manipulating clips

I am used to Premiere Pro, and haven't been able to figure out how to do, in Resolve, what were some simple actions there. For example I could take a still, grab the end of it and draw it out as long as I want, to through the whole clip.

Adjusting transparency was location in the motion section for cropping or changing the angle but I'm not seeing there in resolve.

Another thing I could do in PP, that I haven't solved here, is also adjusting the length of a clip to shorten with ripple so the next one moves to the new position. In resolve meanwhile, I've been using cut with ripple, which involves extra steps, multiplied many times by the number of clips.

Also keyboard shortcuts would be useful as I have to keep changing from choosing the blade to the arrow and back, moving with the mouse.

You can add a still image to the Timeline and stretch it to whatever length you want.

If you want to adjust the opacity, it is under the Composite section in the Inspector.

If you want to Ripple delete a clip, just hit the Delete key after selecting the clip.

The biggest mistake I made after switching from Premiere Pro was thinking that my previous experience meant I could just jump into a new NLE without difficulty.

Nope.

Thankfully, BMD has made some really great training resources available for us.

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

I recommend the Beginner's Guide as a solid groundwork for working with Resolve.

Thanks Eric, I don't know why I wasn't able to stretch it before. Now I have that handle, Also found the transparency, As far as the 3rd. When I want to trim a clip, I use the blade, and cut and then use the pointer to select and press delete and it is already set to ripple. I think in PP, there were fewer resorts to the mouse with keyword shortcuts, or I could jut grab the end and ripple move it to the desired point and those behind would close the gap, only one step.

Jim, I will take a look at that. I was on another introductory training manual suggested and spent hours with pages about finer and finer ways to make and select joins, add metadata keywords and stuff without getting to the more basic things I needed and then it went further in the next one, so it wasn't really beginner it seemed. I've gotten more done going back to the original manual.

Another thing I could do in PP, that I haven't solved here, is also adjusting the length of a clip to shorten with ripple so the next one moves to the new position.

Just switch to the Trim Edit Mode

TrimEditMode.png (2.9 KiB) Viewed 1188 times

I had made such progress, I felt close to being able to export a video. But the computer has no speaker and I connect headphones. When I disconnect them it seems I lose the sound when I put back, so I have to restart Resolve, and that is what I did, assuming it would ask if I wanted to resave any changes from last time , which most recently just included stretching the clip and adding transparency. But I had started with one long loon clip and trimmed various parts and then decided to break it up yesterday, and left the original as just diving, and then cut out ones preening or flapping and put those into new bins and made new timelines, which also involved lots more trimming if it didn't depend on the ins and out selected on the original clips. I thought that much was saved yesterday at least. I remember now that I was going to work more but fell asleep and never got back to it. But I reopen and I am not on the last flapping timeline. I add back the other tracks I had stretched and now I don't get that handle. I can't find any more timelines, looking under the timeline menu, and then I close the current one to see if I will find a choice. So how do I get it back and find out if there are others or I've lost hours of work?

there seems such a fickleness with this program. After I stretched as desired, I closed and lost a lot of work and tried to get back. Recreated a timeline and now I can't stretch as desired. The still image is so thin that I can't grab it without going to high resolution and then when I drag it I see a gap opens on the main video track and disassociates from the audio. I don't see till I move out of higher resolution to see more of the timeline. the same thing happened on another timeline, where I then closed the gap by dragging back the tracks, unsure if I was losing anything.

One thing is you have linking disabled, click the chain icon under the stop button at the bottom of the viewer.

Relinking made no difference. So on this incomprehensible problem, that no one can explain, and youtube videos didn't help, I did what I did on the other timeline. 1st I noticed that the track of the still wasn't in red and the one below was, so maybe that was why it didn't work. but no, so I went to detail so I could started to stretch the still a bit, then went out further to see more and I could see the gap was created, I dragged the end of the still to the end of timeline at lower res and the clip below moved along creating a gap all the way to the end. I selected all the main video track and audio that had moved and dragged it back so there was no gap. so finally it was pretty much what I wanted. but I went to the end of the timeline to see in greater detail that the 2 top still clips were a little beyond the main track. I went to refine the end and : DAVINCI RESOLVE QUIT UNEXPECTEDLY. So once again losing all my progress in this buggy program.

