ok so this started as a simple thing. i just wanted a decent workflow for going from raw drone footage to finished video without it taking me an entire weekend. but somewhere along the way i now have like three different color grading LUTs i switch between depending on mood, i export proxy files in resolve then roundtrip to premiere for the actual cut, then back to resolve for the final grade, and i have a whole folder system that made sense to me six months ago but now i cant find anything.

the actual videos are coming out pretty good i think, i do real estate stuff mostly with some personal travel projects on the side. but the process feels bloated. wondering if anyone has a streamlined thing going that doesnt sacrifice quality. i keep seeing people talk about just staying entirely in resolve but ive never been able to make my brain like it for cutting, premiere just feels more natural for that part

honestly staying in resolve all the way through is one of those things that sounds painful at first but after a few projects it clicks. the cut page is actually really good for rough assembly, like way faster than people expect. i resisted for ages and now i would never go back to the roundtrip thing, just too many points of failure especially when you're dealing with log footage and proxies across two applications.

that said if premiere genuinely works better for your brain on the edit side, there's nothing wrong with the roundtrip as long as your project setup is solid from the start. your folder chaos sounds like a separate problem from your actual workflow lol

i do real estate too and i just use resolve for everything, keeps it simple. for the folder thing i literally just have year/month/client and then raw, export, project inside each one. took me way too long to figure out that simple was better. also for real estate specifically you probably dont need super complex grades anyway, clean and natural usually wins with clients over cinematic moody stuff