Please add these features for editing needs

HI there,

I cut long form in avid media composer mostly. But I've cut features in premiere, and know resolve very well. Use it dailies for creating MXFs for avid, conforming for color, I've cut shorter things in it.

I'm on my first feature film in resolve (someone else started the project I inherited).
It's in 18.5. I can't upgrade because the online post house is staying in that version right now.

Here's some real-world annoyances when cutting narrative long form in resolve I'm running into during my long 14 hour edit days on this movie. So devs, please hear me out. I'm not some new editor, I'm pointing these out for good reason. Feature Films, Network TV, streaming shows, etc. That's where I'm coming from.

And thanks for listening to us users! I’ve attached a screenshot of ONE REEL of this movie (about 20 minutes of content)





Multicam ISO stack goes away... We have scene bins with all related takes in there. They have ISO channels for every mic from the sound device. The moment you create mutlicam object it makes a compound clip type group of the entire ISO stack. This sounds terrible, because you hear phasing and awfulness and its LOUD. I want access to the mic channels so I can selectively put in the timeline what I want. Whether that be cutting all in and disabling the ones I'm not using or cutting in only the useful stuff. Multicam object? Nope. They're all stacked now in a compound, loud as hell you can't control it. Flatten it after its cut in? You are left with one track and you have to overcut the mic stack back in frankly rendering Multicam completely useless in resolve in my eyes. What good is Multicam the moment I lose control of the mic selection? TERRIBLE. Please fix this in a software update!


On that note.. since I've decided to just NOT use Multicam because of this.... when clips are loaded into source side... the mixer tool does not update to give me access to solo / mute / change volume of the ISOs loaded into source. AWFUL. So everything plays full stack on the source side which is horrible. We need access to control what we're hearing source side so we can selectively cut in what we actually want. Be able to audition each channel before cutting in, etc. Instead I'm turning my volume down / up / down / up constantly to deal with this which is a huge annoyance.

Your mixer is TRACK MIXER ONLY. Premiere has a track and clip mixer, avid is clip mixer only basically... In reality for a creative edit we need a clip mixer. Track mixer makes sense for master layback, but in a creative edit I want to be able to scrub through the timeline and see the mixer showing me the clip region values for volume and pan. I've mapped increase / decrease volume to keyboard commands so I can at least up/down db levels by selecting regions and hitting those keys. But its really a complete oversight to not give us a clip mixer. I was baffled when I found this out. I think its because it started as an online tool and editing came later on. But you could definitely improve it by giving us clip values mode on the mixer tool.


If you have a selects sequence loaded into source I wish you guys had a reverse match frame, meaning you can park on a shot in the edit and hit “reverse match frame” and it would find its match in the selects sequence in source. Resolve basically does have reverse match frame ONLY on single clips loaded into source. That works matching back and force. But it can’t do it with selects loaded into source. Obviously you can work around by having selects sequence also opened up, but its an extra step to match frame, then switch timelines to selects sequence, then from source match again (effectively avid style reverse match framing), but wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to do it in one move? Yes it would. To do this you would probably have to make a new mappable action so it does not disrupt how match frame currently works.

User defined bin visual layout. Premiere FINALLY added this after many years. Avid has had it forever. The user can (in thumbnails type view) decide where you visually lay out clips. In piles or groups, rows etc. To help make sense of all the footage in a logical layout that visually represents how many takes of one setup there are, what clips belong to Multicam clips etc. Some editors love the list view, but a TON of editors in long form really really want and need their custom visual layouts. It’s very important to us.


A smaller gripe but Playback->Step One-> … please give us user defined amounts for stepping forward. Stepping one frame forwad/back, great, but then you’ve forced us into one second back/forward/ I might want different values for stepping.

Markers view management of markers!!! We need to be able to manipulate and delete markers in the Markers window! Seriously! VFX marking, edit notes, and beyond. I can’t believe this isn’t already in there.


