Alt-V failing half of the times

Hi all,

I regularly use ALT-V to paste attributes on other clips and I've noticed that a good percentage of times it fails to paste. OR, it pastes half of the attributes. So I have to copy and paste again.

I normally hit copy (CTRL-C) multiple time to hope for a good outcome but it's become very frustrating when that does not happen.

I am on Windows 10 and 18.5.1 (I won't update to 18.6 for now given the recent schenanigans, I'll wait a bit more).

My Resolve has been reset in the past so that's not going to help.

Has anybody experienced that?
Thanks.

I regularly use ALT-V to paste attributes on other clips and I've noticed that a good percentage of times it fails to paste. OR, it pastes half of the attributes. So I have to copy and paste again..

I have seen that happen as well, especially when you're pasting kind of a complex attribute (a specific PTZR position plus a speed change, for example). Ir's an intermittent thing that's kind of unpredictable.

I don't have any suggestion except to keep at it until it works. My guess is that in addition to using the system-wide clipboard for cut-and-paste, for certain things Resolve also has its own internal clipboard just for special things like clip attributes. And once in awhile it chokes and gets only some of the information (or even none of the information). I've also had situations where the Paste Attributes menu won't come up: exiting and relaunching Resolve generally fixes that.

Thanks for confirming.

It's happening more often than I'd like. And it's frustrating when I'm pasting on lots of clips, maybe where it took me a few seconds to select, to then discover it didn't work so I have to re-select everything etc.

Well, finger crossed the BMD Gods will read these messages and Resolve the problem

Cheets!

Yeah I have this problem all the time!
And now during my edit with the blanking fill.

When it works the first time, changing the global blend of the blanking fill then copying the settings and pasting (by selecting all the other clips), the global blend doesn't change at all. Even if I select one clips to change (with the render cache on "user" enabled, the blue line doesn't resest).

What particularly annoys me is that sometimes not only does it not copy the values but it also RESETS the current ones.

BlackMagicDesign/Peter Chamberlain is this something on your list of improvements?

[Peter Chamberlain]

If you can post a drp that reproduces this issue and details about your OS and exact Resolve version someone can take a look.

Hello Peter,

Thank you.

DRA is here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AukePwK7XyEPhOxQvyq ... A?e=eWKDfd
Logs are here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AukePwK7XyEPhOxPCz9 ... w?e=5TNlTE
Dxdiag are here: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AukePwK7XyEPhOsrRaW ... Q?e=NO9eq6

Video demo is here:

I'm running Windows 10 22H2

As I mentioned on the video, I still am on 18.5.1 - I'm waiting a bit more to move to 18.6 after the mayhem of 18.6.0 which cost me a day of work, I'm sure you'll understand. This pasting issue has been going on for a while so I doubt it's related to my particular installation.

I look forward to hearing from the support team.

Thanks

I can confirm this issue. Exactly the same erratic behaviour for me on a very simple edit.

Amazing, thanks for taking the time to add your comment. You are on 18.6.2 so we know it's still an issue.

@Peter,

Can you confirm someone is currently looking into this issue? I posted what you requested but I haven't seen any feedback so far.

Thanks

It is disappointing that we are being asked to invest time to document potential issues with DR and then when documentation is produced - with explanatory videos as well, which take time to make - the support team fails to even look at the problem and provide any feedback whatsoever.

I'm sorry but this is disrespectful.

Anybody from BMD who can look into this issue as promised please??

Anybody from BMD who can look into this issue as promised please??

Did you submit a support request and point to this issue? Sometimes these reports fall through the cracks and it's a shame that you went to the effort of documenting your findings and posting logs, etc. - Reach out to support through their website and point to this thread - see what happens.

BTW - I haven't experimented with what you have reported but I will in the coming days and if I observe the same issues as you and Peter (and others), perhaps I will add my voice to this thread. It's all we can do, really.

Update - I've seen this failure myself now, having tested attributes such as scale, position and a drop-shadow OFX.

Here's what I found -

If you move your focus away from the timeline (helps to have the orange rectangle focus option enabled to see when a panel has focus), the CTRL/CMD + C doesn't necessarily work even though the clip has an orange box around it.

