Purpose of multiple Timelines?

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litote

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Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 4:56 pm

What is the purpose of creating separate Timelines in a project?

Is it simply for conveniently organizing sequences of clips in to one scene to work on, one at a time, with all these scenes to be combined at the end?

If so, what is the method used for combining them all together?
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Gary Hango

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 5:57 pm

You may also want to make several versions of a scene for client comparison.
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Tony Hailstone

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 7:32 pm

Multiple timelines extremely useful. Can be used for:
1. Alternative versions of an edit
2. Overseeing all footage at once
3. Creating new cuts with same material (e.g a long form edit and a highlights video)
4. Working on separate scenes/parts of the day
5. Experimenting

Depending on how you are using them, if you need to combine you should just be able to drop one timeline directly into another.
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mikedkelly

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 8:54 pm

I'm not sure if this is a recommended workflow, but I use them as "sub-projects." For example, in the e-learning that I produce, I have a 1-minute video intro for each of my 10 training sections, which each intro having its own video and audio clips. Instead of making a separate project for each video, I created a single project called Intro Videos, and then built each one in their own timeline, with a bin that holds each set of clips and the corresponding timeline. Now that I am more comfortable with delivering from in/out points, I may switch to using a single timeline and rendering the section for each individual intro. I'm new to video editing in general, but it worked nicely for me at the time.

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mbaksa

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostMon Jan 21, 2019 8:55 pm

In many projects it is better to divide the project into multiple timelines, and then assemble them into final (output) timeline. It is better from an organizational standpoint, but also enables you to easily manage larger project, especially if you have issues with exporting video, as Resolve sometimes has - you could export individual timelines when you are done with them, and work only on those timelines that you haven't finish yet.

Personally, most of the time i would have an intro timeline, main timeline, outro timeline, and other timelines (compound and Fusion clips - which are essentially another timelines).

Multiple timelines are a necessity when doing multicam, especially if you want to color correct all videos from the same camera - it is better to do that on a compound clip (and doing that you have another timeline).
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Villane

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostMon Mar 11, 2019 6:39 am

Hi!

I've been using multiple timelines for my short film. The story is spread over 3 roughly even days, so I have timelines for "Day1", "Day2" and "Day3". I just went over all of these and added maybe a hundred markers and subtitles. Now I'm facing an issue on how to continue while keeping my markers and subtitles and having full movie rendering capability:

I had a "master" timeline where I inserted Day1-Day2-Day3 in sequence. But now I discovered it doesn't play subtitles when I play that timeline. So to have the subs, I should combine them into a single timeline? But now how do I do that while keeping my markers from the DayX timelines?
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Marc Wielage

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostTue Mar 12, 2019 3:13 am

Traditionally, motion pictures (particularly long films with lots of changes) use "reels" that date back to motion picture film in ancient times. (You know, like 10-15 years ago.)

I like to break down features into roughly 20-minute reels, finding a cut point on a scene change or a vastly-different shot -- say, a day scene immediately after a night scene -- so it's a completely different mood, with color that has nothing to do with what we just saw.

The advantage is, if you have to make changes to that segment, you don't have to then ripple that change throughout all 2+ hours of the project. You can also jump ahead to finished reels while earlier reels are being reworked by the editor.

Resolve tends to run slower when you have (say) 2500 shots in one timeline with lots and lots of nodes, vs. only 500 shots in five different timelines. I find it's a lot easier to work that way, but then, I'm a traditional guy used to working this way with film. I also prefer the challenge of judging progress by the number of reels done in a day; I aim for at least one 20-minute reel (or more) per day if possible. If it's a TV show, it's usually about 42-44 minutes, and I'll try to get about 25-30 minutes done one day, the rest the second day, and then have the client come in for viewing and notes towards the end of the day, which takes about 2-3 hours.

When the project is finally locked, it's easy to create nested timelines and render the entire project out as a single file.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostTue Mar 12, 2019 12:42 pm

I use it to create different edits.

Filming a wedding, I might create a Short Film, Feature Film, Full Ceremony, Photo Session and others, all for the same project.
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Dave Shortman

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostTue Mar 12, 2019 1:37 pm

I use it for my holiday vids where I create version for me & family and a different one for YouTube where I don't want any footage where any of the family are identifiable, I start with the normal one, duplicate and then adapt the YouTube one from that.
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Alex Silva

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Re: Purpose of multiple Timelines?

PostWed Aug 03, 2022 9:44 am

Multiple timelines is one of the things i appreciate more about Resolve. I make a project - for example instructional videos - and all instructional videos related to a subject, local, etc live in that project. I don't need to have to make/open another project, i just change the tab.

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