Can I change an existing Timeline's Frame Rate?

Hello,

I am running DaVinci Resolve v14.3.0.014 on an iMac OS X El Capitan v10.11.6.

I have been scanning some 16mm home movies on the Cintel Scanner, which come up great. However, I often have to alter the Timeline Frame Rate from 24 to 16 after having done some extensive editing.

The problem I'm encountering is that the option to change the Timeline Frame Rate is only available before there is content in the Project. The dropbox becomes greyed out after I have a clip or timeline in the Medial Pool.

The only solution I have been able to come up with is to create another project, set the Timeline Frame Rate, import my scans, change their Frame Rate in clip attributes and then manually create an identical timeline to the one which is at a different frame rate.

This is okay if I have only done a simple edit, but increasingly it is becoming a very slow and unproductive process.

Does anyone have suggestions for how I can change the Frame Rate in an existing timeline, or perhaps how I can translate the edits automatically from one timeline into a different timeline (in a different project)?

Many thanks,

Ben

You can't. Planning your workflow is an important part of our job in any professional software.

What you could do is finishing your project in 24, export in a high-quality codec and then change the speed without pitch shift (which is possible now in DR 15).

That's a good suggestion. Thank you.

Does anyone have suggestions for how I can change the Frame Rate in an existing timeline, or perhaps how I can translate the edits automatically from one timeline into a different timeline (in a different project)?

Many thanks,

Ben

Hey Ben..

Might be a bit annoying/cumbersome..
But, you could potentially export an XML/AAF (or even EDL is simple enough)
Bring it into Premiere Pro.. reconstruct whatever didn't come in correctly (there's always something..) .
In PP you have much more freedom to play around with your sequence time base.
You can then re-send it to Resolve via XML...

I am not a fan of how certain parameters like resolution and frame rate, color management, etc. are set globally per project and not locally per timeline.

Ideally, timelines should inherit these parameters from the project, but they should be editable. I get it why the frame rate is locked off, but it doesn't have to be that way.

+1

I am not a fan of how certain parameters like resolution and frame rate, color management, etc. are set globally per project and not locally per timeline.

Ideally, timelines should inherit these parameters from the project, but they should be editable. I get it why the frame rate is locked off, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Hey Igor.

As a colorist/On-Line editor using Resolve for many years this never once came in the way or bothered me.

As an editor who used (and teaches) other NLE's extensively for past 20 yrs I totally agree this is somewhat crippling and should be eventually addressed.

On a side note... Most popular NLE's limit timebase in one way or another (Resolve is the worst). Only Premiere Pro gives full freedom in that aspect.

**There are many ways to work with color management... What were you trying to do that limited you?

Changing timeline frame rate is very problematic and causes huge problems as it= fps conversion for proper end result. This is huge thing and currently nothing can offer 100% reliable fps conversion from any to any fps.
Premiere fps change is good only when you made mistake (so your assets are eg. 24p but you made 25p project and now want to change to 24p) or working with same time base, eg. 25p/50p/50i. In other cases you end up with jerky end masters (with dropped or repeated frames) or full of motion interpolation artefacts.

Seconded.
My students tended to make such mistakes over and over when we were still using Premiere and then were shocked by the bad motion quality.

Changing an existing timeline to a different frame rate is a dubious affair, but you should at least be able to have multiple timelines with differing frame rates in the same project, and be able to copy and paste between them (rounding in/out points). That should satisfy most workflows while deterring the idea of changing a finished edit to a different frame rate after-the-fact.

Also, the amount of Hollywood blockbusters where I've spotted N-in-N frame dropping (postproduction undercranking without frame interpolation) is frightening. Resolve allows you to drop mismatching footage into any timeline, as well as change speed without motion flow, so I don't think that argument really holds up to much scrutiny.

I am not a fan of how certain parameters like resolution and frame rate, color management, etc. are set globally per project and not locally per timeline.

Ideally, timelines should inherit these parameters from the project, but they should be editable. I get it why the frame rate is locked off, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Hey Igor.

As a colorist/On-Line editor using Resolve for many years this never once came in the way or bothered me.

As an editor who used (and teaches) other NLE's extensively for past 20 yrs I totally agree this is somewhat crippling and should be eventually addressed.

On a side note... Most popular NLE's limit timebase in one way or another (Resolve is the worst). Only Premiere Pro gives full freedom in that aspect.

**There are many ways to work with color management... What were you trying to do that limited you?

I often deliver multiple color spaces from the same project. This is easy enough to achieve within the current architecture. But it greatly increases the margin of error if you forget to put the color space back where it needs to be for your viewing or the next output. If Timelines or render presets had output color transforms decoupled from what is now called output color space, that would be the best. You'd have the viewing color space which send the video out to the display and output color space which sets the transform for the file outputs.

The timebase lock is a pain because sometimes I start a project on let's say 24 and then later find out that it's really supposed to be 23.976. Sure this can communicated with clients better. But at my pace that's frequently not an option. I just need to start working, can't wait for clients to get back.

Sent from my S60 using Tapatalk

Maybe someday this will all be a legacy thing and the whole Resolve picture engine will be torn down and rebuilt, but... (killing every archived project that we have ever saved)...