What I did to make sure it worked 10/10 tries:

1. Position timeline cursor over the clip whose attributes you wish to copy
2. Click on the clip to select it (in the timeline) - The timeline focus should now be set
3. If you then modify position or other attributes, make sure you click on the clip in the timeline again to restore timeline focus and make sure the clip is selected
4. CTRL/CMD + C
5. Select the other clip / clips into which you wish to paste these attributes (timeline should still have focus)
6. ALT/OPT + V
7. Select the attributes you want to paste and click Apply

As long as I made sure the timeline had focus when I was copying and pasting, this worked for me 10/10 times. If I didn't have timeline focus (even with clip selected), this failed 1/2 tries in my limited testing.

Thoughts?

Thanks for that.

Can you clarify what you mean with "timeline focus"? Just before I copy, I select the clip I want to copy from. So I am on the timeline. Is there another way to "focus" the timeline?

Thanks!
Tony

PS: I haven't reported this to the official channels yet, mainly because it usually takes several weeks before I get a reply, by then there is usually a new version so most of the time it's a catch-22 situation of "can you try again with version XYZ?" or they ask me to reset everything - which is very time consuming as there are so many things that need to be backed up, and some can't be backed up.

Thanks for that.

Can you clarify what you mean with "timeline focus"? Just before I copy, I select the clip I want to copy from. So I am on the timeline. Is there another way to "focus" the timeline?

Thanks!
Tony

PS: I haven't reported this to the official channels yet, mainly because it usually takes several weeks before I get a reply, by then there is usually a new version so most of the time it's a catch-22 situation of "can you try again with version XYZ?" or they ask me to reset everything - which is very time consuming as there are so many things that need to be backed up, and some can't be backed up.

I understand why you might resist investing in the time to report this.

I will watch your video again - I found that sometimes I would select a clip and then reach up to move the position or zoom, for example, and then click CMD + C when the timeline no longer had focus - and sometimes this works and sometimes not. If you are always clicking on the clip in the timeline before CMD + C then the timeline would have focus. As I said, there is an option in Resolve to draw an orange box around the panel that has focus - maybe you should enable that for testing purposes to verify which panel has focus as you copy / paste attributes.

Cheers

Add - at 2:30 in your video it fails for the first time and it looked to me like you didn't click into your clip before CTRL + C - I could be wrong but it looked like you clicked the track header and since you don't have the panel focus option enabled (that I could see) we can't really tell which panel has focus.

First, thanks for taking the time to help me.

I see what you mean. I will test again, making sure I am clicking on the clip before it's copied. I am more or less confident it also happens after immediately selecting a clip but I'll test to be sure.

Thanks!
Tony

You're welcome, Tony. I should clarify that I'm not suggesting this isn't a bug. If it turns out that it's a UI focus issue, I think Resolve could be a bit better at smartly interpreting the focus of a CTRL + C operation based on heuristics related to the selected clip which would override a focused panel that didn't have any elements in focus - not 100% easy to do but there could be some rules Resolve would follow to make this sort of thing a bit more user friendly. All this is speculation until we hear back from you re: your testing.

Cheers and good luck!

it looks like you are right! I cannot trigger the issue if I do as you suggest.

And thanks for your added comment: it's still a bug but of a different genre. As you say it's a UI focus issue.
Definitely a great help in my workflow as I can now get used to the idea that I have to "click on the clip again" before copying. Annoying but much better than pasting the incorrect attributes on a big bunch of clips after spending a few seconds making the correct selection!

Thank you very much Black M... - ahem- Steve. Again, I appreciate the time you dedicated on this.

Now, BMD, you have even more clues on how to fix this. Some feedback would be at least the polite thing to do.

I'm glad I came across your post, Tony. Nice that there's a workaround. I do hope that BMD will respond to this thread with at least an acknowledgment that things could be improved in this regard. Cheers.

By the way, a similar issue manifests in the color page (and has the same workaround).

When copying a node on a clip, and going to another clip to paste it (even though "select same node" is enabled) and the second clip's destination node seems highlighted red, and hit cmd-v to paste, it will change the colors - it is unclear what its actually doing, but it will mess up your grade. However if you click the destination node again even though it's already highlighted, and paste, the copy/paste operation works as intended.

By the way, a similar issue manifests in the color page (and has the same workaround).

