Desperate Request: %variables

This has been driving me crazy for months, and I just remembered to bring it up here today.

For the love of all that's holy, could they please allow sorting the %variables in the Deliver Page and with Data Burn-In in alphabetical order? I am driven mad by the bizarre, nonsensical order of the current dropdown menu, which makes absolutely no sense. My guess is the 100+ items that are in there are just in the order in which they were created, which makes absolutely no sense to a user desperately trying to scroll down and pick the 2 or 3 things they need for a given project.

I would also like the manual to have a complete list of all the %variable menu items, which -- as far as I know -- has never been thoroughly covered. We need all those menu items listed and explained, even if it's just a quick one-sentence description of what it means. For example, I bet a lot of people don't know that "Timeline Index" actually refers to the clip number in the timeline -- something I frequently use to judge my progress in completing a day's work on longform projects.

I also wish the Data Burn-In would remember the Prefix Render Settings from past versions of the project (and the presets), which -- as far as I know -- it's never done.

And I'll echo the request from elsewhere for the need for a %Project_Modified_Date field, one that just tells the date a project is being rendered or when it was last saved. [I concede that UK dates vs. US dates are an ongoing argument.]

[I concede that UK dates vs. US dates are an ongoing argument.]

For this request, I would prefer YY/MM/DD and possibly HH/MM as well. Big to small, general to specific.

+1 on this.


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[I concede that UK dates vs. US dates are an ongoing argument.]

For this request, I would prefer YY/MM/DD and possibly HH/MM as well. Big to small, general to specific.

the moment I read that last line by Marc, I knew we're gonna continue this argument here

+1 on the OP

btw. Marc, as far as remember the list is in the same order as the metadata fields of clips in the media pool. kinda alphabetical, kinda grouped, kinda random tbh.

+1

Oh Heaven's yes!

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+1. Yes indeedy

What heresy is this one? Lists in alphabetical order? DO you want to be burned to the stakes like Giordano Bruno?

Ingrateful peasants! The Great Programmer God just gave you in 18.5 alphabetical order in the still albums!!! (Thanks BTW).

But yes... +1 for alphabetical order of ANY list (especially Groups...)

btw. Marc, as far as remember the list is in the same order as the metadata fields of clips in the media pool. kinda alphabetical, kinda grouped, kinda random tbh.

It still completely sucks. I find myself endlessly scrolling up, scrolling down, scrolling sideways just to desperately get to what I actually need... which is usually at or near the nonsensical bottom of the list.

But yes... +1 for alphabetical order of ANY list (especially Groups...)

Oh my god, absolutely yes to sorting Groups alphabetically. That should be a given.

[I concede that UK dates vs. US dates are an ongoing argument.]

For this request, I would prefer YY/MM/DD and possibly HH/MM as well. Big to small, general to specific.

To heck with you and your foreign dates! I think elsewhere I suggested they have a YEAR field, a MONTH field, and a DAY field, and that way you could choose "%Modified_Date_Year - %Modified_Date_Month - %Modified_Date_Day" or the U.S. method, "%Modified_Date_Month - %Modified_Date_Day - %Modified_Date_Year".

As it is, I manually type in today's session date in the timeline name (and often the project names), but there's a lot of "it depends" there. For renders, it really would be nice to have "Project_name_version_date," without having to do it all manually.

+1 to everything suggested here.
I am also desperate with this.

BTW: just recently I did tag our stock music library with lots of keywords and descriptions so we can have the collection live in the power bin system. The idea was to make use of Smart Bins for auto-sorting music by composer, mood, style and so on. What a fool I was...
I had no idea how powerless power bins can be and how non-smart smart bins - because you just have no access to all the great metadata through them.

I knew we're gonna continue this argument here

I don't get that.

US does Month/Day/Year.

UK does Day/Month/Year

I'm suggesting neither - Year/Month/Day

Sort of a backwards UK, I guess.

I'm suggesting neither - Year/Month/Day

Which is exactly like it is defined in ISO 8601 standard -> YYYY-MM-DD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

Welcome to international standards

BTW those countries also adopted this as national standard:
United Kingdom BS ISO 8601:2004, BS EN 28601 (1989-06-30)
United States ANSI INCITS 30-1997 (R2008) and NIST FIPS PUB 4-2

Which is exactly like it is defined in ISO 8601 standard -> YYYY-MM-DD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

That's the beauty of standards: there's so many to choose from.

+1

I was just trying to find a full list with explanations. I'm assuming there is a way to add a serial number and +1 to each successive export but I'm not even sure where to look to find that info on variables.