Color grading software (as opposed to non-linear editors) were originally built to accommodate sequential-file media streams (.dpx, .cin, .tga ...), which do not inherently have a frame rate. The operator had to tell the software how many frames per second. This mirrors the celluloid frame paradigm, where a frame of film does not have a fixed frame rate. Its just a frame. How fast it goes through the camera/projector -- your call. On the one hand, this is kind of freeing, but with Quicktime movies and other time-referenced media, yes, it's kind of a pain. Maybe opening up to media containers like that was not that great an idea? Now we have to contend with a codec list that extends beyond the horizon, all those crazy segmented or interlaced dominances, fractional frame rates... all so much simpler before then.

jPo, CSI

You have exactly same ability for "videos". This is what Video Frame Rate in clip properties does- assumes different framerate, so file is played at different speed. Video at the end is also a set of frames and it can be played at different fps same as image sequence.
This is still very different to frame rate conversion.

Also, the amount of Hollywood blockbusters where I've spotted N-in-N frame dropping (postproduction undercranking without frame interpolation) is frightening. Resolve allows you to drop mismatching footage into any timeline, as well as change speed without motion flow, so I don't think that argument really holds up to much scrutiny.

Yes and this already causes lots of issues. People will start changing global fps and create total crap. I can guarantee you 1000s of questions- "why my footage looks bad". For anyone who knows consequences it will be about useless. There could be some exceptions like 24p to 25p etc. (with speed change). It can be implemented and useful in some cases, but you really need to be aware of possible consequences.

[James Little]

Hi All,

the true solution to this is to refer to the 'FPS' field under the 'Capture Info' (please see the manual). This sets the film rate of the film. As such, for the Audio reader it will automatically now start to convert audio at 48kHz at the FPS rate. This will also ensure that you need NOT do anything to timeline settings when processing the file, Resolve automatically does the timecode conversions etc.. (without interpolation and the risk of dropped frames) to match this 'FPS' value.

Please ensure you use it, it's a very important setting for the Scanner.

Hi BMD DR Team/fellow users,

Clearly many people cringe in DR when they find they created a project->timeline and need to change the frame rate due to human error or a technical request. I highlight this "frame rate change" problem is much more wide scale and costing use too much time and grief, but here is a suggestion:

THE PROBLEM:
In today's post environment not only do we use more mixed frame rate source clips but we are more frequently changing source and timeline frame rates (Reinterpret/Retime) all throughout our workflow. We also reuse/copy/import edit sequences/EDL's from older projects/timelines or other Edit systems to new timelines, possible with different frame rates - BUT frequently the In/Out edit points go bad cause they are referenced as HH:MM:SS.FF either from the start of each clip or timeline or as embedded timecode expecting frame rates do not change ! We change frame rates and HH:MM:SS.FF becomes useless. Look what happens to the HH:MM:SS.FF time of a clip's In point if we Reinterpret it from 29.97 to 23.976

I appreciate clips and timelines will ripple shorter or longer if we change clip/timeline frame rates, but the clips start and end frame should be the correct image we intended !
I appreciate we humans use HH:HH:MM.FF visual references and probably want to remain this way, but we need to be aware this is meaningless if frame rates change, even using embedded timecode.

A SOLUTION TO CONSIDER:
internally use "absolute number of frames" to reference In/Out points/duration, ie: edit IN point is the number of frames from the start of the clip or timeline. OUT point is calculated from the edit duration, again actual number of frames for the duration - frame rate agnostic ! Since we still love our HH:MM:SS.FF visual standard, let GUI's mouseover to reveal the actual internal number of frames these frame rate relative HH:MM:SS.FF references. Interestingly, actual frame numbers is more standardised in the "? frame rate" graphics world - yeah Fusion !

J.

Here is a tip to change the framerate afterwards :

Delete every media including timeline from the project.
Change framerate of the timline.
Click edit/undo (to get all media back)

Create a new timeline, copy paste timeline 1 to timeline 2

Done

This is all going away in V16.

But in the meantime, I have been able to write directly to the database and hack the framerate. It works, but there are some weird things with it. They don't seem to affect the quality of the output. I abandoned spending any more time on figuring out how to do this right since V16 was announced.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Here is a tip to change the framerate afterwards :

Delete every media including timeline from the project.
Change framerate of the timline.
Click edit/undo (to get all media back)

Create a new timeline, copy paste timeline 1 to timeline 2

Done

We strongly advise against using this method... - as we have several times in the past. It can mess up a lot of internal calculations and lead to undefined behavior.

As Igor observes in the next post, v16 supports per-timeline properties (including resolution and framerate) in a formal manner.

Yes, but v16 still doesn't allow to change fps in existing timeline.
Most elegant way is probably through nested timeline.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

You can change the frame-rate for an empty timeline.
You can also paste clips across timelines with different frame rates.

Both actions are undoable.

Yes, for an empty one, which is meaningless as no work has been done yet. At this point it's the same as creating new timeline with desired fps.
Problem is for existing timeline when all editing is already done for almost done.

In case of described problem in original post nested timeline is most likely best solution.

Regardless of anything changing timeline fps has huge consequences, which some people don't understand.
It's easy for cases when you can drop/repeat frames (eg. 25p vs 50p etc.), but not in case where fps has different time base (eg. 25p vs. 30p etc.)

I would like to see Resolve having implemented fps change for easy cases, and for things like 24p <->25p allow to do it in export panel (like it's now for 23.976 vs 24). You can add few standard ways (including eg. 25p to 59.94i). It would help a lot for possible delivery cases.

Yes, one would expect that if you copy/paste the cut from a 60 fps timeline to a 30 fps timeline, the cut points would stay intact, but the OP reports teh cut points get messed up...an attempt to copy/paste from/to timelines whose frame rates are not integer multiples of one another should be met with a requester warning you that motion problems may occur.