When copying a node on a clip, and going to another clip to paste it (even though "select same node" is enabled) and the second clip's destination node seems highlighted red, and hit cmd-v to paste, it will change the colors - it is unclear what its actually doing, but it will mess up your grade. However if you click the destination node again even though it's already highlighted, and paste, the copy/paste operation works as intended.

That's by design. By default if you only click on the thumbnail it will paste the entire grade, but if you click on a specific node it will only paste from the node you copied. There is a preference for this that you can change.

By the way, a similar issue manifests in the color page (and has the same workaround).

When copying a node on a clip, and going to another clip to paste it (even though "select same node" is enabled) and the second clip's destination node seems highlighted red, and hit cmd-v to paste, it will change the colors - it is unclear what its actually doing, but it will mess up your grade. However if you click the destination node again even though it's already highlighted, and paste, the copy/paste operation works as intended.

That's by design. By default if you only click on the thumbnail it will paste the entire grade, but if you click on a specific node it will only paste from the node you copied. There is a preference for this that you can change.

Not what I described. I said the node is already highlighted red. It's a bug. Try it out and see for yourself.

By the way, a similar issue manifests in the color page (and has the same workaround).

When copying a node on a clip, and going to another clip to paste it (even though "select same node" is enabled) and the second clip's destination node seems highlighted red, and hit cmd-v to paste, it will change the colors - it is unclear what its actually doing, but it will mess up your grade. However if you click the destination node again even though it's already highlighted, and paste, the copy/paste operation works as intended.

Yes - I've seen this, too. Similar to the OP's issue in that the focus of copy/paste is sometimes ambiguous.

Not what I described. I said the node is already highlighted red. It's a bug. Try it out and see for yourself.

When switching clips, there's always a node highlighted according to what you have in the 3 dot menu as to exactly which node that will be, but it's more about which panel is in focus. If you click on a node, the node graph is in focus (turn on focus indicators in UI user preferences to see). If you then click on a clip's thumbnail, that area is in focus (though for some reason there's no UI indicator for this).

If you paste while the node graph is in focus then it will paste from one node to another. If you paste when the thumbnail area is in focus, it will paste the entire grade, unless you have 'Always copy and paste on selected nodes' selected in User preferences.

Not what I described. I said the node is already highlighted red. It's a bug. Try it out and see for yourself.

When switching clips, there's always a node highlighted according to what you have in the 3 dot menu as to exactly which node that will be, but being highlighted red doesn't mean it is selected. In your post all you say is that it is highlighted, you don't say that you have selected it.

If you want a specific node's grade to be pasted onto a specific other node, then either you need to have that option selected in your preferences or you need to manually select that node in the tree.

The fact that the node has a red box around it suggests that it is selected (although it is not). Hence my comment about ambiguity in terms of copy/paste focus. Honestly, I never noticed that the red box doesn't necessarily mean 'selected'. Live and learn

Not what I described. I said the node is already highlighted red. It's a bug. Try it out and see for yourself.

When switching clips, there's always a node highlighted according to what you have in the 3 dot menu as to exactly which node that will be, but being highlighted red doesn't mean it is selected. In your post all you say is that it is highlighted, you don't say that you have selected it.

If you want a specific node's grade to be pasted onto a specific other node, then either you need to have that option selected in your preferences or you need to manually select that node in the tree.

The fact that the node has a red box around it suggests that it is selected (although it is not). Hence my comment about ambiguity in terms of copy/paste focus. Honestly, I never noticed that the red box doesn't necessarily mean 'selected'. Live and learn

I edited my post for clarity, it's actually more about which panel is currently in focus, but since nodes and clips can be switched either with or without changing focus then this can lead to confusion in this matter.

Absolutely - and this is likely at the crux of the main issue of this thread as demonstrated by a variety of tests. It's one of the reasons I usually keep the option to highlight panel focus enabled.

can you tell me more about this option, Steve?

can you tell me more about this option, Steve?

Under Preferences > User > UI Settings you can find:

Show focus indicators in the User Interface

(Shows a red line on the panel that has focus)

ahhhh, very useful. So I see the "issue" better, DVR won't copy unless the clip is selected AND the timeline is in focus.

That's a great visual aid, thank you!