Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

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Frank Fischer

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Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSun Aug 01, 2021 11:02 am

Hi everybody,

we edit and grade music videos with up to 20 angles, UHD.

We use the Multicam clip feature of DR Studio 16 for editing and cutting, ie., we edit the multicam clip to select suitable angles. During Multicam creation the "Angle Names" are assigned to the "Clip Name" .

On the Color page we now want to use the Smart Filter feature to only show clips of eg vocal, sax, piano .. etc since they need to be color graded in groups. Every instrument angle (camera) gets its respective basic grading to match different cams and lighting.

However, the clips in the Colorpage are not named by the Clip name, but are only displayed as Multicam . This is a problem, since no Metadata seem to be available for smart filtering?

Only if we flatten (which is not wanted) the multicam clips we get the option to smart filter.

Is there a workaround for this?

Best
Frankie
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Jim Simon

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSun Aug 01, 2021 1:22 pm

Multicam is kind of a Compound clip. When you move into Color, you're not accessing the original media, but the new Multicam compound.

There are two ways to access the original clips. Flatten, as you've seen, and right click on the Multicam and Open in Timeline, then move to Color from that timeline.

That help?
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Frank Fischer

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostMon Aug 02, 2021 5:52 am

Once you try to open all Multicam clip segments in the timeline the issue remains because you can not open all segments of your edit at once. You can only open one segment. So in the Color page only one clip appears. Unfortunately, no help for productivty.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostMon Aug 02, 2021 2:25 pm

If you Open just one segment, you'll be in the timeline that contains all the original clips.

You only need to Open once for each Multicam.
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Frank Fischer

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSat Aug 07, 2021 2:22 pm

This is right. However, the original edit is gone as soon as I open the Multicam.
It is a pity that DR does not pass through the angle name that is chosen for each segment. This should not be very difficult.

Best
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Jim Simon

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSat Aug 07, 2021 2:28 pm

No, the main timeline isn't gone. There's a couple ways to get back to it.

If Stacked Timelines is off, there's a little breadcrumb trail in the lower left of the interface that allows you to go back to the main timeline.

The easiest I think it to enable Stacked Timelines in the Timeline View Options, so each timeline has its own tab.
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Cesar Tejada

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSat Dec 04, 2021 5:03 pm

I'm facing the exact problem with multicam workflow. There needs to be a better way to organize the multicam clip by angle in the color page.
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kayakfishingaddict

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostMon Mar 07, 2022 8:26 pm

Totally agree and I can't believe this hasn't been fixed yet! Coloring multicam clips takes a long time. 90% of the time is spent manually filtering camera angles instead of simply being able to use a smart filter!
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Peter Chamberlain

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostTue Mar 08, 2022 7:46 am

If you have 20 angles in your multicam, and these are used i the timeline intermingled with non multicam clips, selecting any one of the multicam clips and then right clicking, open in timeline, will show you all 20 tracks/clips, which you can grade in the color page.. and those same cameras/angles will be granded for all uses of those clips in all the subsequent multicams.

Is this not working for your workflow?
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Jim Simon

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostTue Mar 08, 2022 7:43 pm

kayakfishingaddict wrote:Coloring multicam clips takes a long time.
I don't think it does if you understand all the tools Resolve offers. Have you gone through any of the training yet?

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... ning#books
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kayakfishingaddict

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSat May 21, 2022 4:15 pm

Peter Chamberlain wrote:If you have 20 angles in your multicam, and these are used i the timeline intermingled with non multicam clips, selecting any one of the multicam clips and then right clicking, open in timeline, will show you all 20 tracks/clips, which you can grade in the color page.. and those same cameras/angles will be granded for all uses of those clips in all the subsequent multicams.

Is this not working for your workflow?


Sorry, I missed your reply. I understand your method and I appreciate that method. It doesn't seem to work well in an uncontrolled environment. Please, let me explain. When you're shooting multiple camera angles in an uncontrolled environment (e.g. outside) with lighting changes due to the sun, etc. And you clip the parts you want into angles. You tend to choose the best multicam angles based on lighting, etc. Once you've done that, you want to color them all together by just focussing on the usable clips, not the long running footage for each angle but the actual clips you want to use. In a controlled environment what you state is the way to go, but when the lighting varies a lot, you'll end up with a better output if you look only at the individual clips.

Often times I group multicam segments into different groups based on lighting conditions even though they are from the same camera/angle. I group them all, use the lightbox feature, pull out similar lighted segments and put them into another group, etc. Once I have them all grouped, I color the entire group using post clip and make minor adjustments from time to time in a clip. That doesn't work well with simply coloring the long running clips in the multicam opened as a timeline scenario.

We truly need the ability to smart filter the separate clips within a multicam. We can put them in groups so why can't we smart filter them?

