Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

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Gene Cornelius

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostThu Dec 10, 2020 3:14 am

Just commenting on my previous post here. It dawned on me (yeah, I'm slow, be nice) that using nested timelines does not have the problem of not being able to see "through" or in context to the video below, or in context with the other clips before or after them.

The workaround is so stupid simple I feel a bit foolish, but sharing here to help the next "fool". Right?

Copy the base clips to which you want to refer onto a similar track on the nested timeline. Just remember to mute that track when going back to the main timeline. Making the main timeline clip a Compound clips "seems" to free up some computer resources as well. Obviously if any changes are made to the base clips on the parent timeline then update the nested timeline(s) as well.

Then one can add FX, crop, position, animate, colour, etc. HOWEVER.

The big however is with regard to alpha on the nested timeline's clip ... due to the fact that while it seemed to work the first time I messed with it (foolishly not saving) I tried a different approach, and now I can't get it to work. I can use a mask on the nested timeline in the parent timeline, and that works, but if I use a mask, say, to cut out everything but the center of the frame, with alpha output connected, the outside of the clip goes away .. but that alpha does not translate when the timeline is placed as a clip in the parent timeline over the base clip.

If I could get this to work again I would likely not post again about this as it seems to have addressed all my issues but for that one: Alpha channel.
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Timo92

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostFri Dec 18, 2020 1:28 am

Gene Cornelius wrote:So yeah, it would be really cool to have Compound Clips' contents be accessible without decomposing (so "opening" perhaps, kind of like twirling down a layer in AE), and have the resolution of the CC be independent of timeline/project resolution.


That is already possible. Right click the compound clip. Click "Open in Timeline".
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wfolta

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostFri Dec 18, 2020 2:20 am

Gene Cornelius wrote:My main issue was that I was thinking of compound clips like layers in a pre-comp in AE. Or even without pre-comp.

Argh. I was following the discussion with interest until I suddenly realized that some people are using compound clips, etc, to do AE-style compositing. Nooooooooooo.... please no! Therein lies insanity, inefficiency, copies upon copies, accidental offsets, and strange menus that pull in keys from other layers that are created only to be immediately made invisible.

I'm not sure how one should draw a line between editing/formatting uses for nesting and misguided compositing. But to the extent that the discussion is asking BMD to spend time and effort to enable AE-style compositing, it's scary.

Multi-cam clips make sense totally. Compound clips make sense if they're meant to offer alternatives. Also for expedient measures to solve a last-minute Media or Delivery problem. But if folks are using it for Compositing we're doomed. [Only half said in jest.]
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Mark Grgurev

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostFri Dec 18, 2020 11:53 pm

wfolta wrote:Argh. I was following the discussion with interest until I suddenly realized that some people are using compound clips, etc, to do AE-style compositing. Nooooooooooo.... please no! Therein lies insanity, inefficiency, copies upon copies, accidental offsets, and strange menus that pull in keys from other layers that are created only to be immediately made invisible.

I'm not sure how one should draw a line between editing/formatting uses for nesting and misguided compositing.

Sadly, I don't see a future where people won't try to do that. Compound Clip has been used for far more than formatting for a long time.

If you want to grade a clip in the Color page before sending it to a composition, BMD officially recommends that you wrap it in a Compound clip.

That only works on one clip though. if you want to grade multiple clips in the Color page before sending them to one composition, then you need to wrap it in a Fusion Clip. Unfortunately, if you want to change the grades and effects on the clips after they're fed into the composition, you need open the Fusion Clip as timeline which means you can't see your changes in the context of the composition.

If you want to do that then you need to composite using the Color page. That's fine because the Color page is actually pretty decent for doing some types of compositions but it has some weird limitations. For example, you can't apply effects to Titles in the Color page, so if you want track a title to a clip in the Color page, you need to wrap it in a Compound clip. If you want to apply a vignette to a Generator you gotta wrap it in a Compound Clip. If you want to encapsulate that composition into a single clip, you can just select of the used clips and wrap them in a Compound clip.

The has a lot of other downsides though. Now new Compound clips are being created in the Media Pool for every title or generator you want to include in the composition. If you want to change the settings for those titles or generators then you need to open each Compound clip as a timeline which, yet again, means you have to make those changes without seeing them in the context of the composition. To make things worse, since they technically aren't timelines, you can't apply Timeline Grades to them.

The one big advantage that comes with using the Color page for composition and then wrapping those clips in a compound clip is that that outer Compound clip exists within the Media Pool. That means you can drop that Compound clip into any timeline and, whenever you make changes to it, those changes propagate to all other instances of the Compound clip.

