Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolutions?

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Ellory Yu

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Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolutions?

PostFri Jul 30, 2021 9:54 pm

When using Resolve, I always break out sequences of related scenes into timelines and nesting them into what I call a "master" time line. This has not been a problem if all the timelines have the same timeline resolution. But what happens if I want to have the timelines that are to be nested in different resolution? Well, I could do that but when I nest them into the "master" timeline, they're format takes on the resolution of the master timeline's resolution. So what to do?

1. Render each timeline out and bring them into the master timeline as clips? That seem to work but it makes it a maintenance challenge and tedious to work with.

2. Make all nesting timelines the same resolution as the master and just crop each clips on the timeline to be that of the size of the resolution to work on, or use output blanking? Yes, it will work but inherently a wrong way to do.

3. Others? What other methods does the masters of Resolve can offer here?
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MLanghausen

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostFri Jul 30, 2021 10:07 pm

Nesting, for example, a 4K UHD Timeline into an HD Timeline does not turn the UHD Timeline into an HD Resolution timeline. The UHD Timeline just auto scales down according to your project scale settings.

The project scaling can be overridden in the inspector window. And you can pan/scan/resize as necessary using the inspector properties as well.
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Ellory Yu

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 5:55 am

MLanghausen wrote:Nesting, for example, a 4K UHD Timeline into an HD Timeline does not turn the UHD Timeline into an HD Resolution timeline. The UHD Timeline just auto scales down according to your project scale settings.

That's true. But I don't want to override the project settings. I want each timeline scaling to be based on the resolution of the timeline. For instance, if you are setting up timelines to have different resolutions to be displayed in a particular aspect ratio (for example 2.35:1 or 1.33:1) and nest it in a timeline that is HD, it scales it back to HD and so you don't get the black bars. Hence the problem. What I want is that when I render out the HD timeline with content that's a mixture of HD, then a 2.35:1 timeline, then a 1.33:1 timeline, and then back to HD content, the rendered video will play in HD, showing the HD content and no black bars; then when it hits the 2.35:1 timeline content, it will have horizontal black bars; then when it hits the 1.33:1 timeline, the content will have vertical black bars; then back to no black bars when it gets back to HD content. I hope that provides a visualization of what I'm trying to accomplish with this workflow.
MLanghausen wrote:The project scaling can be overridden in the inspector window. And you can pan/scan/resize as necessary using the inspector properties as well.

Yes I know. But that is not what I want to do. I want the timeline resolution to be size according to the aspect ratio for the timeline that will be later nested into another timeline of a different resolution and aspect ratio.
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MLanghausen

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 6:35 am

I can duplicate this behavior.
This seems wrong and a bug?
I was not able to get a nested timeline to use the scaling properties in the inspector.
They are ignored.
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Ellory Yu

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 6:43 am

MLanghausen wrote:I can duplicate this behavior.
This seems wrong and a bug?
I was not able to get a nested timeline to use the scaling properties in the inspector.
They are ignored.

Aha! I was able to do this in R16 but not in R17. I thought it could be a bug but I was not certain if I just got my workflow wrong. Thanks for checking it out MLanghausen. My workaround right now is to render each time line at its different resolution to some intermediary format (like Prores or Avid DNx), then bring them in as clips to the HD timeline. It is tedious but works for the project I am on right now. I hope it gets fix in the next version of 17.
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MLanghausen

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 6:46 am

Yeah, this is not how a nested timeline should behave. Hopefully they tag this as a bug report and fix it.

Update:
It looks to be respecting the nested timelines vertical resolution when the "Master Timeline" is set to "Scale Entire Image to Fit" instead of respecting the nested timelines horizontal resolution.

So it is basically doing a "Scale Full Frame with Crop"
However, when I set this as the scale settings of the master timeline it pops in on the image a little tighter and not "FullFrame"
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Jim Simon

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 2:02 pm

Ellory Yu wrote:3. Others? What other methods does the masters of Resolve can offer here?
Don't use nesting. I used to use it in Premiere Pro, but I found it unnecessary in Resolve.

And actually something of a hinderance when it comes to mixing in Fairlight.
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MLanghausen

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 2:24 pm

Jim Simon wrote:Don't use nesting. I used to use it in Premiere Pro, but I found it unnecessary in Resolve.


I disagree, there are plenty of reasons nesting is useful in any NLE. To say "don't use it" I would consider poor advice.

If a tool doesn't function as one would expect/anticipate, it should be noted and brought to the attention of the developers instead of avoided and ignored.


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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 2:41 pm

Nested timelines and nested timeline-like clips (Compound Clips, MultiCam Clips, Fusion Clips) have always been broken in Resolve with regards to multiple resolutions, and this has been raised many times before without, sadly, any improvement.

Here's a thread from last year (coincidentally, a year ago to the day) which summarises a number of other threads discussing the various problems: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=118817

Later in that thread a user claims to have a fix/workaround that may help in situations where one needs multiple output resolutions, eg for different deliverables. Not sure if that would help in the OP's case, but check the posts by Aaron Van Domelan in the thread linked above for more details.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Nested timelines. How with different timeline resolution

PostSat Jul 31, 2021 11:33 pm

MLanghausen wrote:If a tool doesn't function as one would expect/anticipate, it should be noted and brought to the attention of the developers instead of avoided and ignored.
I think both are sometimes warranted.

I think this is one of those times.
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