A Use Case Might Help
And here's the real world use case. Imagine you strap two cameras on a vehicle (e.g. a kayak) one pointed forward and one backward and you film yourself as you travel around (e.g. catching fish). Sometimes you're pointed directly at the sun and sometimes you're not...in fact you're at all different lighting angles. Because you don't know when the action will take place you're recording all of the time. And at any point in time or lighting angle you may want to use the action captured (e.g. caught fish). The good news is that you've got multiple angles to play with in post.

So you sit down, edit your footage, keeping only the best angles from your multicam shoot...sometimes wishing you could move the sun itself, but alas you can't so you take the other angle and/or cover with some b-roll or drone shots. Now you want to color it to ensure different cameras match, mood, etc. But those 300 segments you ended up with inside of that multicam clip....there's no way to filter them to the given angle so that you can color that angle as a group....let me take that back, you can do it...you have to click one at a time with multi-select, ensure you're precise on your clicks and keep the multi-select key down, scroll the strip as you click each one, and once they're all selected right click and add them to a group. Now you need to repeat that same laborious process for the other angle too. Then you can lightbox each group, re-group any that have extremely different lighting, and now start color correction/grade against the groups you made. That whole precise-click-multi-select-and-scroll-with-manual-selection-of-angle-name part of the process would be two clicks if you could Smart Filter angles in a multicam clip.

PS I've actually come back to this thread to see if it's been fixed within 18 but it doesn't look as if it was.
Last edited by kayakfishingaddict on Sat May 21, 2022 4:42 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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kayakfishingaddict

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSat May 21, 2022 4:19 pm

Jim Simon wrote:
kayakfishingaddict wrote:Coloring multicam clips takes a long time.
I don't think it does if you understand all the tools Resolve offers. Have you gone through any of the training yet?

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... ning#books


In a word, yes. I've used Resolve for several years, watched many hours of YouTube videos including Resolve's training, and read portions of the documentation that are relevant. Perhaps understanding my scenario you'll see something that I don't. Trust me, I hope you do...I'd appreciate the help.

--- Here's what I just shared with another poster ---

Often times I group multicam segments into different groups based on lighting conditions even though they are from the same camera/angle. I group them all, use the lightbox feature, pull out similar lighted segments and put them into another group, etc. Once I have them all grouped, I color the entire group using post clip and make minor adjustments from time to time in a clip. That doesn't work well with simply coloring the long running clips in the multicam opened as a timeline scenario.

We truly need the ability to smart filter the separate clips within a multicam. We can put them in groups so why can't we smart filter them?

So what am I missing?
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Jim Simon

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSat May 21, 2022 11:42 pm

I find your approach here a bit odd.

1. Cut the entire duration of the Multicam in one pass without stopping.
2. Go back through a second time, tweaking the cuts.
3. Now you go through and select the portions of the cut Multicam to use in the final edit.
4. Then the color work. There are many methods to apply the same grade across clips - Copy/Paste, Groups, Shared Nodes, Remote Grades...
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostWed May 25, 2022 7:59 am

Jim Simon wrote:I find your approach here a bit odd.

1. Cut the entire duration of the Multicam in one pass without stopping.
2. Go back through a second time, tweaking the cuts.
3. Now you go through and select the portions of the cut Multicam to use in the final edit.
4. Then the color work. There are many methods to apply the same grade across clips - Copy/Paste, Groups, Shared Nodes, Remote Grades...


Hi Jim. If I understand your step #3 correctly, I think you're saying don't use the multicam itself in the final timeline, but instead just the portions of it (e.g. view the multicam as a timeline and copy and paste the portions you need as the separate clips they are into your final timeline). Is that right?

That would work, as you could then use the camera metadata to group clips, but you lose the benefits you get by using the multicam itself in the final edit...essentially treating it as a single source clip that you cut, choose camera angles, etc. as you mix in broll, titles, etc. all in the final timeline.

You lose the ability to switch camera angles in the final edit where sometimes you'll need to in order to fit in J/L cuts and/or cover over audio gaps. You also lose the ability to fix audio sync issues that you may discover after playing the final edit....or at least you've made it very difficult as that one clip within the multicam may have exploded into n clips in your final timeline. Instead of realigning the audio once, you'd have to do it n times. There may be other benefits too.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostWed May 25, 2022 6:50 pm

kayakfishingaddict wrote:Is that right?
Yes.
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostWed May 25, 2022 6:54 pm

kayakfishingaddict wrote:you lose the benefits...
Not really. You're copying Multicam clips. They retain all the same properties of the original Multicam clip.

And you can take the opposite approach as well. Instead of Copying select portions to a new timeline, Delete the portions you don't want in the same timeline.