Audio metadata!!!! And your nonexistent turnover tools. I think the mindset is “everyone will mix in Fairlight!” While some might. Feature films, going to a mix stage… I’ve asked many re-recordists and their teams about Fairlight and they do not like it. They want to use pro tools. Regardless of you guys wanting to convert others to using Fairlight which is a fair goal for your company to have, at this time your turnover tools are nearly non existent. Turning over to a pro tools mix they always want in addition to the usuals like picture ref and AAF/wav mix downs… EDLs in various flavors! They want EDLs of the audio only edit for production sound that reference sound roll, start TC…. Also auxiliary TC, and Sound TC. They want as many ways as possible to relink the original production audio on their end in pro tools from ORIGINAL PRODUCTION AUDIO BWAVs. And it seems that his has been very much overlooked. There is no EDL tool for generating such things. I think resolve would end up being more widely accepted if they made great tools for more robust turnovers to other systems that like. Premiere is also weak on that front. Avid’s List Tool is very very strong. Something to look into emulating. I just tried “Export EDL With Audio” option which makes an EDL that does NOT reference the sound roll data. Which actually does exist in media pool if you look at it in media pool view. Is this on purpose to hurt ppl trying to get to pro tools? Haha. It just seems like a massive oversight on this feature. If this was added probably then we could cut with just the mix track only (which a lot of editors do) and let pro tools side re-conform with all mic channels and take it from there.


Custom columns in bins! Why not give us the ability to add our own data to clips?


Mostly your trimming is very good. WAAAAY better than premiere’s non existent trimming feature set. We need a way to be able to flop trim sides with lassoing. On J/L cuts with a lot of channels, you can lasso them all and then toggle trim side… but we need a way to lasso select tracks at that point to flop to the other side. Right now trim toggle is just toggle ALL. Avid let’s you lasso select whatever tracks you want and it flops the side the other way. This lets us stay in the trim, and modify our directions very nicely. Recall last trim!!!! In avid I recall trim selection 200 times a day easily. Probably 500. Maybe 1000. Dear lord do we need that feature. One way to one-up avid on that would be a history of complex asymmetrical trim selections. “Recall 2 trims ago, 3 trims ago” etc. That would blow my mind to have that. Even though avid can recall the last one… that’s the only one you can recall.



Ability to apply volume to all clips selected in a bin / media pool. example, pulling in 200 pieces of temp score /needle drops and auditioning options. they're all mastered music tracks slamming the db levels and we need to turn alllll those tracks down to like -10, -12db etc. Yeah you can individually turn them down in inspector but that's not workable for a huge pile of music. We calibrate our audio setups for proper monitoring and we don't like having to adjust our volume or dim it during auditioning options. that would be an easy add it seems like.



Thanks again for listening, and I hope in future versions some of this stuff can be addressed.

I do dig deep and try to find solutions before posting but if I missed a way to do any of this I'd love to hear I'm wrong and learn. Thanks in advance.

That’s a crazy good read and feedback.
+1 from me for all of those suggestions

That's a very good list, thanks for posting.

Thank you! I’ve been asking for many of these things for years but nowhere near as persuasively as you just did.

Very well put— huge +1 on all suggestions.


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Don't disagree but, in the meantime:

Multicam completely useless in resolve in my eyes

For my needs, multicam is great as long as I ignore the audio completely ie replace the multicam clip instance's audio (in the master timeline) with the original source audio tracks... the switch is then purely visual and my audio mix entirely unaffected and independent. Works best for me that way and keeps me sane.

the mixer tool does not update to give me access to solo / mute / change volume of the ISOs

Yeah, it's a massive pain. Users have been begging for some degree of inline source side auditioning controls ever since Resolve became usable as an NLE... unfortunately, so far, to no avail.

Great list with excellent explanations. Thanks for taking the time to post this!

While Andy's comments about doing multicam audio manually is the current practical workaround, well ... it drives me around the bend to have to do it. I don't in Premiere, and it's a major annoyance in Resolve for me.

Well, as is no clip mixer ... sigh.

