Wishlist

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Roel Videler

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Wishlist

PostSun Jun 12, 2016 9:53 pm

Dear BMD,

I'm pleading as an aspiring colorist who still makes most of his money doing conform work to please consider the important roles of conformists and media managers. It's getting to a point where I'm just losing faith that it'll ever be 'okay'.

Right now, with 12.5 some really nice preset features were added. Some other things were not exactly improved. Among them, once a render is done and the session is re-opened.. The render list is empty. I'm sorry, but that render list is important. It tracks deliveries and can be used for future deliveries as well. Auto-removing is just ridiculous. I really like some of the new features but I'd rather work in a very old version than have my render list auto-cleared.

The Job list is also very un-satisfying in terms of how much information is given. As for the multi-project ability to render, that's very cool but I never got it to work. One time it actually did render the OTHER project that was queued but it actually neglected to render the active projects queue. It's also very hard and tedious to edit parameters. Even just opening the thing up and looking inside leads to an inevitable save dialog.

On the input side of the program i'm missing one major feature. Something that I would personally kill for, so name your president. I find it hard to accept that creating offline media, especially as it's stored frame by frame (isnt that extra taxing on the filesystem?) has to render in a captive mode instead of background. Also, once the media is generated, there is no icon or indication that it has in fact been done and clicking the generate button again actually makes it render again, even if it's already completed. Something there jut isn't finished.

Scopes in the edit page. Really big please!

And that forced, non-disableable four up display on certain edits that can only be worked around with the wipe needs to go. It has very little purpose and should be something you chose to work with, not something that's stuffed down your throat.

As for the editing interface, too few buttons and too many key combos.

And for file saving operations, there are already some hidden % codes but it would be really great if they were properly integrated in the export window. Especially when working with individual clips, using $REEL $TCIN $TCOUT etc and being able to match that with the media matching panel in prefs would be awesome and massively timesaving when transferring between facilities or archiving.

The media matching panel shouldn't be a preference, but a specific timeline setting. And it should show its results when importing an AAF/EDL because right now it can take a lot of time finding the right settings.

Saving should be faster. I dont know how, but both the disk database and postgres are slow. Snapshotting and saving in the background would be the most amazing thing possible, but that is probably very hard. But it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to save a 10 minute film with only one or two tracked shots and really not that many nodes and keyframes. I get the idea that some of the data is being stored in an entirely incorrect data form creating massive amounts of redundant metadata. As an addition to that, it would be great to allow the image store to be in a database, instead of a very cryptic disk folder.

And as for the color page, a simple button/keypress to switch layers WITHOUT changing timeline timecode. So no more jumping around. Way back when with telecines you wouldn't put this in either so why do it now?

And finally (not the end of my personal wishlist but it's a biggie that a lot of colorists are bugging about).. please for the love of user friendliness, allow users to map their own tangent (or whatever) panels. Why the heck not? It's absolutely wasteful that I can't use the panels in the edit page for conforming and can't adapt the buttons to my own grading style. It would be even more amazing to have that ability on the soft buttons on the big Resolve panels.

That's a lot of wishes, and I hope you know I love Resolve and the opportunities it posts for us wanna be graders. A lot of really awesome things were added in 12.5 that I wasn't expecting but am ecstatic to see but there are some fundamentals that need work to make the program smoother and appealing to both new users and the established colorists who are used to a certain level of performance and flexibility that I do see in other packages.

Highest regards,
Roel Videler
DaVinci Resolve Studio 17
HP Z640, Mini Panel, Windows 10 Pro x64, 2x Intel E5-26something, 64GB, Mini Monitor 4K, GTX1080Ti
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Alex Uzan

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Re: Wishlist

PostMon Jun 13, 2016 8:02 am

I agree with your wishlist.

But, are we sure that BMD read forum requests ?
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Peter Chamberlain

Blackmagic Design

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Re: Wishlist

PostTue Jun 14, 2016 12:20 am

Yes we do listen to the requests as this forum is a key feedback channel for Resolve users.
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Peter Chamberlain

Blackmagic Design

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Re: Wishlist

PostTue Jun 14, 2016 12:36 am

Some questions below.

Roel Videler wrote:Dear BMD,
Right now, with 12.5 some really nice preset features were added. Some other things were not exactly improved. Among them, once a render is done and the session is re-opened.. The render list is empty. I'm sorry, but that render list is important. It tracks deliveries and can be used for future deliveries as well. Auto-removing is just ridiculous. I really like some of the new features but I'd rather work in a very old version than have my render list auto-cleared.

The Job list is also very un-satisfying in terms of how much information is given. As for the multi-project ability to render, that's very cool but I never got it to work. One time it actually did render the OTHER project that was queued but it actually neglected to render the active projects queue. It's also very hard and tedious to edit parameters. Even just opening the thing up and looking inside leads to an inevitable save dialog.
Roel Videler



If you look in the three dots option menus in the render queue there is an option to "Show all projects'. You can also select to show more job details. Further, double click on the file name to see the project and timeline details. Finally, you can also select the 'JOB 1' text and label each job as you prefer.
Peter

Roel Videler wrote:On the input side of the program i'm missing one major feature. Something that I would personally kill for, so name your president. I find it hard to accept that creating offline media, especially as it's stored frame by frame (isnt that extra taxing on the filesystem?) has to render in a captive mode instead of background. Also, once the media is generated, there is no icon or indication that it has in fact been done and clicking the generate button again actually makes it render again, even if it's already completed. Something there jut isn't finished.

Scopes in the edit page. Really big please!

And that forced, non-disableable four up display on certain edits that can only be worked around with the wipe needs to go. It has very little purpose and should be something you chose to work with, not something that's stuffed down your throat.
Roel Videler


We are looking at more background rendering/cache/optimisation and scopes.
Hold the shift key to disable the 4up display.
Peter

Roel Videler wrote:As for the editing interface, too few buttons and too many key combos.

