timeline and the rushes to see if you can grab some training data.

There is not an exact formula for how much training data needs to be uploaded, but here is some guidance.

Let's say your source is 150 frames in duration, an additional 200-300 frames of the character talking will be sufficient. You do not need to match the frame count of you source, you can upload multiple training files that are shorter or longer than your source. 

More details can be found in the Training Data section of our Knowledge Base.