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Your mixer is TRACK MIXER ONLY. Premiere has a track and clip mixer, avid is clip mixer only basically... In reality for a creative edit we need a clip mixer. Track mixer makes sense for master layback, but in a creative edit I want to be able to scrub through the timeline and see the mixer showing me the clip region values for volume and pan. I've mapped increase / decrease volume to keyboard commands so I can at least up/down db levels by selecting regions and hitting those keys. But its really a complete oversight to not give us a clip mixer. I was baffled when I found this out. I think its because it started as an online tool and editing came later on. But you could definitely improve it by giving us clip values mode on the mixer tool.

User defined bin visual layout. Premiere FINALLY added this after many years. Avid has had it forever. The user can (in thumbnails type view) decide where you visually lay out clips. In piles or groups, rows etc. To help make sense of all the footage in a logical layout that visually represents how many takes of one setup there are, what clips belong to Multicam clips etc. Some editors love the list view, but a TON of editors in long form really really want and need their custom visual layouts. It’s very important to us.

+1！Quite agree with these.
Great opinions！Thank you for your post.

Add to this source/record timeline swapping, the way Avid (and latterly Premiere) do it, not the limited way Resolve does it, and source/record patching, also on the Avid model, and the Edit page would be on the way toward industry parity.

However, the universal appeal of these features won't be entirely settled until somebody with no narrative editing experience announces he "votes" no.

+1

+1

+1


and:

Audio metadata!!!! And your nonexistent turnover tools. I think the mindset is “everyone will mix in Fairlight!” While some might. Feature films, going to a mix stage… I’ve asked many re-recordists and their teams about Fairlight and they do not like it. They want to use pro tools. Regardless of you guys wanting to convert others to using Fairlight which is a fair goal for your company to have, at this time your turnover tools are nearly non existent. Turning over to a pro tools mix they always want in addition to the usuals like picture ref and AAF/wav mix downs… EDLs in various flavors! They want EDLs of the audio only edit for production sound that reference sound roll, start TC…. Also auxiliary TC, and Sound TC. They want as many ways as possible to relink the original production audio on their end in pro tools from ORIGINAL PRODUCTION AUDIO BWAVs. And it seems that his has been very much overlooked. There is no EDL tool for generating such things. I think resolve would end up being more widely accepted if they made great tools for more robust turnovers to other systems that like. Premiere is also weak on that front. Avid’s List Tool is very very strong. Something to look into emulating. I just tried “Export EDL With Audio” option which makes an EDL that does NOT reference the sound roll data. Which actually does exist in media pool if you look at it in media pool view. Is this on purpose to hurt ppl trying to get to pro tools? Haha. It just seems like a massive oversight on this feature. If this was added probably then we could cut with just the mix track only (which a lot of editors do) and let pro tools side re-conform with all mic channels and take it from there.

+++++++1

+1 to all of this

+1


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Ability to apply volume to all clips selected in a bin / media pool. example, pulling in 200 pieces of temp score /needle drops and auditioning options. they're all mastered music tracks slamming the db levels and we need to turn alllll those tracks down to like -10, -12db etc. Yeah you can individually turn them down in inspector but that's not workable for a huge pile of music.

This already works. I can select multiple clips in a bin, and changes made in the inspector will apply to all the selected clips.

Multicam ISO stack goes away... We have scene bins with all related takes in there. They have ISO channels for every mic from the sound device. The moment you create mutlicam object it makes a compound clip type group of the entire ISO stack. This sounds terrible, because you hear phasing and awfulness and its LOUD. I want access to the mic channels so I can selectively put in the timeline what I want. Whether that be cutting all in and disabling the ones I'm not using or cutting in only the useful stuff. Multicam object? Nope. They're all stacked now in a compound, loud as hell you can't control it. Flatten it after its cut in? You are left with one track and you have to overcut the mic stack back in frankly rendering Multicam completely useless in resolve in my eyes. What good is Multicam the moment I lose control of the mic selection?

I'm not sure I follow exactly what you are trying to do there, but I think there is probably some setup you could do to have it work the way you want. I agree 100% it would be nice if this was more intuitive / automated, but I'm editing a project with multicam & isos, and I am able to select iso tracks by setting them up as individual audio angles. The only time it plays them all together is inside the multicam "compound clip", which isn't a place to spend time editing.

