Blackmagic Forum

Jim Simon wrote:

Mel Matsuoka wrote:there are times when certain features are accidentally invoked

Honestly, my preference for solving Operator Error issues has always been "pay more attention".

That’s why you are not a software developer, or user-interface designer, because you would not be particularly good at either job.

One of the software/UI designer’s most important jobs is to try and avoid designing things that place responsibilities on the user that the software itself could be handling for them in the first place. Another important part of good software design is anticipating how a user may make mistakes when using a particular application, and implementing ways to help them avoid making those mistakes in the first place, or at least recover from them intuitively when they do.

A common egregious example of this that I constantly run into on the web, are forms that tell you to enter your credit card number or phone number in a very specific format (e.g. 000-123-4567, and not (000) 123-4567). As someone who has developed such forms many times before, I get frustrated with this because if they are going through the trouble of running the user input through some sort of RegEx that checks to see if the input is in the proper format, then why don’t they just “normalize” the input to the format that they want it to be in when it gets input into the backend database, and not place that burden on the user?

You obviously cannot design for every possible situation where a user may make a mistake, but where certain types of “situations” are common errors that users frequently report, then considerations should be made regarding if the design of the problematic feature could be improved.

Telling users to “pay more attention”, instead of properly designing/redesigning the software in the first place, is only an appropriate attitude if you’re the type of arrogant developer who thinks they are doing the world a favor, and is too lazy and/or apathetic to care about useability and user-experience.

If I change the Timeline Viewer from Record Timecode to any other option, like Record Frame or Source Frame, and then navigate with timecode entry, the display reverts back to Record Timecode.

As with all things in the software, it should stay where I set it until I manually change it again.

Jim Simon wrote:If I change the Timeline Viewer from Record Timecode to any other option, like Record Frame or Source Frame, and then navigate with timecode entry, the display reverts back to Record Timecode.

As with all things in the software, it should stay where I set it until I manually change it again.

I reported this bug a very long time ago. That's really very annoying.

+1 to timeline views

One of the gotchas that's been bugging me lately is while working on a Fusion comp, when I switch to Edit, then back to Fusion, the same node doesn't remain selected, thus forcing a manual reselection every time.

That's really annoying.

Adding "Printer Light Hotkeys" setting to the list.

It drives me nuts that I have to manually invoke this every time I start Resolve. It's like requiring the user to manually click an "Enable Control Surface" option every single time they start Resolve!

Jim Simon wrote:change the Timeline Viewer from Record Timecode to any other option

This one is working in 17 Beta 4.

STOOOOOOOOOP opening the Clips panel, Fusion page, in 17 beta.

I want it closed. I close it.

LEAVE IT CLOSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The super annoying 3D Qualifier "Show Paths" checkbox should stay unchecked once you turn it off. I can't remember a single time that I've ever found that option to be useful since the 3D Qualifier was added to Resolve.

Keyframes for the weirdest reason ever defaults to "All" and not "Color".

Please leave them at "Color" by default - who would ever want to use All?

ESPECIALLY since BM thought it would be a "feature" that you can't copy/paste (CMD-C/CMD-V) a single node anymore Now it will paste THE WHOLE NODE TREE unless Color is checked in Keyframes.

I wish I could tweak my UI and ALL settings and save that as my default workspace.

Jim Simon wrote:One of the gotchas that's been bugging me lately is while working on a Fusion comp, when I switch to Edit, then back to Fusion, the same node doesn't remain selected, thus forcing a manual reselection every time.

That's really annoying.

+1

The most confusing, annoying, and utterly asinine change to the Resolve interface is that keyframes on the color page now default to "All" instead of "Color." The default should be "Color."

Having the default set to "All" means that you can't copy/paste individual nodes anymore, without manually changing it to "Color." So as a result, copying/pasting a node instead copies the entire clip's grade. This is a "feature" that isn't needed, as it's already simple to copy an entire clip's grade with the middle-click function (or by grabbing a still and then applying said still).

Basically, Blackmagic has made an important, simple feature (copying/pasting node) more annoying to do, in order to accommodate another feature that was already simple and easy to do (copying a clip's grade). It's very dumb.

It feels like a bug, not a feature.

Default to “all” is and was the default for as long as i can remember.

But +1, I remember asking in the past about having “color” be the default, OR sticky when you restart the box/reopen a project.

waltervolpatto wrote:Default to “all” is and was the default for as long as i can remember.

But +1, I remember asking in the past about having “color” be the default, OR sticky when you restart the box/reopen a project.

