Tue Oct 09, 2018 7:10 am
The "Zoom to Window" control helps a lot in these situations.
For a lot of reasons, I think Good Node Management involves using a fixed number of nodes throughout a project (particularly longform like features or episodic TV), each one pre-labeled as to function, and then you can just bypass the unused nodes and activate them only when needed. You can also keep the node tree large enough that everything is easily readable.
The problem with winding up with 25-30-35 nodes is they get to be very unwieldly a lot of the time. I tend to try to keep the node trees at no more than 20-22 nodes or so, but I'll add another half dozen or more as Post-Clip grades when necessary. (I concede there are complex projects like fashion commercials or car spots where you might well need a dozen tracking roto windows, a dozen external mattes, and a half dozen curves and keys to really slam the image.)
Often, I find there is a simpler way to do what you're trying to do with massive number of nodes. In cases where I've been teaching Resolve students, I've seen cases where they have 2 or 3 nodes early in the tree, and then we discover that much later on, there's a couple of nodes that completely undue that effect. In other words, when we delete all of those competing nodes, the picture effectively does not change. Keeping it simple can be very beneficial, not only creating a cleaner picture but also providing a better visual understanding of signal flow. Order of Node Operations is really crucial here.
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