Blackmagic Forum

Hello BMD,

I am really angry about this current behaviour in DR16:
If you copy a clip from a certain track, you cannot paste it onto another track other then the one you copied it via CTRL+C and and CTRL+V.

This happens for two timelines.
At the moment, I am not able to copy clips from track 1 of timeline A and paste it in track 3 (active track) of timeline B. This is hard to understand.

Please change it that way:
Copy clips from any track number and paste it to any other track number, at the position of the playhead.
Thanks.

Jeff

You control the Paste tracks with Auto Select.

Yeah it's pretty simple. Always best to enquire about things (often from the manual) before jumping to conclusions that things can't be done or aren't working correctly.

Tom Early wrote:Yeah it's pretty simple. Always best to enquire about things (often from the manual) before jumping to conclusions that things can't be done or aren't working correctly.

I like your arrogant and ignorant writing, please continue.

JeffreyWalther wrote:arrogant and ignorant writing

Why do people do that, get offended by the messenger and completely miss the message?

Seems counter-productive.

Jim Simon wrote:

JeffreyWalther wrote:arrogant and ignorant writing

Why do people do that, get offended by the messenger and completely miss the message?

Seems counter-productive.

Because they did not read well and did not see the entire problem:
If I paste one clip from a timeline to another, the clip is pasted somewhere else, but never at the playhead. This makes no sense at all.

Switching the auto select buttons on or off DO NOT solve this issue.

That's not my experience: do you have an in point active?

*My* ignorant and arrogant take is, you must have an 'in' or 'out' point somewhere on the timeline, because I can paste wherever I want, at any selected playhead position.

JeffreyWalther wrote:If I paste one clip from a timeline to another, the clip is pasted somewhere else, but never at the playhead.

That was not made clear in the original post. Your main point was that it wasn't pasting on the desired track. The last little tag of "at the position of the playhead" wasn't enough to suggest pasting in a different location was also part of the problem.

But even if we agreed that you posted enough for us to understand the entire problem, it's still solvable with the current capabilities, so the suggestion to read the manual still applies, I think.

Your 'offense' was unwarranted.

And again I am confronted with ignorant answers.

Referring to the manual all the time, because of a common function like Copy&Paste, is an impertinence. Of course, as a user I can expect the copy&paste to work the same way as in any other application. And this does not only apply to NLEs. It is always inserted where the cursor is and Resolve makes an exception for some reason, which is very annoying!

JeffreyWalther wrote:And again I am confronted with ignorant answers.

Referring to the manual all the time, because of a common function like Copy&Paste, is an impertinence. Of course, as a user I can expect the copy&paste to work the same way as in any other application. And this does not only apply to NLEs. It is always inserted where the cursor is and Resolve makes an exception for some reason, which is very annoying!

which means it's a bug with your system, not a missing feature (or else you're just doing it wrong). This feature works exactly the way I would expect it to on the many systems I have used Resolve on, which is the same way it works on the many NLEs I have used over the years (ok they activate tracks in some different ways but that's just a matter of learning the nuances between different software). Where's my ignorance now?

JeffreyWalther wrote:

Jim Simon wrote:

JeffreyWalther wrote:arrogant and ignorant writing

Why do people do that, get offended by the messenger and completely miss the message?

Seems counter-productive.

Because they did not read well and did not see the entire problem:
If I paste one clip from a timeline to another, the clip is pasted somewhere else, but never at the playhead. This makes no sense at all.

You didn't explain the entire problem so how am I supposed to read it? You didn't even spell the thread title correctly.

This year, I have finished:
4x feature movies
31x high end music videos
2x documentaries


Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve.
That is approx. 600 hours of final and payed edit from January until now.

I do have plenty of experience in Resolve.
But the copy & "wild" paste issue is somethine, that seems to be an incorrect implemented thing.
No matter if auto select is switched on or not.... if I paste the clip, it has to be at the playhead, neither at the beginning nor somewhehre 3h later in the timeline. And this sucks. I came across this issue the first time because of a second timeline with some candy shots that have to be implemented in the first timeline.

So this is still a feature request, because the current stuff is not working as expected.

You should read the bottom of this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=90190

which basically says how you should state full system specs and give the devs as much info as possible on the step-by-step procedure for recreating the bug/problem you are experiencing, with a video if need be, so that they can recreate it, because if they cannot see the problem their end (just as myself and others on this thread cannot on our systems), then it will never be addressed. Is it just on 16 that this has happened, or previous versions too?

JeffreyWalther wrote:This year, I have finished:
4x feature movies
31x high end music videos
2x documentaries


Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve.
That is approx. 600 hours of final and payed edit from January until now.