You'd think that would apply to Fusion clips, too, but it doesn't. Dragging a Fusion Clip or Compound Clip into a timeline will drag it in a blank composition. The only objects that can have compositions associated with them in the Media Pool is a Fusion Composition but it's not really treated like a container, it's treated like a black clip that has a Fusion Composition on it. If you use that clip to make a few clips in the timeline, then changing the version in the Media Pool won't change the clips in the timeline. The clips in the timeline actually have no connection to the version in the Media Pool at all. You can delete the clip it was made from in the Media Pool and it won't effect the one in the timeline.

If you want multiple clips in the timelines to linked to same composition, then you need to take whatever clip has the composition on it, whether it be a Fusion Composition, Compound Clip, or Fusion Clip, and wrap it in a Compound clip.

Effectively, Compound clips become the only way to make instances of Fusion compositions which makes them exactly like pre-comps.

I tried to propose an alternative to this and other behaviors. but that topic didn't even get to two pages of responses within a year so I guess no one was interested. I would prefer that BMD actually fix the shortcomings in Resolve's VFX workflow and processing pipeline, but it seems people are perfectly happy with using Compound clips like pre-comps to sloppily get around them.

It's scary how much I've seen community members defend behaviors in Resolve that have inherit inefficiencies and instead prefer patchwork solutions that further complicate the software. The answer to a lot of Resolve current problems is to remove and condense, not to expand.

wfolta wrote:But to the extent that the discussion is asking BMD to spend time and effort to enable AE-style compositing, it's scary.

They already spent time on that already since Track mattes and Adjustments clips are part of the Edit page. There's really no attempts by BMD to actually consider how to best integrate features into Resolve as a whole anymore and they see the multi-page paradigm as their excuse to get sloppy.

wfolta wrote:Multi-cam clips make sense totally.

I feel like they make sense until you try the Cut page's method of multi-cam editing. Then you kind of realize how backwards the traditional method of multi-cam is.

It's my belief that Resolve only really needs one clip container: timelines. The only real advantage I can see to Compound Clips is that they're hidden from the timeline list but I'd be just as happy with a "Hide From Timelines List" option in the context menu. That could even be the default for timelines made within other timelines. If any other tools were added for timeline organization and readability, I'd prefer they be something unique instead or four different types of clip containers with slight differences.
Last edited by Mark Grgurev on Sat Dec 19, 2020 12:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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wfolta

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostSat Dec 19, 2020 12:03 am

I like how Cut works for multi-cam in some sense. Very retro. Very tangible. Works smartly with the Speed Editor.

But -- and I haven't tried this, so I could have it totally wrong -- doesn't the Cut way force you to choose a camera and then you're stuck? Not in the sense that you can't do things to overwrite it with another camera, but in the sense you can't simply select another camera from a menu and have it instantly replace the current camera in that clip.

I guess the clean way to do it is the Cut way, but combine that with Sync-Clips-style, dynamic menus that let you overwrite with any other clip that covers the same range of time. The Edit way seems less like destructive editing, but with smart enough menus, you have the same convenience but without Multicam clip overhead.
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Mark Grgurev

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostSat Dec 19, 2020 1:13 am

wfolta wrote:I like how Cut works for multi-cam in some sense. Very retro. Very tangible. Works smartly with the Speed Editor.

And it has the side-effect of not requiring you to enter the multi-cam clip, de-compose the multicam clip, or create groups to apply grade to clips from the same cameras after the edit.

wfolta wrote:But -- and I haven't tried this, so I could have it totally wrong -- doesn't the Cut way force you to choose a camera and then you're stuck? Not in the sense that you can't do things to overwrite it with another camera, but in the sense you can't simply select another camera from a menu and have it instantly replace the current camera in that clip.

I guess the clean way to do it is the Cut way, but combine that with Sync-Clips-style, dynamic menus that let you overwrite with any other clip that covers the same range of time...

Took me a second to get what you meant but yes, that's true lol But considering it's getting the clip-to-camera and the camera-to-camera relationships from the bin, I don't see why they couldn't add an option in the context menu to change cameras just like you suggested.

In fact, I wasn't aware of this until just now that the Cut page seems to store it's sync-bin relationships into locked multi-cam clips in the Media Pool. The Cut page hides them but you can see them, open them, and even edit them in the Edit page. From what I can tell, it appears to save a new Multi-cam clip each time you re-synchronize clips in the bin and uses the newest one so you can always revert back to a previous sync relationship.

I still kind of wish it wasn't just saved as a multi-cam timelines though just because it means they can contain adjustment clips and disabled/muted tracks and clips. Since the Cut page's "Place on Top" and "Source Overwrite" options actually place clips on top of other clips, there's at least some conceivable way that someone can actually make use of Adjustment Clips in Cut page's multi-cam but since Adjustment clips can't be view in a Source Viewer, the Cut page won't let you drop them in that way anyway.

wfolta wrote:The Edit way seems less like destructive editing...