+1

I was just trying to find a full list with explanations. I'm assuming there is a way to add a serial number and +1 to each successive export but I'm not even sure where to look to find that info on variables.

it depends on what you are trying to do.
if you use individual clips rendering you can check the "use unique filenames" box. clips will get an V1-0001 pre- or postfix

you could also add the %{Timeline Index} variable for a counter of all events (sadly it puts 10, 100 and 1000 after 1 because it is not 0001)

the manual has some info about what variables do what, but mostly they are just referring to the metadata fields of the source clips

I was just trying to find a full list with explanations. I'm assuming there is a way to add a serial number and +1 to each successive export but I'm not even sure where to look to find that info on variables.

Yeah, I've read the manual at least 4-5 times over the years, and I've never, ever seen a full list of all the %Variables fields or values.

I'd go a step further and would also like to see a list of all the Error Messages in Resolve, but that's a request that goes back many many years. No luck with that.

Do you not type anything after the %?

When I want to render using the timeline name followed by something else, I don't scroll all the way down to Timeline Name, I type %time and then choose from the 4 options that remain

Do you not type anything after the %?

When I want to render using the timeline name followed by something else, I don't scroll all the way down to Timeline Name, I type %time and then choose from the 4 options that remain

I think most people already do what you suggested. It means you use the variables you know. And that’s definitely the way to go right now imho.

But it doesn’t help improve your workflow by finding out what other variables are available to you. An actual list of all available variables we can use would achieve that.


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+1 to the addition of the %variables to the manual.

I'm on the fence about alphabetical order - I think if you know some of the basic values or what you might be looking for that should be enough, and if we get the variables in the manual I don't see a need for that. I'm okay with the current implementation where if you type %int it'll give you a bunch of the variables that contain "int" for you to choose from.

Re: Dates - I use YYYYMMDD, but I'd suggest %Year, %Month, %Day as discrete variables for custom date standards, or some kind of system/user dropdown for date configuration. +1 to some kind of date variable.

+1 !

A few more Variables related to timeline would be helpfull for the filename in Deliver Page, especially:

% Timeline Current IN Timecode: to automatically add the timeline TC IN to a filename in Deliver Page
% Timeline Current OUT Timecode:

Great for back and forth with VFX team.

+1

I would also love to be able to save out LUTs for every shot in a timeline using %Variables in the filename.

+1 ! A few more Variables related to timeline would be helpfull for the filename in Deliver Page, especially:

% Timeline Current IN Timecode: to automatically add the timeline TC IN to a filename in Deliver Page
% Timeline Current OUT Timecode:

Great for back and forth with VFX team.

Yeah, I needed that recently for a feature with about 100 VFX plates, and it was laborious having to type in the first frame of timecode by hand into each clip's filename. (We did not want Frame Counts, which is already a %Variable option.)

+1 but first persuade Avid + Adobe go adopt %Variables

And YYYY-MM-DD all day long. Although options for MM-DD / DD also useful.

+1 to the manual request.

I'm on the fence about alphabetical order - I think if you know some of the basic values or what you might be looking for it'll give you suggestions. i.e. %int it'll give you a bunch of the variables that contain "int."

Re: Date suggestion - I use YYYYMMDD, but I'd suggest %Year, %Month, %Day as discrete variables for custom date standards.

Date suggestion - I use YYYYMMDD, but I'd suggest %Year, %Month, %Day as discrete variables for custom date standards.

That would totally work.

I mean, guys, let's be honest - we need tons and tons of variables to use for Deliver page. Because then we can make a lot of presets for all kinds of workflows. Currently even After Effects have quite a bit of them, compared to Resolve.

+1

+1

+1!!!


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Honestly resolve is very poor in variables of the delivery page. Resolve doesn't even have date option...Even in data bun in page if u select date it does not work automatically , u have to got to mediapool page and put keywords then it will reflect on data burn in page, it is so ridiculous...one thing i need to put focus that is sequence versioning,every time vfx update u need to replace manually...if u work in a long form project and u have 200 VFX shot it is very pain full job, in 2024 we expect way sophisticated workflow what resolve is not offering right now...i request to resolve that plz take some inspiration from baselight....

Honestly resolve is very poor in variables of the delivery page. Resolve doesn't even have date option...Even in data bun in page if u select date it does not work automatically , u have to got to mediapool page and put keywords then it will reflect on data burn in page, it is so ridiculous...one thing i need to put focus that is sequence versioning,every time vfx update u need to replace manually...if u work in a long form project and u have 200 VFX shot it is very pain full job, in 2024 we expect way sophisticated workflow what resolve is not offering right now...i request to resolve that plz take some inspiration from baselight....

All of this - I feel your pain so much - we need to be able to switch version on clips in media pool/timeline etc. And also be able to publish edits/files with much more variables. Resolve very quickly became crucial tool in TVC industry as more and more people are editing in Resolve (and basically 99% are grading in Resolve anyway), so it only makes sense to push it more into proper online finishing tool.