The drawback there is you no longer have a complete version of the Multicam to fall back on, so may be best to do the Delete option on a copy of the timeline.
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostSat Jun 11, 2022 6:08 am

Jim Simon wrote:
kayakfishingaddict wrote:you lose the benefits...


Not really. You're copying Multicam clips. They retain all the same properties of the original Multicam clip.


But if you are copying smaller multicam clips and pasting those in your final timeline then you have the same issue.... multicam clips in a timeline, that you then use on the color tab, cannot be smart filtered into the separate clips from each camera that you want to group and color together. Essentially, you end up at the same place that prompted my original request. Right?
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kayakfishingaddict

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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostTue Nov 01, 2022 10:15 pm

I continue to come back to this post hoping that this issue will be fixed. If someone from DR is watching this please feel free to contact me directly. This is a serious issue that adds unnecessary hours to editing videos that use multicam for synchronizing multiple camera angles....and then adds those multicam clips to a regular timeline for editing. The lack of being able to filter the sub angles by any metadata is an issue that could be easily fixed and save many hours of processing!!!
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostWed Jan 04, 2023 10:24 pm

100% Agreed! This NEUTERS the ability to filter, and that cannot be by design. This is a limitation of the one thing davinci resolve is suppose to excell at - coloring!
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostWed Apr 26, 2023 9:44 am

+1 for this. Smart filtering based on multiclip angle would be very useful.
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostFri Jul 07, 2023 12:28 am

+1 for this as well. I'm a colorist trying editing in multicam for the first time and am surprised there's no metadata that carries through the multicam clips. I already have a mix of multicam and flattened clips in my timeline because of a bug I encountered in the edit where multicam clips can't be stabilized, so now my clip types are a bit of a mess. Another problem (bug?) I'm encountering is if noise reduction is applied to multicam clips on the group level, it doesn't have any effect. One needs to open multicam clips in timeline, and apply noise reduction to the nested clips. As a colorist, I don't want to have to navigate back to the edit page to open a multicam clip in the timeline and then jump back to the color page to do simple fixes, I'd rather be able to treat them all the same way on the color page, like any other media I'm accustomed to working with. I haven't done an edit in a while and thought doing the edit for this project in Resolve as opposed to Premiere (which I am more familiar with as an editor) would simplify my workflow, but it apparently has made it more complicated. I think if DaVinci wants their editor to be taken seriously they need to do some signficant fixes to multicam. Currently running 18.1.4 on Mac btw.
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostFri Aug 11, 2023 9:19 pm

I've made a script as a bit of a work around for this exact issue. Basically it allows you to filter multicam angles in the Color page:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=180181

This script will automatically put different colored clip markers on the different multicam angles for any multicam clip in your timeline. Which can then be filtered for in the Color page and put into clip groups. Would love a proper solution though!

I use this all the time because unfortunately coloring only the source footage within the multicam clips does not work for footage with dynamic lighting or varying locations. Perhaps this works for multicam shoots where nothing changes in the shot over the course of 3 hours. If I colored the source footage I would have to keyframe all my color changes for each angle across my 3 hour+ shoots when the final edit is only 15 minutes and I could have just done it shot by shot with angle filtering.

Hopefully that script helps those who are struggling with this!
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostFri Aug 11, 2023 9:37 pm

@Frankie, unfortunately in your case because you have more than 16 camera angles, this script won't be too helpful for you. DaVinci Resolve only has 16 different color markers, so this script stops being helpful if you have more angles than that.

However, if you find this script useful enough, maybe there's a way I can modify it so that you can group your multicam angles in batches. Basically running the script once to mark the first batch of multicam angles, put those angles into individual groups on the color page, and then delete all those markers and run it again on all the other angles. It's a bit of an awkward process but could be worth it depending on how often you're editing with 16+ angles and the complexity of your edits. Let me know!
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Re: Smart Filter issue in Multicam Mode

PostTue Aug 15, 2023 8:57 pm

beneufeld wrote:+1 for this as well. I think if DaVinci wants their editor to be taken seriously they need to do some signficant fixes to multicam.

+++++100

It seems that the developers simply do not see the development towards the amateur segment of processing, where you have to work with large amounts of uncontrolled light in the frame, or even from angles without an operator.
They seem to believe that only filmmakers need detailed processing, which has 3 operators on each camera, and in post-processing a separate editor for each highly specialized segment.
Because of this, the program lacks some fairly simple but important functions. For example: the impossibility of copying keys in color (and even more so editing a separate function for a group of keys), applying complex filters not to the source itself, but to the composite layer, or editing metadata from angles in multicam mode.

And this is offended, because this is the most massive use of a video editor in the world. And it is in such streaming loading that it is necessary to save time, 90% of which is corny spent on fighting with the interface. :?

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