Interesting. There must have been a different reason as to why the copy/paste node function was enabled by default then. Because now it's extremely annoying that I have to actually toggle a switch just to make it so I can copy/paste nodes. Very annoying!

And yes, sticky would work ok too. As long as I can pick how it behaves (and it stays that way), I'm game.

What it charged is what the "copy/paste" does in relationship with the "all/ color/ sizing": while before it only copy a single node, now it copy either a node or "all"

waltervolpatto wrote:What it charged is what the "copy/paste" does in relationship with the "all/ color/ sizing": while before it only copy a single node, now it copy either a node or "all"

Got it. Well, I hate it. Haha. It was already very easy to copy a shot's entire node tree, so I'm boggled why Blackmagic would choose to make it more of a nuisance to copy a single node in order to accommodate copying an entire node tree. I hope they change the default behavior back to how it was before.

Aaron Hinton wrote:

waltervolpatto wrote:What it charged is what the "copy/paste" does in relationship with the "all/ color/ sizing": while before it only copy a single node, now it copy either a node or "all"

Got it. Well, I hate it. Haha. It was already very easy to copy a shot's entire node tree, so I'm boggled why Blackmagic would choose to make it more of a nuisance to copy a single node in order to accommodate copying an entire node tree. I hope they change the default behavior back to how it was before.

I know, even in case you use only the keyboard, you could have copy n a memory and paste with [alt+1] [cntrl+1]

but, alas, other battles have my attention...

update in progress, stand by

Jim Simon wrote:One of the gotchas that's been bugging me lately is while working on a Fusion comp, when I switch to Edit, then back to Fusion, the same node doesn't remain selected, thus forcing a manual reselection every time.

That's really annoying.

This one drives me nuts. I have an inkling that it's re-selecting node[i+1] when it should be selecting node[i], maybe it's an error in the code assuming one-based indexing rather than zero-based.

Peter Chamberlain wrote:update in progress, stand by

Thank you so much for changing the node copy/paste behavior back to how it was in previous versions! Beta 8 is feeling pretty solid. I'm loving the new features of Resolve 17, and now I'm loving that the copy/paste is back to normal!

Jim Simon wrote:I would want them to be sticky. Everything should be sticky.

If I put it that way, it's because I want it that way. Leave it that way until I UNput it that way, is what I'm saying.

I fully agree with this. So much time would be saved if every user could just set their personal defaults based on their workflow preferences. I would even argue that one should be able to set their default keyframe interpolation and only change it if there's an exception. Seems to me that most people like their keyframes eased so it doesn't make sense that the default is linear interpolation and you have to change it every time.

Mel Matsuoka wrote:I absolutely agree with you in principle. But there are times when certain features are accidentally invoked, such as qualifier/window highlight mode or disabled grades, and making everything "sticky" would make it very difficult to recover from confusing UI states like this, because restarting Resolve--the general solution to these problems--would not reset these options to their previous states.

Workspace -> Reset UI would do it. The other thing is experience: you learn over time, "ah, when I see THAT, I know this mode is on."

Mel Matsuoka wrote:

Jim Simon wrote:I would want them to be sticky. Everything should be sticky.

If I put it that way, it's because I want it that way. Leave it that way until I UNput it that way, is what I'm saying.

I absolutely agree with you in principle. But there are times when certain features are accidentally invoked, such as qualifier/window highlight mode or disabled grades, and making everything "sticky" would make it very difficult to recover from confusing UI states like this, because restarting Resolve--the general solution to these problems--would not reset these options to their previous states.

There are certain features like that which are only intended to be used in temporary states (I don't know of any legitimate use case for always leaving highlight mode on while working across Resolve sessions), and as such, it makes sense for such options to be excluded from global stickiness.

No listen... that is why "Reset default" exist. Everything SHOULD be sticky. Just have that button somewhere.

One could uncheck "Show Toolbar". But it will only be good until you close the NLE. When you re-launch, it will be checked once again. It should be gone forever.

Settings for "render in place" are also not sticky.

I find it very hard to keep my Deliver settings to "In/Out Range". Resolve REALLY wants to render "entire timeline" - Sometimes even right after I press "add to render queue"!

There is a bug on that front, Andre.

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=128241

Feature request:

Fairlight Page:
Track hights are not retained but reduced to the smallest value when loading a project. Please save and retain track hights!

Tersites75 wrote:Feature request:

Fairlight Page:
Track hights are not retained but reduced to the smallest value when loading a project. Please save and retain track hights!

