Blackmagic Forum

Copying grades and nodes in the Color page is now focus-based.

How exactly does this work now?

In the node graph, you can select and copy a node grade to paste to another node in the same or different clip.
In the thumbnails view, you can select and copy a clip grade to paste on another clip thumbnail.

I must be missing something because when I try to copy/paste via the Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut, it's still copying the whole grade, not the individual node.

Working here in Studio 17b8 for Windows.

Shrinivas Ramani wrote:In the node graph, you can select and copy a node grade to paste to another node in the same or different clip.
In the thumbnails view, you can select and copy a clip grade to paste on another clip thumbnail.

Nice! Thank you BM (and Shrinivas)

OK I figured it out... I have to physically click on the node in the clip, otherwise it'll try to copy the whole grade.

Not a fan to be honest. Makes things much less efficient when trying to copy a single node in my opinion.

Something that was a simple Ctrl-C, "Up/Down", Ctrl-V is now...

"Position & Click Mouse on Node", Ctrl-C, "Up/Down", "Position & Click Mouse on Other Node", Ctrl-V

There were already a few ways of copying the whole grade structure across... including the "Apply Grade" feature.

Can we revert to the original behavior, or at least provide a preferences toggle to revert this?

RikshaDriver wrote:I have to physically click on the node in the clip

Well...yeah. You have to select something before you Copy it. That's SOP for everything you do on a computer.

Jim Simon wrote:Well...yeah. You have to select something before you Copy it. That's SOP for everything you do on a computer.

You've completely missed the point.

In Resolve, the last selected node for each individual clip is always remembered. It defaults to the first one otherwise.

In previous versions of Resolve, one could simply do a quick copy and paste via Keyboard and Resolve would ONLY copy the individual node based on whichever one was highlighted. There was no need for all the extra effort of "focusing" on a node to copy it - that is focusing by clicking on it, even if it may have already been highlighted.

THAT workflow was far more efficient than what is now default behavior.

Haven't tested it, but if they kept the logic of Beta 7 the behaviour you want should be avaialble if you change the drop down menu on the keyframes panel from ALL to color. At least that was the workaround after the change of the behaviour was introduced in Beta 7.

Switching that keyframe toggle from all to colour doesn't seem to hold now. I have to keep toggling it off and on again.

I agree this is a step backwards. It was already super simple to copy an entire grade and super simple to copy a single node. Now, copying a single node is more cumbersome and much less intuitive.

Now there's like 8 different ways to copy the entire grade. And one very specific and confusing way to copy a single node.

A copy paste will copy the highlighted node, but only sometimes. It wont copy the highlighted node if the node was highlighted automatically when switching to the clip but instead, once it's already been highlighted you must click on it again to highlight it for the purpose of copy/paste other wise if you try you will overwrite the entire node tree... great. Meanwhile to copy the entire grade you can middle click a clip, ctrl-c/ctrl-v on the thumbnails, right click and apply grade, use the scroll mode on the advanced panel, use the copy grade 1/2 shots prior shortcut, save to and apply from gallery with shortcuts... how many more am I missing?

Do we really need ANOTHER way to copy the whole grade? And at the expense of making copying a single node more difficult?

This "feature" just needs to go I think. I'm not sure how this is a better way of working for anyone.

You are right, I just tested it, it does seem that changing to color like in Beta 7 does not work like that anymore. But I did notice when using the mini panel, it will work fine when you are copying a node, use the mini panel to toggle though the clips and then hit the paste button on the panel, it will still only paste the node grade. Only when you use the mouse and click the thumbnail to select a specific clip the paste button on the panel will paste the whole grade.

I have to agree all in all this additional method of copying a grade from one clip to another seems overkill and it does make it more confusing when you just want to copy a single node grade and leads to scenarios where you could accidentally copy a whole clip grade.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" rings more than true in this case. These type of changes are especially risky as they do not have any visual representation in the GUI so the user cannot anticipate what will happen. Now we have to be mindful if we just clikced the thumbnail before or if we clicked the node itself.

