Ability to loop a video clip

Hey, Cosmin, I totally dig this feature request! There is so much good that could be inherited from Vegas Pro by any NLE dev team that would be smart to invest their time in studying this piece of software. I mean, I've tried lots of NLE's. But nothing comes close to simplicity of Vegas, how FAST you can actually get things done there, especially with the Vegasaur add-on.

Tell me, Cosmin, why did you decide to desert Vegas? I'm still rocking it in 2020, although it's five years old. The last Sony update was in June 12, 2015, before MAGIX took over.

The only problem with Vegas 13 is that it doesn't support all formats, even straight from the DSLR. What's more surprising is that VEGAS Pro 18 by MAGIX doesn't support some formats that Vegas 13 had no problem opening. So, it's a weird evolution of software, not to mention that it became pretty slow.

I was charmed by Resolve's ability to open all kinds of formats and there is no other NLE that does it as FAST as Resolve, I think. Premiere being one of the slowest. Vegas 13 - pretty fast. Resolve - very fast! But at the same time they don't even have a normal audio export. At least on Windows it's limited to AAC 192 kbps when saving to MOV/MP4, which is crazy IMO! How can you make a professional NLE and not ensure a simple quality sound output. So, I actually have to MUX video and audio together with YAMB or FFmpeg.

But I drifted away from the feature request. Yes! The small option to right-click any object on the timeline and being able to choose "Loop" would make a big difference. Great idea that originally came to bright minds of developers from Sonic Foundry, who were behind Vegas when I was still in school (over 20 years ago).

To be fair I read everything in this discussion and wanting a feature and demanding a feature is two separate things. First of all can the feature wanted be coded in a efficient manner that will not disrupt other parts of the software. Also consider the fact that if the feature can do more harm than good to a beginning user coming in then there can be some problems. Copy and Paste procedures are as old as the the first IBM computer I ever owned. People on this forum are good people. But they take no bullcrap and that is okay. They actually care. I once posted a tutorial video here and got ummmmm completely destroyed because I was new at what I was talking about. But I turned that negative into a positive and know more about the software than alot of people. So don't feel like you are being attacked. Sometimes as my father put it tough love is the only way some of us can understand.........

Back to the subject of the initial question: does DaVinci Resolve Studio allow to loop clips? Yes, it does. Through Fusion. I've tested it and realized that it's not worth it though, because encoding such a loop takes twice longer than encoding a bunch of copy-pasted clips on a timeline (you can hide them under a compound clip, if you want to keep your timeline a bit more tidy).

Still, if for some reason you want this to be done sorta like in Vegas, this is possible up to 1 million frames. So, for a 30 fps timeline that would mean any clip can be looped for nine hours and fifteen minutes. Not hard to count: 1m (frames) / 30 (frames) / 60 (seconds) / 60 (minutes) = 9,26 (hours). Long enough.

This is done by dropping a Fusion Composition onto the timeline (it's under Effects Libraty > Toolbox > Effects). Then with the playhead over that Fusion Composition (make sure there are no clips covering it, it should be on top), you just:

• Dive into Fusion
• Open Media Pool and drop the clip that you want to loop into the nodes field next to MediaOut1
• Connect MediaIn1 to MediaOut1 (drag the tiny square from MediaIn1 onto MediaOut1)
• With MediaIn1 selected, turn on the Loop option in the Inspector on the right
• Change the Global In/Out to 0 and 1000000
• Change Trim to the maximum Out available

That's it. You can stretch that Fusion Composition as long as you want to. It will loop for many hours. But again, not the fastest way to loop a clip in DaVinci Resolve, at least in v16, where I've tested it. Fusion takes more processing power than simple clip copied across timeline.

So, how I would do it, I would just copy-paste a clip as many times as I want for it to be looping, and then select a group of all theses pasted clips, right click 'em and choose New Compound Clip. If I want to modify this compound clip later, I right click it and choose Open in Timeline.

Would love to be able to loop a video clip. Or even loop a fusion composition in a way that is rendering-efficient... it seems like animations using looped keyframes render each loop afresh.

