Blackmagic Forum

Looking at the USAGE column in the browser, seems even if it shows usage however many times, sometimes right clicking on the usage number doesn't show the Usage in the drop menu to check the time (s) it's used. Of course sometimes it does. Just not always. What's the trick to make it show the Usage in the drop menu whenever there IS Usage?

You have Display Scaling for your monitor set to 100%?

From user manual:

In List view, the Usage column does not automatically update to show how many times a particular clip has been used. However, you can manually update this metadata by right-clicking within the Media Pool and choosing Update Usage Data from the contextual menu that appears. Afterwards, each clip will display how many times it’s been used in this column. Clips that have not been used yet display an x.

Thanks

So what I've discovered is the "Usage" menu item only shows up when right-clicking a thumbnail in the Media window If the clip is used in the Timeline that is open and in front. If you're using stacked Timelines and the clip is being used on other Timelines in the stack but NOT the current Timeline tab. It doesn't show that it's being used.

It should show all Timelines the clip is used in or at least have a preference that allows this.

Recently, "Update Usage Data" from the contextual menu has stopped appearing. When I need to find out the current occurrence, I have to restart DaVinci.

For a system that is built around a database, Resolve sure seems to struggle to display information that should be pretty trivial to store and retrieve. It just can't seem to track clip usage in any sort of reliable way unless the timeline is open, which makes the metric pretty much useless since it cannot be relied upon.

Resolve 17.2.2 updates Clip Usage automatically so there is no update option anymore.
On my system Clip Usage shows the total number of times the clip is used in the Project across all timelines. It does take a few seconds to update. Clip usage shows video and audio as seperate instances, so a combined video/audio clip will show as "2" in the Usage column.

Peter Cave wrote:Resolve 17.2.2 updates Clip Usage automatically so there is no update option anymore.
On my system Clip Usage shows the total number of times the clip is used in the Project across all timelines. It does take a few seconds to update. Clip usage shows video and audio as seperate instances, so a combined video/audio clip will show as "2" in the Usage column.

It definitely does not work like this on my system.

Firstly, the right-click Usage menu will only show instances of the clip in the currently open timeline, which is pointless, because we already have the Edit Index for that, that does the same job with a significantly better UI. For the word Usage to have any meaning, the clip's entire presence across the project needs to be shown in this menu, with each timeline appearing as a sub-menu. Otherwise, BM need to rename this to Usage in Currently Open Timeline.

Secondly, on a fresh start of Resolve, it will only ever update the Usage column once you open a timeline containing that clip. Try restarting your session of Resolve and see if the Usage column reports the correct usage. My guess is that — if you're on Windows at least — it will not.

Below is a recording to show that in action. On clip C0454, I have opened multiple timelines containing that clip, and it shows me a usage of 338. When I simply restart Resolve, that same clip is now reported as 113 because only one timeline was loaded. In fact, all the clips in that bin now show a different usage count.

https://imgur.com/0rDpk37

The system blows and needs fixing. The logic of only updating the count on loading a timeline into memory is baffling. There needs to be a counter that is actively updated every single time a clip is used or removed and that needs to persist as a readable, updated, and reliable value at any state of the project. Right now, it's useless except in the simplest projects.

The Usage is only shown for timelines loaded in RAM. When we open a project, we don't always load all timelines, as you might have 100s of timelines in a big project.

If you want the Usage to always work, you can turn on the option to load all timelines at project load. Your project load times will increase.

Rohit Gupta wrote:The Usage is only shown for timelines loaded in RAM. When we open a project, we don't always load all timelines, as you might have 100s of timelines in a big project.

If you want the Usage to always work, you can turn on the option to load all timelines at project load. Your project load times will increase.

Screenshot 2021-07-26 at 6.55.52 PM.png

Hi Rohit, thanks for the clarification. Can this approach be changed? If the usage count is written to the database as a clip's usage is updated, then it can be retrieved regardless of whether a timeline is loaded or not.

Peter Cave wrote:Resolve 17.2.2 updates Clip Usage automatically so there is no update option anymore...

Good point!
User manual tells: "... usage column is now automatically updated; no user intervention is required."

What about DaVinci 16?
Where is "Update Usage Data" option from the contextual menu in DaVinci 16?