I was happily thanking BMD in the other thread about this change that they found a reasonable way to implement this after the desaster in B7. But come to think of it, there's still no real benefit to this whole change compared to how it was before B7. It's a bit less annoying in B8, true, but still can confuse the users or lead to accidental results. And I definitel see the potential for problems on high volume short deadline projects where a fast workflow is key. These small things can add up to a lot of time wasted on making sure to be in the correct state before pasting data.

Would be great to have an official statement from BMD what they are trying to accomplish with this change. Would be much easier to give constructive feedback on this if we would know why they changed it in the first place.

Yes, I‘d like the behavior to be reversed as it was in v16. This doesn‘t make sense and people are very confused. I teach on the side and my students are all very confused now, because they often accidentily copy the whole grade and don‘t notice it right away because they use a fixed node tree..

It would be great if the toggle in the settings just lets us reverse it how it hass been. I get that for people who don‘t use / have a middle mouse button it was a bit cumbersome copying grades from one shot to another..
another option would be a separate key combination like alt+c/v for copying whole grades.

Thx BMD for trying to improve the software constantly at a fast pace. This time I think, it‘s breaking more then it helps..

RikshaDriver wrote:

Jim Simon wrote:Well...yeah. You have to select something before you Copy it. That's SOP for everything you do on a computer.

You've completely missed the point.

In Resolve, the last selected node for each individual clip is always remembered. It defaults to the first one otherwise.

In previous versions of Resolve, one could simply do a quick copy and paste via Keyboard and Resolve would ONLY copy the individual node based on whichever one was highlighted. There was no need for all the extra effort of "focusing" on a node to copy it - that is focusing by clicking on it, even if it may have already been highlighted.

THAT workflow was far more efficient than what is now default behavior.

+1

RikshaDriver wrote:There was no need for all the extra effort of "focusing" on a node to copy it...

Ahhh, now I'm following.

Now that Copy/Paste shortcuts also work on clips, you will have to click the node to change selection.

But...I'm not sure there's any other way to do things while keeping the new Copy/Paste ability.

RikshaDriver wrote:OK I figured it out... I have to physically click on the node in the clip, otherwise it'll try to copy the whole grade.

The behavior may still not be what people want, but you are not understanding what "Focus" is. Go to Preferences > User > UI Settings and check the Show Focus Indicators In The User Interface. You will now see a red line at the top of the window that has focus. Focus is a window-specific concept, not node-specific.

Now repeat your experiment -- without clicking on a node -- and note that when you do your copy or paste the node tree window does not have focus. So you get behavior you don't want.

To get the results you expect, you need to put the focus in the node tree window, and the easiest way to do that is to click -- but you don't have to click on a node, just click on the background and you'll see the red line appear in the window. Now when you copy or paste, it only affects a node, not the entire tree. (By clicking on a node you were shifting focus to the node tree window as a side effect.)

I'm not sure if there's a quicker/easier way to shift focus to the node tree window. If not, it's still more awkward than it was, so it still needs more work perhaps. (It's a beta.) But it is working correctly with focus.

This is similar to the case where people see that up-arrow in an Inspector in Fusion doesn't increment the number. They've clicked in the timeline to change location in time and taken the focus off of the Inspector. I know this burned me a couple of times. Still not sure if they need to make certain actions not change focus or not.

They talk about Focus on page 82 of the v16 manual. I can't find a quick way to switch focus except by some sort of click.

Nice clarification, Wayne.

Thanks for the elaboration Wayne.

Whether it's a click on the node or within the node window, the requirement is ultimately the same... that being the click registered by the user to trigger focus on the node/node tree.

A step backwards in UI efficiencies to be honest. There were already a few different ways to copy whole grades across.


On a side note, it seems the first click at the source level is not required. It's actually the node/node tree click on the destination clip that will trigger the delineation between whether the whole grade is copied or just the node.