The key here is to understand how Resolve translates "clips" tracks into "timeline tracks". Part of my clip setup process is to properly set up the audio format for each clip in the audio tab of "clip attributes". The default is to mash all the audio tracks together in a single "multi-channel" track, and what you need for ISO tracks is to create a mono track for each internal ISO. Once you've done this, you'll get a proper set of mono audio tracks that stay linked with your video track. The second thing you need to do is make sure the audio tracks for each multicam angle are also set to mono, or Resolve will attempt to "convert" your mono ISOs to whatever format the track is set to, and it will probably screw up the audio routing in the process.

When creating your multicams, you may need to break out each ISO onto its own audio "angle" track. Done properly, this will let you choose an ISO track as an audio angle independently of whatever video angle is selected. This isn't perfect, because you can only select one angle at a time (making mixes across multiple ISO channels impossible), but it's good enough for picture editing under the assumption that the audio will be re-linked later in post. One other gotcha: Make sure the starting timecode of the multicam matches the timecode of the internal clips. This can't be changed after the fact.

I agree this whole process could be less convoluted and more automated and user-friendly. I would love to see BlackMagic spend some time improving it. But for the time being, I think there's things you can do to make multicams usable.

This already works. I can select multiple clips in a bin, and changes made in the inspector will apply to all the selected clips.

Thanks for that! Yes it does work. Glad to be corrected on that one for sure.


That multicam workflow sounds frankly unworkable when you have like 4 hours of dailies every day coming from production. Avid groups just link via timecode/aux tc/waveform/etc, and keeps all the ISOs, no need to manage audio channels layout/definitions of types etc, it just inherits properties from its sources like it should. And timecode is correct right off that bat. The convoluted workarounds in resolve, sure might work, but its so much manual work to fix how it's functioning that i'd frankly just use avid instead because its so streamlined and just works with multicam. I'll for sure poke around and check out what you're talking about though, maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. But it would have to work via selecting ALL groups (cause we can have TONS and TONS of groups every day) and applying to all of them at once. Having to stupidly type in timecode to a multicamera object made me shiver is disgust haha. WHY!? Just inherit the damn timecode.

Anyway thanks a lot for pointing out something about the groups / ISOs, I'll investigate it. Appreciate it.

SOURCE TIMELINE.
Desperately need a solve for this to coax me from AVID to Resolve.
We should be able to see the source timeline and be able to overwrite/insert from it into our project.

YES!

Several wonderful suggestions here ... +1

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Having to stupidly type in timecode to a multicamera object made me shiver is disgust haha. WHY!? Just inherit the damn timecode.

I'm pretty sure it does this already as long as you are using timecode as the sync basis. The situation I ran into when this didn't work was during workflow tests and using waveform sync. Multicams synced with waveform sync start at 0:00:00:00. Multicams synced with timecode correctly inherit timecode ... or such is what I remember.

This is a great write-up!
I'm also an Avid veteran and this is my first time spending time on Resolve. Don't assume "Avid veteran" means I'm just someone who doesn't want to change his methods, I was also an early adopter of FCP when it first came out, and I've been using Premiere once in a while but regularly. If there is one thing that I miss on all the NLEs, it's the powerful asymmetrical trim tool that Avid invented and improved. And all its options to quickly alter the side you're trimming. I think all long form editors - fiction and docs - will agree with me on this.

I'm taking over a feature doc that was started on Resolve and decided to stick to it, as a real life test. I want to like it, because I like the philosophy of the company. I'm only in my first week and there are already some things that are annoying, especially on a software which is in its 18th version. Today's annoyance was realizing that you can paste audio clip attributes (great), but "pan" is not part of the attributes you can paste (why?)...

I'm also finding the multicam audio very painful. As Bryan said, once clips are in a multicam, all the audio tracks of the angle you're using are mushed together into one track on the timeline. And I have yet to find a simple way to mute one of them. As I said, it's a project I inherited so there are things that were done months ago and I can't change them - unless it's easy to change things in batch. This audio thing is driving me crazy. Real life example: our main character is wearing a radio mic all day long. Sometimes she's off screen, in another room talking to someone whilst the camera is filming something else. So I hear her, even though I don't need/want to! And I have yet to find a simple way to mute her mic!