+1 ! A few more Variables related to timeline would be helpfull for the filename in Deliver Page, especially:

% Timeline Current IN Timecode: to automatically add the timeline TC IN to a filename in Deliver Page
% Timeline Current OUT Timecode:

Great for back and forth with VFX team.

Yeah, I needed that recently for a feature with about 100 VFX plates, and it was laborious having to type in the first frame of timecode by hand into each clip's filename. (We did not want Frame Counts, which is already a %Variable option.)

Absolutly. Same here recently. % Timeline Current IN (and OUT) Timecode would be an error and time saver!

+1


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Absolutly. Same here recently. % Timeline Current IN (and OUT) Timecode would be an error and time saver!

100% agree -- that would be very helpful, maybe one variable for %Timecode_IN and one for %Timecode_OUT.

Absolutly. Same here recently. % Timeline Current IN (and OUT) Timecode would be an error and time saver!

100% agree -- that would be very helpful, maybe one variable for %Timecode_IN and one for %Timecode_OUT.

200% !!

Huge +1 for alphabetical order.

Huge +1 for timecode in-point! Though, I strongly dislike how current timecode variables get put in the filename with '.' as separator. I understand that they're replacing ':' because that's an illegal character, but for filenames I'd really prefer no separator at all than having multiple '.' in my filename!

Huge +1 for today's date in a flexible format that we can adapt to fit within our own in-house file naming standards. My suggestion would be for %yyyy %yy %mm %dd but at this point I don't even care, I just want to be able to use it and without being forced to use a '-' separator. Users who want yyyy-mm-dd can use %yyyy-%mm-%dd and users who want yyyymmdd can use %yyyy%mm%dd. I just want flexibility!

One thing I'll add is that when burning metadata variables into the picture, we need a way to tell metadata fields to only read from a specific track. For example, currently, if my programme is on V1 and there are a few titles here and there on V2, %reelname will show the reel name of v1 until there is a title on v2, and because there is no reel name associated with the title, that field just goes blank for the duration of the title. Avid avoids this by allowing you to specify which timeline track you want to read the metadata field from.

Huge +1 for alphabetical order.

Huge +1 for timecode in-point! Though, I strongly dislike how current timecode variables get put in the filename with '.' as separator. I understand that they're replacing ':' because that's an illegal character, but for filenames I'd really prefer no separator at all than having multiple '.' in my filename!

Huge +1 for today's date in a flexible format that we can adapt to fit within our own in-house file naming standards. My suggestion would be for %yyyy %yy %mm %dd but at this point I don't even care, I just want to be able to use it and without being forced to use a '-' separator. Users who want yyyy-mm-dd can use %yyyy-%mm-%dd and users who want yyyymmdd can use %yyyy%mm%dd. I just want flexibility!

One thing I'll add is that when burning metadata variables into the picture, we need a way to tell metadata fields to only read from a specific track. For example, currently, if my programme is on V1 and there are a few titles here and there on V2, %reelname will show the reel name of v1 until there is a title on v2, and because there is no reel name associated with the title, that field just goes blank for the duration of the title. Avid avoids this by allowing you to specify which timeline track you want to read the metadata field from.

All of the above

Adding this here to avoid making too many threads; sorry if I'm hijacking!

%variables now being used for the render in place dialogue pop-up is awesome, thank you! However, I'm experiencing two hiccups:

1. custom changes to this string are not remembered after closing the app, meaning we have to re-build the naming scheme each time. If changes here can't be made persistent, please allow us to save custom presets here for fast recall.

2. %clipname doesn't work when the clip being rendered in place is not a media pool clip, like a title or Fusion comp. I.e. using the default string of '%clipname Render' with a media pool clip named 'A0001C001_250324_RNIY' you get a Render In Place clip named 'A0001C001_250324_RNIY Render 1' as expected. However, with a Fusion comp or title called 'My Fusion Comp' you get a Render In Place clip named just 'Render 1' — I realise that %clipname is referencing a Media Pool metadata field, however, can there not be a way for it to fall back to the clip's name as it is in the timeline when that clip does not exist in the Media Pool?

Adding this here to avoid making too many threads; sorry if I'm hijacking!

Don't be sorry, just don't hijack and make a proper thread for what is a very different topic.

Don't be sorry, just don't hijack and make a proper thread for what is a very different topic.

How is it a very different topic? The thread is about %variables and covers multiple different ways in which they can be improved, both on the Deliver page and in the metdata burn-in window. Several replies to the thread raise further areas where %variables could also be improved. I'm not sure why my contribution about %variables as they relate to naming Renders in Place is where you draw the line? Enjoy telling off strangers on the internet, I guess?