That's interesting because I see it the opposite way. Both store the clip-to-camera and camera-to-camera relationships but once you flatten a multi-cam clip and make some changes, there's no going back. Meanwhile the Cut page's multicam editing could continue to work even on flattened multi-cam clips.
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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostSat Dec 19, 2020 11:18 am

I need davinci to render separate clips with speed and stabilization effects implemented. I waste a lot of time compound clipping clips. please make it an option to render with all speed effects implemented. thanks.
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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostSat Dec 19, 2020 3:19 pm

Mark Grgurev wrote:
wfolta wrote:The Edit way seems less like destructive editing...

That's interesting because I see it the opposite way. Both store the clip-to-camera and camera-to-camera relationships but once you flatten a multi-cam clip and make some changes, there's no going back. Meanwhile the Cut page's multicam editing could continue to work even on flattened multi-cam clips.

I think what I'm seeing is how Multicam presents itself. In Edit, it's a Multicam clip that contains all the cameras (that were entered into the clip by me) and I can non-destructively choose which camera displays when the playhead is over the clip.

In Cut, it literally (appears to) lay the clip from the camera I've chosen over a clip from another camera and it just so happens that they match in timecode. Just as the Sync Bin (appears to) just present separate clips that have content at a particular timecode and let you add them to the timeline. So the overlaid clip can't just be turned into another clip: it's a destructive operation. (Not to the original clip, of course, but in the sense that you can't make a different choice in one swoop, you'd have to delete that clip and do the same steps again with a different one.)

That could be implemented (I think) with no containers of any kind. Just raw video clips with timecode metadata and smart editing functions that take the current timecode into account and only bring in clips with appropriate timecode. You could then grab the clip and move it if you want -
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Mark Grgurev

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostSat Dec 19, 2020 4:57 pm

wfolta wrote:I think what I'm seeing is how Multicam presents itself. In Edit, it's a Multicam clip that contains all the cameras (that were entered into the clip by me) and I can non-destructively choose which camera displays when the playhead is over the clip.

I supposed a similar function could be added to the Sync Bin via options to only show clips from the current bin or via show/hide button per camera. The UI kind of infers that it should already have the former behavior but it's not working.

There's actually a lot of stuff that the Sync Bin strangely half-acknowledges. Since it's just a version of a multi-cam clip anyway, you can already disable tracks and add markers if you open up that multicam sequence in the Edit page. The Sync Bin will actually show those markers and will gray out the disabled camera but you can't actually add markers from within the Sync Bin and the disabled camera will still show in the Source Viewer as if it's a camera that's off. It even acknowledges when a clip has a color grade on it but it won't insert it into the timeline with the grade applied. Then you lose all of that if you just re-synchronize because it's creating a new multi-cam sequence.

There's definitely ways that Sync-Bins can be improved but I don't think we disagree on that lol
wfolta wrote:In Cut, it literally (appears to) lay the clip from the camera I've chosen over a clip from another camera and it just so happens that they match in timecode. Just as the Sync Bin (appears to) just present separate clips that have content at a particular timecode and let you add them to the timeline. So the overlaid clip can't just be turned into another clip: it's a destructive operation. (Not to the original clip, of course, but in the sense that you can't make a different choice in one swoop, you'd have to delete that clip and do the same steps again with a different one.)

That could be implemented (I think) with no containers of any kind. Just raw video clips with timecode metadata and smart editing functions that take the current timecode into account and only bring in clips with appropriate timecode. You could then grab the clip and move it if you want -

Of course! You can kind of think of the Sync Bin as a kind of Take Selector for all synced clips on the timeline. The only difference is that the sync relationship isn't being stored in your work area. You could also think of it like a multi-cam version of the Source Tape view.
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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostThu Aug 05, 2021 5:11 pm

another limitation: if your Compound clip contains stereoscopic clips, once you open it to grade them, you cannot access their stereoscopic palette, so you can't make any stereoscopic changes. you have to temporarily copy the clip to the parent timeline, do the stereo edits there, and then paste it back into the Compound clip.

like everyone else, I originally assumed that Compound clips are just nested timelines, we definitely need those.

BTW as of Resolve 17.2.2, Spatial NR does work on Compound clips, but Temporal NR still does nothing.
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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostTue Oct 26, 2021 11:09 pm

+1
Also to allow multicam timelines the same flexibility of regular timelines: Timeline settings, Start Timecode, etc.
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Joe Shapiro

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Re: Overhaul the "Compound Clip" vs. Nested Timeline system

PostThu Jan 05, 2023 8:35 pm

+1 for unifying the various forms of timelines. Plus I'd like to add another timeline-like object from Resolve: synced clips. Audio syncing would be much more flexible if these timeline-like objects could be operated on with the normal timeline tools. Here's a request that discusses such:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=150358
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