You can right click on track header and choose Lock Track Height to...

Vit Reiter wrote:

Tersites75 wrote:Feature request:

Fairlight Page:
Track hights are not retained but reduced to the smallest value when loading a project. Please save and retain track hights!

You can right click on track header and choose Lock Track Height to...

Yes, but the dialogue only offers a limited (= discrete) amount of settings, and the "custom" setting (the only interesting one) is buggy as it doesn't get saved but gets reset to "none". Why make this a selectable feature where it makes 100% sense to just remember the settings and be done with it?

Tersites75 wrote:

Vit Reiter wrote:

Tersites75 wrote:Feature request:

Fairlight Page:
Track hights are not retained but reduced to the smallest value when loading a project. Please save and retain track hights!

You can right click on track header and choose Lock Track Height to...

Yes, but the dialogue only offers a limited (= discrete) amount of settings, and the "custom" setting (the only interesting one) is buggy as it doesn't get saved but gets reset to "none". Why make this a selectable feature where it makes 100% sense to just remember the settings and be done with it?

Personally, a fixed height from the list is enough for me, but I agree. It would be better as you say it.

Vit Reiter wrote:You can right click on track header and choose Lock Track Height to...

An interim aid. Ultimately, track height should stay where it's set by the user - in every project, every database.

I'd like the last selected view of a Node Graph grouped clip to be sticky, as outlined in this post:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=98085

It is customary in a professional application that all settings configured by users, when saved should stay saved (if auto save is a problem, the user should take it into consideration).

Do we want user controlled software or user controlling software (FAANGs)

Mel Matsuoka wrote:Another "non sticky" option that annoyed me today:

"Show Timecode Overlays" in the Edit Page viewer

Count my vote in favor.

Jim Simon wrote:There are certain changes that editors can make to the user interface, tools, dialogs, etc. that just don't 'stick'. We have to change these things every time the dialog opens, or for every new project, or every time we restart Resolve.

This thread is for posting which items really annoy us because we have to keep changing them, which items we wish would stay the way we set them up until we change them again.

I'll start.

1. Clips on the Deliver page. I don't want 'em, ever. But I have to turn them off every time I restart Resolve.

2. Advanced Settings under Video on the Deliver page. I do want these, every time. Yet I have to open them up every time I restart Resolve.

3. Qualifier on the Color page. I very rarely use it, so I have to turn it Off every time I open a new project.

4. Timeline View Options on the Edit page. I'd love to set this up just once, and have every timeline in every project for every database use those Options by default.

5. Normalize Audio Level dialog. I always use A/85 for my projects. I'd love for the dialog to remember the last used setting. This 'memory' would persist across all projects in all databases.

6. New Multicam Clip. I always use the same settings here, as well, and would love for this one to also remember those settings across all projects and databases so that I only have to set them up once.

7. Loudness Metering preset, Fairlight page. (Accessed from the three dot menu for the Loudness Meter.) Like I said, I always use A/85, so I'd love for this to stick across all projects and databases until I change it.

What about you guys? Anyone else have anything they wish would stick, so we set them up only once?

I'd love to have the possibility to save different Timeline Views as presets, just like in AVID.

Jim Simon wrote:Update:

4. Timeline View Options on the Edit page. I'd love to set this up just once, and have every timeline in every project for every database use those Options by default.

+1 to this. Very annoying having to do this every time.

a 'Set as default' and 'Restore to default' button at the bottom of this menu would be ace.

+1 to everything being remembered.

Today's annoyance: constantly re-applying Show All Video Frames every time I open Resolve.

TheBloke wrote:Today's annoyance: constantly re-applying Show All Video Frames every time I open Resolve.

Yeeeeeeeessssssss!!!!!!! Freakin' HATE having to do this EVERY...DAMN...TIME!

C'mon BMD. If ever there was a JDI feature, this is it! Just prevent the software from making changes on its own!

EVERYTHING should be remembered!

Every damn time I start the app I have to re-enable Timecode Overlays ... its hardly a huge deal, but its another one of the myriad irksome non-sticky setting annoyances that are just an unnecessary pain.

Edit: Rejoice! Timecode Overlays have reached Sticky status in Resolve 18.5.

There are dozens of great feature requests in this subforum, but this particular thread should be pinned to the top and the devs forced to fix one of them every single day.

(Pretty please)

I like your thinking, Andy.

It would be great if we made some progress on these.