I do have plenty of experience in Resolve.
But the copy & "wild" paste issue is somethine, that seems to be an incorrect implemented thing.
No matter if auto select is switched on or not.... if I paste the clip, it has to be at the playhead, neither at the beginning nor somewhehre 3h later in the timeline. And this sucks. I came across this issue the first time because of a second timeline with some candy shots that have to be implemented in the first timeline.

So this is still a feature request, because the current stuff is not working as expected.

No need for a feature request as it is working for everyone except you. I suggest you do a screen recording of the issue so we can see if you have any in or out marks on the destination timeline. You have not answered previous posts asking this question.

P.S. Calling other forum users arrogant & ignorant is not the best way to encourage other users to help you, and we ARE here to help.

Hi all,

I'm having the same problem on a Mac:

1. CTRL + C on Timeline 1
2. select Timeline 2 (by clicking on timeline "head" where the mute button is located, it becames light grey like it's been selected)
3. CRTL + V

It copyes the clip on Timeline 1.

I agree with the first poster, this basic behaviour is very frustrating it is to all extents a bug of the software. I've already spent 20 minutes trying to understand how to accomplish this simple task, reading froums and watching videos that explains how top copy and paste, none of them solved my issue.

The sole existence of videos and posts on how to copy and paste is symptomatic (WT*..)

Anyway, forgive my frustration, what are the correct steps to copy one clip from Timeline 1 to Timeline 2?

I just realized I wrote "Timeline" when I really meant "Track"

Hi Gianluca,

The way paste works is as follows: The clip(s) to be pasted will start from the lowest numbered track that has Auto Track Selector on.

If one clip is pasted, it goes to the lowest numbered Auto Selected track.

If two or more clips are pasted, the first goes to the lowest numbered Auto Selected track, the second and subsequent go above that in the same relation as it was in the copy source.

So if you copy two clips from tracks 3 & 4 and paste into a timeline where Track 2 is the lowest Auto Selected, the clips go to Tracks 3 & 4. If you copy two clips from Tracks 2 & 5 then paste into a timeline where Track 3 is lowest Auto Selected, they will go onto Tracks 3 and Tracks 6.

In all cases, it's the lowest numbered Auto Track Selector that decides the starting track. A key word here is 'lowest'. In your example it sounds like you disabled the Auto Selector on Track 2, when in fact what you wanted was to disable the Auto Selector on Track 1, so the clip would go to Track 2.

If no track has an Auto Selector enabled, the clip(s) start on a new track above the current highest.

Please see this short example video I made that should demonstrate the permutations:


Note also that Track Auto Selectors are also used for some other functions, such as the behaviour of the Next/Previous Clip/Edit shortcuts (Down/Up arrow respectively, by default), so they are quite important and powerful. There are keyboard shortcuts to toggle them for individual video or audio tracks, or all video or all audio tracks at once.

giangio wrote:I just realized I wrote "Timeline" when I really meant "Track"

There's an Edit button that you can use to fix your posts.

JeffreyWalther wrote:Copy clips from any track number and paste it to any other track number, at the position of the playhead.

On my end, the behavior seems to be exactly as others described. It always pastes at the playhead and the track it pastes to depends on which tracks have auto-select enabled.

Though I'm not sure why auto-select is what chooses where tracks are selected. Feels like it would make more sense for Resolve to paste it into the same track that inserts and overwrites use.

TheBloke wrote:Hi Gianluca,
Please see this short example video I made that should demonstrate the permutations:

Thank you so much for your time and effort in producing the above detailed explanation and video. I will practice the use of auto selectors.

I still consider this a UX bug, the sole existence of a thread like this is the proof. The copy/paste pattern is in use since the beginning of GUIs, not being able to just copy/cut/paste clips on tracks is frustrating.

Again thank you for the effort you put in replying

While I don't agree with OP's general tone, I would agree with the sentiment of it being frustrating and unintuitive to use (even if it is how other NLEs work - of which I don't have enough experience to comment if they do or not).

I don't understand why copy & paste can't work like basically every other piece of (non-NLE) software out there in an intuitive manner.

Turning on and off tracks, activating them, deactivating them, etc, is so unintuitive, time-consuming and easy to forget how to do if you don't do it all the time, and things easily go wrong.

How I believe it should work is that you copy an item on a track (or more than one item), then you click anywhere on the track you want to copy to and put the playback head where you want the copy to insert from. When you paste, it goes in to the selected track from the playback head. Any items on second tracks would then go on to the next non-locked track. The only time it would not do this is if a track was locked. Simple, quick, intuitive.

Even having this as an option would be great.

All of this is explained in detail in the manual and the tutorials. I would point out that cut and paste is handled differently in Avid, FCPX, Premiere, and Resolve. The basic principles are the same, but you have to alter your steps for each specific program. To me, this falls under the category of "learn it and get used to it."