And for file saving operations, there are already some hidden % codes but it would be really great if they were properly integrated in the export window. Especially when working with individual clips, using $REEL $TCIN $TCOUT etc and being able to match that with the media matching panel in prefs would be awesome and massively timesaving when transferring between facilities or archiving.

The media matching panel shouldn't be a preference, but a specific timeline setting. And it should show its results when importing an AAF/EDL because right now it can take a lot of time finding the right settings.
Roel Videler


Please describe the media matching panel as we dont have anything called that so your description is not clear.
Peter

Roel Videler wrote:Saving should be faster. I dont know how, but both the disk database and postgres are slow. Snapshotting and saving in the background would be the most amazing thing possible, but that is probably very hard. But it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to save a 10 minute film with only one or two tracked shots and really not that many nodes and keyframes. I get the idea that some of the data is being stored in an entirely incorrect data form creating massive amounts of redundant metadata. As an addition to that, it would be great to allow the image store to be in a database, instead of a very cryptic disk folder.
Roel Videler


The PostGres storing operations are significantly faster in v12.5 compared to v12.3 and these improvements will be rolled into Disk Database when we are confident that no data will be lost in the transition.
Peter
DaVinci Resolve Product Manager
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waltervolpatto

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Re: Wishlist

PostTue Jun 14, 2016 12:51 pm

for the delivery page, my WIBNI is the ability to make a job and export the job as text file for later or for loading that in a different machine. as for the OP, we CANNOT afford to lose jobs once rendered because we need to do multiple exports with exactly the same configuration and an array of secondary exports where the difference is minimal but it change just a path, a file format and/or a name.

there is nothing more frustrating than the need to open a older export at 3am to do a pickup just to find out that has been cleared and we have to scramble to rebuild the exact configuration for export/name/filetype/timeline/path and so on.
W10-19043.1645- Supermicro MB C9X299-PGF - RAM 128GB CPU i9-10980XE 16c 4.3GHz (Oc) Water cooled
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Roel Videler

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Re: Wishlist

PostTue Jun 14, 2016 1:32 pm

Hi Peter,

Thanks for taking the time to listen to me/us! It means a lot and I hope you find our feedback useful and don't mistake my criticism for anything less than admiration. If I didn't care for your product I'd just remain silent and grumble at the screen. Okay sometimes I do that, but that's just my personality.

I'll try my best to be concise.

Peter Chamberlain wrote:
Roel Videler wrote:Dear BMD, rant rant rant empty job list rant rant


If you look in the three dots option menus in the render queue there is an option to "Show all projects'. You can also select to show more job details. Further, double click on the file name to see the project and timeline details. Finally, you can also select the 'JOB 1' text and label each job as you prefer.
Peter


Thank you! That expanding of the job list I didn't know about. I'm missing 3 bits of information, namely the timeline, in point and out point. I did notice being able to name the jobs which is a great feature, so thanks for that. My main issue was with the list auto-clearing though, al Walter also pointed out:

waltervolpatto wrote: as for the OP, we CANNOT afford to lose jobs once rendered because we need to do multiple exports with exactly the same configuration and an array of secondary exports where the difference is minimal but it change just a path, a file format and/or a name.

Personally, I found this new feature at a very very bad time after a long day and needing to pick up my kid. This happens, but it makes you grind your teeth.

Peter Chamberlain wrote:Hold the shift key to disable the 4up display.

You sir are my hero. This edit function is now one of the best things since sliced bread. I mean since hamburgers, sliced bread kinda sucks.

Peter Chamberlain wrote:Please describe the media matching panel as we dont have anything called that so your description is not clear.

There once was a panel.. Nevermind. I meant the section under Master Project Settings called Conform Options. Sorry for not being clear. What they really appear to be is (re-)linking options and might not be the same for every EDL/AAF/XML in the project, therefore not project but timeline bound. Having this configurable at import and having a display kind of like the ColorTrace™ would be beyond the scope of awesome.

waltervolpatto wrote:for the delivery page, my WIBNI is the ability to make a job and export the job as text file for later or for loading that in a different machine.


I like that idea very much, in text or XML. Some of us might also have production portals and that would allow for automated generation of the proper export path/versioning/render settings for specified deliverables. The idea is making me giddy. God i'm a nerd.

While I have you (ha, sorry) I also have a few more findings. One is that there's a lot of timecodes on screen in Resolve, in any page. Most users have gone to 2.5K or 4K screens as GUI by now so saving a little screen reel estate is less of an issue. That said I'd really like it if there were identifying marks next to the timecodes on screen, be it words, abbreviations or even icons.

In the retime controls, why can't I enter a new speed manually? The presets seem a little random, besides being logical steps, but I run into odd numbers from editors and it's a bit of a pain having to solve that with the tools at hand.

And here's an actual bug: say you have a clip, cut it and re-time it at any speed (i'm using 110% in my test) then it will shift one frame in the starting time, creating a stuck frame that you manually need to fix instead of the frame that new clip used to start with. If this isn't clear I can probably make a some screenshots if you like.

Again, thanks for your time!
DaVinci Resolve Studio 17
HP Z640, Mini Panel, Windows 10 Pro x64, 2x Intel E5-26something, 64GB, Mini Monitor 4K, GTX1080Ti
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Jean Claude

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Re: Wishlist

PostTue Jun 14, 2016 2:03 pm

waltervolpatto wrote:for the delivery page, my WIBNI is the ability to make a job and export the job as text file for later or for loading that in a different machine...


+1
(or same machine.... :D )
"Saying it is good, but doing it is better! "
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