Whilst on the subject of multicam, and it applies to other types of clips: give me a way to match frame several levels. Sometimes, I might want to match frame a multicam in the timeline, and then I want to match frame to the original clip of a specific angle. Avid let's you match frame until you reach the bare clip (multicam -> synced clip for angle A -> raw clip for the cam angle, or raw sound from the sync). Here, I feel like I have to do a triple somersault... match frame from the timeline to the multicam, then swap timelines, then make sure the angles I don't want are disabled, then match frame to the angle I want to check. There are many actions that require a lot of thinking, and this gets in the way of editing. Avid might be complex, but it has a simple logic that applies to a lot of things. And honestly, next time a student tells me that they don't like it because "it's too complex to use", I will just laugh. I got my producers to buy me a Resolve dedicated keyboard and this thing is a joke... each key has something like 4 options, and a lot of them depend in which window you're operating. Useless.

Please Blackmagic, help us like your software for long form!

Side note, I was also given a Speed Editor which I think could be a cool thing. Except I can't figure out if you can do an asymmetrical trim with it. Can you? Or is it just a tool for the Cut page?

SOURCE TIMELINE.
Desperately need a solve for this to coax me from AVID to Resolve.
We should be able to see the source timeline and be able to overwrite/insert from it into our project.

I can look over anything else somehow, but not seeing timeline when i switch to source frustrates me so much i often get ptsd from it
Besides all other things posted above, seeing the timeline in source is the biggest thing that keeps me from completely switching over to Resolve.
I can even get by with the "non-dockable" UI somehow on 3 monitor setup, but the source timeline view i can't.
I tried getting around this with timelines in tabs and using only record viewer. Then i created shortcuts for going from one timeline to another and back - and it works as intended, but i lose the source-record side by side view, and i'm quite astonished at how depended im from it actually.

and also subclip from timeline...

I know Resolve is a different universe, but as said above if they expect to be widely adopted, i think they need to listen to people a bit more.

oh, plus one million to those feature requests!

SOURCE TIMELINE and VIDEO AND AUDIO PATCHING I beg you!!!!

This is how it NEEDS to be.

I think the Avid patching system is under copyright, otherwise it would have been copied a long time ago. No one ever came close to something as simple and efficient.

In Premiere Pro you CAN Source Timeline. It's not quite as simple as AVID but with a few clicks you can get a non editable sequence in a source timeline to cut from.
It's definitely not under copywrite or anything like that....

Agree with all of these issues.
Long time Avid user, new to Resolve and want to like it but definitely in need of some refinements and updates.

For a VFX editor, these are some things that make my job much harder:

1)Not being able to add custom columns to bins to add additional data (eg: VFX ID, Vendor etc)

2)Not having the flexibility and options of Avid List Tool when exporting EDLs, tabbed lists etc

3)Not being able to grab a subclip from the record timeline and drop it in a bin. When I grab a subclip from the timeline it's a copy of the entire source clip with in and out points for the subclip. I workaround this by match framing back to source and creating a subclip from there but much slower doing it that way.

4)If you match frame to a subclip you can't hit match frame again on the source side to match back to the original clip like you can in Avid

5)No source timeline

6)No ability to select which tracks to cut from source to record

7)In Avid I can export my marker list and then re-import to subcap generator to create subcaps for VFX IDs. Haven't been able to find a way to do this in Resolve which means manually adding titles for all the VFX IDs (which can be in the hundreds).

I'm sure I'll find more things as time goes on...

I like Resolve and am finding it quite intuitive but when you have a tried and tested workflow that can't be used efficiently it doesn't make Resolve a viable choice.

You've used the word A**d too many times, your post will be promptly ignored by the authorities of this forum.

+1

+1

Playback->Step One-> … please give us user defined amounts for stepping forward. Stepping one frame forwad/back, great, but then you’ve forced us into one second back/forward/ I might want different values for stepping.