Relinking made no difference. So on this incomprehensible problem, that no one can explain, and youtube videos didn't help, I did what I did on the other timeline. 1st I noticed that the track of the still wasn't in red and the one below was, so maybe that was why it didn't work. but no, so I went to detail so I could started to stretch the still a bit, then went out further to see more and I could see the gap was created, I dragged the end of the still to the end of timeline at lower res and the clip below moved along creating a gap all the way to the end. I selected all the main video track and audio that had moved and dragged it back so there was no gap. so finally it was pretty much what I wanted. but I went to the end of the timeline to see in greater detail that the 2 top still clips were a little beyond the main track. I went to refine the end and : DAVINCI RESOLVE QUIT UNEXPECTEDLY. So once again losing all my progress in this buggy program.

Sounds like you could use some training on such basic issues, I think the biggest hurdle you are facing is assuming that resolve functions identically to Premiere Pro. Unfortunately for you it isn't, and mybe things which were obvious in Premiere due to your probably large amount of hours of use just don't fully translate to Resolve.

You'd certainly do yourself some favours going through Blackmagic's training program

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

So once again losing all my progress in this buggy program.

Any special reason you're not using the Live Save and/or Auto Save features?

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/training#books

So once again losing all my progress in this buggy program.

Any special reason you're not using the Live Save and/or Auto Save features?

It's Proverb Time - two spring to mind:
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime

Miraculously, when I reopened Resolve after the crash, I found, that though I hadn't saved, what I had last done was not lost. Must have been some kind of pre-crash autosave. I've now made a lot of progress, reconstituting my timelines, so that all have the extended still clips, from bins with keywords, and put transitions in one, except for some reason where some wouldn't accept so I put markers at such points. I know that this would happen in PP too, saying there wasn't enough of something, but then it was easy to ignore, and it still worked fine, while here I will have to look further to find out why, or just export the essentially finished video without some transitions.

I don't expect things to work exactly as in PP, but when I find where something is, there is a great similarity. I certainly plan to look at more training videos and continue with the 3000+ page manual, but the 1st introductory video recommended on one of my earliest posts, seemed to assume one already knew some stuff, and went into great detail continually refining joins or something that was far behind what I needed and the then next video took it from there in even greater detail. Applying titles and credits is not something I need to get started with the very basics. In fact I never bothered with any of my youtube videos.

What i do is read the manual or watch videos, applying to my own situation until I reach a block or something doesn't work for me the way it seems it should when I follow the directions. My memories of starting PP, are watching a couple of videos, to the point where I could get started, and I was pretty much able to then start compiling videos from clips. I later learned some more things with the forum assistance that helped me improve efficiency or do some things I was stuck on. similar to here. But for my purposes , I probably didn't need 90% of PP capabilities and likewise here.

So I went to the above training video link page and choices are if I want to buy book or download. I did the latter and then what? I go to lesson one and open and it and it shows folders, finished timelines or OMO footage. I clicked on one of the things. My loon video I had was open and I saw that it replaced everything there with things in red, and got out of there fast, undoing and retrieving my video. Is one supposed to buy the lessons before being able to do anything?

So I closed my video and clicked on one of the choices in the training video. the result, my video opens with all my work overwritten and ruined? Great help.

selected all and put in garbage bin and recovered my stuff. what a freaking nightmare.

I'll preface my comment by : BMD has EXCELLENT "follow along" training "books", and tons of very good material for learning the software... - These type of training tools have their place, and and tons of people learned the program this way.

But... in most of the cases it is not the way to go to learn a software (or anything that have an artistic part to it). What you learn is how to get the same result at someone else project.

For me, just posting a link to them is like : Hey, just RTFM, and try to figure it out by yourself. - When the person is obviously struggling with very basic tasks in Resolve.

And it's so much more interesting to learn on your own projects.

Rob, don't waste your time on the training books... go directly to the BMD training videos on youtube (they don't have chapters and it's a shame, but it's better than reading pdfs) :

I suggest you watch Casey Faris too, and his beginner tutorials. They have chapters and it's easy to follow.

You seem to have some trouble to navigate in Resolve, selecting elements, etc. You'll find 90% of the actions and tools you need to know about in these videos. It will be more efficient imo.

You can duplicate your main timeline and experiment on it with things you learn by watching these videos, then when you feel comfortable with the results (and the actions and tools used), do it on the main one.

Good luck

Thanks. I now have several videos just about ready for upload but I thought I might make some contrast adjustments. I'm going over things 1st in the 3000+ page manual and am on page 97.

