Blackmagic Forum

I have a large number of still photos that I am integrating with video clips. Is there a setting that will mark an item in some way to show that it is being used in the timeline? With a large number of stills to keep track of, it would be helpful to be able to quickly see if I have already brought that photo into the timeline.

Right click the column headings and check the "usage" box. Usage will be added to the column headings.....you need to use the scroll bar to find it - you can drag the column to where it is most convenient. It doesn't tell you where it was used, just how many times.

thanks Roen. I added Usage as a column heading but no data is showing under it-- its just blank. will keep playing with it.

Jim Odell wrote:thanks Roen. I added Usage as a column heading but no data is showing under it-- its just blank. will keep playing with it.

The column doesn't auto-update. You need to right click in the media pool and click "Update Usage Data".

Bingo. thanks much. the logic is slowing sinking in.

Important note:

if you have a compound clip, that compound clip will be marked as [used], but the clips inside the compound clip will NOT be marked as used.

same for any [matte] that is not attached to a clip but used in a color correction node.

It would be a great boost to Resolve's acceptance as an editor to have these interrogation/reporting options as best practise.

waltervolpatto wrote:Important note:

if you have a compound clip, that compound clip will be marked as [used], but the clips inside the compound clip will NOT be marked as used.

same for any [matte] that is not attached to a clip but used in a color correction node.

Thanks, good to know Walter. That probably explains why media managing a sequence doesn't pull the clips from within Compound Clips. This caught me when trimming a project recently and I had to re-build my compound clips as they don't auto re-link inside either.

Both great tips - this forum is awesome. I used to be an avid reader of Walter's posts in the Q forum in years past.

Roen Davis wrote:Both great tips - this forum is awesome. I used to be an avid reader of Walter's posts in the Q forum in years past.

waltervolpatto wrote:Important note:

if you have a compound clip, that compound clip will be marked as [used], but the clips inside the compound clip will NOT be marked as used.

same for any [matte] that is not attached to a clip but used in a color correction node.

This still hasn't been fixed.

Furthermore, the number in the usage column will show an instance for every video and audio track a clip has. This means that if you have a clip with 2 mono audio tracks and 1 stereo track in a timeline, then the media pool will say it is being used 4 times when in fact it is just being used once! This is VERY unhelpful! I had a very large project which I used remote grading for, and I wanted to use a new project in order to grade a further 4 edits. Of course, the only way of keeping the remote grades would be to keep a timeline with all the media I needed within - luckily I had a Master timeline, though alternatively I could just keep the existing Timelines until I had imported all the new ones, which I did. So I duplicated the project, imported the new timelines and all the grades I needed were available. Now I set out to delete all the media and timelines I wouldn’t be needing, so I deleted all the old timelines, highlighted all the bins and updated the Usage column, in lieu of deleting any clips which only had a usage of 1, since they would only be in the Master timeline and not any of the new edits. Well unfortunately I couldn’t do that because everything had a usage count of 6 or more! So I had to keep all my old media - I couldn’t even change the bin structure because I wouldn’t have any way of knowing which bins contained redundant media. Very messy!

Flagging isn't an adequate solution since anything within a compound node would not be flagged so I'd have to open them individually, adding to what would already be a very time consuming process considering how many timelines I had.


(also, what's the Q forum?)

Tom Early wrote:(also, what's the Q forum?)

Quantel, an English company, was a longtime competitor to DaVinci. They were Digital pioneers and, AFAIK, wrote the book on digitising a raster image. They might have made the first video disc for slow mo and freeze frame then Quantel DVE and Mirage then PaintBox. I think they sued the creators of photoshop for copying code but not sure. Then came EditBox and Henry and various other digital animation platforms then eQ and iQ. They were good product. Q forum was their equivalent to this forum.

On usage reporting: Premiere has a similar column based thing but when you click it, it reports which timelines and the timecode location of its use. This is very helpful. If it’s not already in a feature request then I invite everyone who is less lazy than me to do a feature request.