Jim Simon wrote:

allenrowand wrote:- The multicam edit mode, i.e video only or audio and video

That one gets me often, as well. I only ever cut Video. Wouldn't mind if that setting stuck across all projects.

Same here, even in duplicate projects/timelines it seems to default back to Audio-follows-Video for me.

Would also be useful if the Multicam editor window remained selected rather than switching back to Source viewer every time I toggled on/off inspector.

pnguyen720 wrote:It would be great if we made some progress on these.

I'm seeing the Show All Video Frames option (Program Viewer menu) stay enabled across sessions now in both 17.4.3 and 17.4.4.

Yippy!

Aaron Hinton wrote:The most confusing, annoying, and utterly asinine change to the Resolve interface is that keyframes on the color page now default to "All" instead of "Color." The default should be "Color." Having the default set to "All" means that you can't copy/paste individual nodes anymore, without manually changing it to "Color." So as a result, copying/pasting a node instead copies the entire clip's grade. This is a "feature" that isn't needed, as it's already simple to copy an entire clip's grade with the middle-click function (or by grabbing a still and then applying said still).

I missed this question before, but I think starting with Resolve 17.x, this is now taken care of with "Always Perform Copy & Paste on Selected Nodes," in User Prefs -> Color:

Another one that keep biting me in the ass is the size of the Preferences window.

Either make it large enough by default to show all preferences from every tab, or remember it's size and position within that database.

Jim Simon wrote:

Mel Matsuoka wrote:there are times when certain features are accidentally invoked

Honestly, my preference for solving Operator Error issues has always been "pay more attention".

To err is human. That's how we're built. It's always better to make a user interface more forgiving of and recoverable from human error.

Mel Matsuoka wrote:

Jim Simon wrote:

Mel Matsuoka wrote:there are times when certain features are accidentally invoked

Honestly, my preference for solving Operator Error issues has always been "pay more attention".

That’s why you are not a software developer, or user-interface designer, because you would not be particularly good at either job.

One of the software/UI designer’s most important jobs is to try and avoid designing things that place responsibilities on the user that the software itself could be handling for them in the first place. Another important part of good software design is anticipating how a user may make mistakes when using a particular application, and implementing ways to help them avoid making those mistakes in the first place, or at least recover from them intuitively when they do.

A common egregious example of this that I constantly run into on the web, are forms that tell you to enter your credit card number or phone number in a very specific format (e.g. 000-123-4567, and not (000) 123-4567). As someone who has developed such forms many times before, I get frustrated with this because if they are going through the trouble of running the user input through some sort of RegEx that checks to see if the input is in the proper format, then why don’t they just “normalize” the input to the format that they want it to be in when it gets input into the backend database, and not place that burden on the user?

You obviously cannot design for every possible situation where a user may make a mistake, but where certain types of “situations” are common errors that users frequently report, then considerations should be made regarding if the design of the problematic feature could be improved.

Telling users to “pay more attention”, instead of properly designing/redesigning the software in the first place, is only an appropriate attitude if you’re the type of arrogant developer who thinks they are doing the world a favor, and is too lazy and/or apathetic to care about useability and user-experience.

+1000

Amen, Mel

Jim Simon wrote:

TheBloke wrote:Today's annoyance: constantly re-applying Show All Video Frames every time I open Resolve.

Yeeeeeeeessssssss!!!!!!! Freakin' HATE having to do this EVERY...DAMN...TIME!

C'mon BMD. If ever there was a JDI feature, this is it! Just prevent the software from making changes on its own!

EVERYTHING should be remembered!

It might be calming to know that Resolve isn't intentionally changing things back after you've set them. Rather, the program just isn't saving and restoring your setting, so you get the default each time the program restarts.

It would be GREAT if BMD did something at the UI toolkit level such that, without having to intentionally code it every time, UI controls automatically remembered their last setting across sessions. Then BMD could choose the few places they DON'T want that to happen rather than chasing the ever-growing places where it would be nice if things persisted across sessions.

Here's hoping!

If DR remembered the last state of the Source viewer when switching back to the timeline, that would certainly be a big help. Seems to be specific to the Multicam tool, if any of the other tools are selected when switching between timelines, they also stay selected after the switch. But not Multicam, that always goes back to Source "tool," it seems.

Currently the only workaround I found is to set up two keyboard shortcuts but still need two of them... First one to set focus back on Source Viewer and again second one to reset it back to Multicam.... every single time you need to go tot he timeline and then return to source viewer you have to do these keyboard shortcuts, because the setting is not 'sticky' like the other drop down menu items.