More ways to ruin a video. Before checking out the 2 suggested learning videos, I was trying to improve my knowledge from the online 3000+ page manual. I was trying a few suggested things and then to my horror, my loon video had an error message and everything in it was replaced with a granite like appearance. I tried undo but it didn't work. I changed a recommended memory preference back to auto and things looked normal again, and I went to look at these training videos. The 1st I realize I had already watched much of and found it dwelt too much on detail of getting joins exactly perfect, adding titles, credits etc, which wasn't really the things that were what I wanted. The 2nd, by Casey Faris, was much more suited to a total beginner and I started following along. It was fast and I replayed a part where he was adding stuff to the timeline very fast after changing ins and outs and I wondered if he didn't mention a shortcut. then he came to a part that I'd been wanting and that was ripple moving clips at their ends, but it wasn't working for me, maybe because their ins and outs were already at the ends. I decided to open a different test video to try and then I saw that the thumb for the loon video still had the granite appearance that everything in it had had. And when I opened I saw that the last timeline I was working on looks different. almost half at the beginning is grayer and the ruler above starts and ends differently. So any ideas on what's wrong now? this had been basically finished and I just wanted to learn about contrast.

You have an In and Out point set in your first image, that is why things look grayed out. I'm not sure what is going on with the other image. If you don't want the in and out set, hit Alt+X and that will remove the In and Out.

do you mean that the timeline has ins and outs set? Al the clips have individual ones set. Al x isn't doing anything. Curious that the non-grayed are starts where I put a marker where I couldn't add a transition.

I said Alt+x, not Alt+s.

that was a mistype. I tried alt x only several times.

Alt+x, not Ctrl+x.

Sorry my brain is getting fried from all this. Alt x is all I did, for certain. I working on another video now and my attention is now there more, but I never tried control X nor s.

In the clips below, before Alt+X and then after Alt+X.

what should the pointer be on when this is done?

I would either click in the Timeline viewer or a blank space of the Timeline.

I thought it worked, when I clicked the 2nd time with it on a clip in the timeline. But actually, it was that just pointing in the timeline ungrayed area did it. When I click above the top track below the timeline, the area in front of the 1st blue marker reverts to gray. It seems that the problem is the time line starts there, somehow shifted from the start where it belongs as those grayed clips in front belong to the video.

So, left with a seemingly insoluble problem with this one video that I had to restart much of about 4 times after different problems developed in trying to use the manual, or training videos, I turned to another that was much less involved, only one timeline, codec, and shot from a stationary tripod, not following movement. I had already assembled and was just going through adding transitions, and can't see the whole thing in edit at the level to work with. I wondered why so many joins wouldn't accept transitions, and kept plodding on, wondering why it seemed so much longer than I expected. I came to a part that I thought seemed similar to some before, kept on and came to a part again that seemed pretty familiar. I think after the 3rd time, I decided to go back to the beginning and expand each clip so I could check the clip names. Sure enough, there was duplication. The series of clips was duplicated 8x, so I'd been going over the same stuff repeatedly. I found where the 1st one was duplicated and deleted that and all after. I know I didn't add the clips 9x so how might this have happened? So I think this is essentially completed, except for wishing I could have transitions in each join. But then I wondered, why does the loon video in edit page have a line above that though staggered and out of sync with the clips below, this has no line up there. I found that there was a part I thought I had ripple deleted on the copies and missed the original, so selected with razor and did so and then I noticed this had something in common with the loon video. When I click below the ruler timeline, instead of a clip, all is grayed out except a small segment, with a line above, similar to the longer, staggered one in the loon video. I can ungray the rest by clicking on any clip, but the small segment remained. Like the loon video, alt x didn't change but now I discovered the points on the viewer and could manually move each to the ends and then the timeline matched the clips. Attached is a before-solution picture.

However, not so simple with the loon video. I could move the beginning point because it had a dot to grab and slide, but there is no end dot, it just goes all the way, with no end. Added corrected squirrel timeline for comparison.

You are still acting like the gray bar is something mysterious. It is just showing you the In and Out points. You can get rid of it with Alt+X and you can set the In with the I key, the out with O. Here are some videos explaining this.

I wasn't acting, as to me it was mysterious, as these clips all had their own ins and outs and I was trying to adjust the timeline and alt x was doing anything. but pressing O as you suggested worked, so thanks.