I just want to jump in here and say I need to loop videos ALL THE TIME, and this feature would be extremely useful to me, rather than infinite duplicates like I'm doing now. I come from a music production background and looping beats and effects is how I compose. Now I'm producing a kids' show using Davinci and I'm layering and looping assets all over the place, but it is far more time-consuming than it needs to be.

I'll add that if the code is too complicated, even the ability to loop a compound clip would be useful. For example, if I duplicate 100 mini videos my colour grading window will be overwhelmed (unless I hide the videos), but a loopable compound clip would keep things clean enough.

I like the idea, some may find it useful but for most professionals, I don't think they will find it as an impactful feature that saves them time. Just with shortcuts, you can make a 20 min loop in 5 seconds and that's a task that I think few people do when working on feature films, tv shows, etc.

The only time I use a loop is to review a change in the timeline or make a 30-second video loop for Instagram.

I know when you're coming from other programs sometimes you want certain features in the new one, but you need to relearn again a lot of things and study all the advantages and disadvantages that Resolve has, and judge if it's convenient to you.

I started on Sony Vegas, then Premier, and now Resolve. I had to learn many things from scratch because every program is different and they have many ways to do things faster.

I think the best way to do things faster is to educate yourself and know where the program can help your work.

For every beginner, I really suggest visiting the Davinci Training Page. I started just clicking Resolve's interface and learning from some youtube videos, but when I took the training I discover a whole universe of possibilities to make things faster in Resolve. By the way, you get certified when you take the training and IT'S FREE!.

Again your idea may be helpful for some, but Resolve needs to address many issues first and implement features that really can improve the work of most professionals.

+1 for simple checkbox "loop". It can be turned off by default for not hurting anyone

Wow, a lot of fire in this thread. It feels like most people against it are ones that don't need the feature because of the type of work they do but it often gets overlooked that Resolve is targeting a much wider audience than before now.

I think it's very common to want to loop video. Not just for adding grain but think simple looped animation videos with alpha like an animated emoji? Imagine a social video with lots of those things and you have to paste them all across your edit. Quite a mess.

Compound clips? Have fun with a huge list of extra entries in your media pool.

Through color page? Not very intuitive and easily tweakable if you are mostly on the edit page because you are editing not colorgrading.

Yes you get my +1

It's not going to hurt anyone not needing it.

It's not going to hurt anyone not needing it.

Some people get confused by features they don’t understand, especially if it makes something easier. Post is supposed to be hard work!

+1

+1
And I suggested that it could be an option of any compound clip (with a right click on it maybe, to activate a "loop" mode of it)

Made a quick mockup of how it could look loke

here : viewtopic.php?f=33&t=137149&hilit=+loop

And here an example for just looping the audio : viewtopic.php?f=33&t=137149&hilit=+loop#p741159

+1 again

+1

Still don't' understand why isn't it a button on the timeline like everywhere else.

Yeah this thing shouldn't discovered by a tip or by having to look into the manual , looping a portion of a clip should be as obvious as the basic loop option imo, like you said.

Still don't' understand why isn't it a button on the timeline like everywhere else.

Yeah this thing shouldn't discovered by a tip or by having to look into the manual , looping a portion of a clip should be as obvious as the basic loop option imo, like you said.

It's nowhere near common enough to warrant that

+1

Even "good old" After Effects offers the option (in the "Interpret footage" window).

I have written a small script that repeats the top clip of the timeline
below the playhead as often as you like.

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/env python

r"""
This script will repeat top timeline clip below the playhead.
Use track patcher for destination.
If clip is not in a bin (effect clip...) make "Compound Clip" first.
This script was written by Christoph Schmid
feel free to alter it to your needs.
I take no responsibility for any harm caused by this script.
This script is designed to run inside Davinci Resolve.