I'm new to Davinci and not faced to most of OP things because I haven't used them yet. But this stepping one second back/forward is almost first I faced. And it's my pain, for example, I have clips with smooth transitions with one duration and it is not 1 sec. I've found transition start, split, and I need to jump to the end of the transition with one keypress. In Davinci it's impossible now. In APP I just write needed number of frames...
Please, hear us.

I am a long form editor and would love to have a User defined bin visual layout like Avid and Premiere have. PLEASE!!!

I'm actually amazed that a bunch of these little things might have actually been addressed in 19.1. Not all of them, as I agree multicam can be improved a lot in general still, and while they did add a new option for match frame to a timeline source that is loaded in the source monitor, it's not necessarily as powerful but a good change forward.

When it comes to multicams for long form I had a little success combining the linked audio system and multicams to setup each track to solo the production stereo audio mix, and only enable expanded channels when I needed them. Then using Ediload later for expanding assemblies for post audio teams as needed instead of working with tons of channels on the timeline. But I feel 19.1 has simplified this alot:

New in 19.1 Multicam's respect the underlying clips multi channels, so as long as they are linked correctly you have access to all the channels as you need.

But personally, if I know it's going to audio post anyway, I've finally found work arounds to use EdiLoad to do proper hand off assemblies to Pro Tools. But please, Blackmagic, Add the ability to export audio metadata in the ProTools AAF export Tools. The lack of audio metadata export in the AAF even though the wav file metadata does get passed along is frustrating and makes turn overs to sound to Pro Tools painful.

User defined bin visual layout.

I haven't personally missed this as much, but I get it. For me building out keyword libraries for this need was more useful long term (but that's me).

A smaller gripe but Playback->Step One-> … please give us user defined amounts for stepping forward. Stepping one frame forwad/back, great, but then you’ve forced us into one second back/forward/ I might want different values for stepping.

I would love this too, the physical jog wheel on the editor keyboard has made this less painful, but more control could be nice to have.

Custom columns in bins! Why not give us the ability to add our own data to clips?

+1 yes please

Ability to apply volume to all clips selected in a bin / media pool. example, pulling in 200 pieces of temp score /needle drops and auditioning options. they're all mastered music tracks slamming the db levels and we need to turn alllll those tracks down to like -10, -12db etc. Yeah you can individually turn them down in inspector but that's not workable for a huge pile of music. We calibrate our audio setups for proper monitoring and we don't like having to adjust our volume or dim it during auditioning options. that would be an easy add it seems like.

I am able to trim the audio gain on multiple clips in the inspector when selecting multiple clips. I have been for some time. Select a bunch of clips, goto inspector, trim down audio gain. The inspector will say multiple clips are selected and you are off the races no?

I'm pretty sure it does this already as long as you are using timecode as the sync basis. The situation I ran into when this didn't work was during workflow tests and using waveform sync. Multicams synced with waveform sync start at 0:00:00:00. Multicams synced with timecode correctly inherit timecode ... or such is what I remember.

I can also confirm, when syncing multicam's with timecode, the multicam clip's timecode matches the clips timecode when using timecode as the sync base. And when I first link the production audio with the clips using linked audio via timecode, I have access to all the channels on all the camera angles within the multicam clip too. I feel @bryancolvineditor 's setup needed some tweaking.

6)No ability to select which tracks to cut from source to record

They added this in 19.1 where you can define which tracks go where a lot better.

7)In Avid I can export my marker list and then re-import to subcap generator to create subcaps for VFX IDs. Haven't been able to find a way to do this in Resolve which means manually adding titles for all the VFX IDs (which can be in the hundreds).

I'm not sure if this will help, but they added the ability to render marker notes in the data burn -in system. Could be simple than doing subcaps

Bumping this, come on Resolve Support, let's Go!

Bumping this, come on Resolve Support, let's Go!

Have you taken a look at the 100+ new features in Resolve 20?

agree that we’re heading in the right direction overall, but this particular release doesn’t feel as impactful as some of the previous ones.

That said, the addition of the Rsync Media Directories feature has definitely been useful so far appreciate that enhancement.

Bumping this, come on Resolve Support, let's Go!

Have you taken a look at the 100+ new features in Resolve 20?

We don’t do anti lock brakes. But look at these cupholders!