On startup, DaVinci Resolve scans the Utility Scripts directory and enumerates the scripts found in the Script application menu.
Placing your script in this folder and invoking it from this menu is the easiest way to use scripts.
The Utility Scripts folder is located in:
Mac OS X: /Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Fusion/Scripts/Edit/
Windows: %PROGRAMDATA%\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Fusion\Scripts\Edit\
Linux: /opt/resolve/Fusion/Scripts/Edit/ (or /home/resolve/Fusion/Scripts/Edit/ depending on installation)


You may need to edit environment variables:

Mac OS X:
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API="/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Developer/Scripting/"
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_LIB="/Applications/DaVinci Resolve/DaVinci Resolve.app/Contents/Libraries/Fusion/fusionscript.so"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API/Modules/"

Windows:

RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API="%PROGRAMDATA%\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\Developer\Scripting\"
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_LIB="C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\fusionscript.dll"
PYTHONPATH="%PYTHONPATH%;%RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API%\Modules\"

Linux:

RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API="/opt/resolve/Developer/Scripting/"
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_LIB="/opt/resolve/libs/Fusion/fusionscript.so"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API/Modules/"

"""


import DaVinciResolveScript

resolve = DaVinciResolveScript.scriptapp('Resolve')
project_manager = resolve.GetProjectManager()
project = project_manager.GetCurrentProject()
current_timeline = project.GetCurrentTimeline()
mediapool = project.GetMediaPool()
current_bin = mediapool.GetCurrentFolder()



ui = fu.UIManager
disp = bmd.UIDispatcher(ui)

dlg = disp.AddWindow({'WindowTitle': 'Repeater',
                      'ID': 'Repeater',
                      'Geometry': [400, 200, 200, 100],
                      'Spacing': 0, }, [
    ui.VGroup({'Spacing': 5, }, [
        # Add your GUI elements here:
        ui.HGroup({'Spacing': 10, }, [
            ui.Label({'ID': 'label_1', 'Text': 'Repeat', 'MaximumSize': [50, 20], 'MinimumSize': [50, 20]}),
            ui.LineEdit({"ID": "edit_times", "Text": "10", 'Events': {'ReturnPressed': True }, 'MaximumSize': [100, 20]}),
            ui.Label({"ID": "label_2", "Text": "times"}),
        ]),
        ui.HGroup({'Spacing': 10, }, [
            ui.Button({'ID': 'bt_addClips', 'Text': 'Repeat', 'MaximumSize': [200, 20]})
        ]),
    ]),
])

itm = dlg.GetItems()

def execute(ev):
    current_item = current_timeline.GetCurrentVideoItem()
    item_end = current_item.GetEnd()
    item_dur = current_item.GetDuration()
    item_in = current_item.GetLeftOffset()
    current_mp_item = current_item.GetMediaPoolItem()

    startFrame = int(current_mp_item.GetClipProperty('Start')) + item_in
    endFrame = startFrame + item_dur - 1
    times = int(itm['edit_times'].Text)
    for i in range(times):
        mediapool.AppendToTimeline([{'mediaPoolItem': current_mp_item,
                                   'startFrame': startFrame,
                                   'endFrame': endFrame,
                                   'recordFrame': item_end + i * item_dur}])

dlg.On.bt_addClips.Clicked = execute

def _func(ev):
    disp.ExitLoop()
dlg.On.Repeater.Close = _func

dlg.Show()
disp.RunLoop()
dlg.Hide()




Save this code as repeater.py in the corresponding directory:

Mac OS X: /Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Fusion/Scripts/Edit/
Windows: %PROGRAMDATA%\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Fusion\Scripts\Edit\
Linux: /opt/resolve/Fusion/Scripts/Edit/ (or /home/resolve/Fusion/Scripts/Edit/ depending on installation)

You may need to adjust the environment variables of your system:

Mac OS X:
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API="/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Developer/Scripting/"
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_LIB="/Applications/DaVinci Resolve/DaVinci Resolve.app/Contents/Libraries/Fusion/fusionscript.so"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API/Modules/"

Windows:
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API="%PROGRAMDATA%\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\Developer\Scripting\"
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_LIB="C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\fusionscript.dll"
PYTHONPATH="%PYTHONPATH%;%RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API%\Modules\"

Linux:
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API="/opt/resolve/Developer/Scripting/"
RESOLVE_SCRIPT_LIB="/opt/resolve/libs/Fusion/fusionscript.so"
PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$RESOLVE_SCRIPT_API/Modules/"

You can start the script from inside Davinci Resolve:
Workspace > Scripts > repeater

If the clip is not in a bin (effect clip...) make a "Compound Clip" first.