Ctrl Shift Drag in Timeline Not Working As Expected

Hi there,

Just installed beta 7 over beta 6...

The only thing I have noticed so far is that when I select a clip and try to Ctrl-Shift-Drag it to another part of the timeline on the Edit page, it no longer swaps positions with other clips, but instead just overwrites/ripples in the middle of clips. It does not switch positions with other clips, dropping at a clip boundary, but can actually be dropped in the middle of a clip. This is with the A pointer selected.

This was working fine in betas 4, 5 and 6. The strange thing is that I noticed in the release notes for beta 7, it mentioned an 'additional feature': -

Added support for swapping clips in the Edit timeline using Cmd/Ctrl+Shift and dragging

So, I am a bit confused, as we actually already had this feature prior to beta 7, so why listed as something new? But the main thing is that, as I can see, this now longer works as expected in beta 7 where as it did before. Am I missing something?

Cheers,
Cass.

Hi
I'm on a PC and it works perfectly on b7 for me...

Hi
I'm on a PC and it works perfectly on b7 for me...

Thank you for posting. Yes, it is strange. I guess we have seen that before that depending on the exact set-up of computers, a differing result. I reloaded beta 6, and all works perfectly, but just not in beta 7.

I guess I can probably just stick with beta 6 for now until beta 8 is released and see if the problem repeats... Thanks again.

That is very odd.
A wild guess, how about as an experiment, saving your keyboard preset, then changing to the default or something else. Perhaps there is some odd conflict there? Worth a try.

That is very odd.
A wild guess, how about as an experiment, saving your keyboard preset, then changing to the default or something else. Perhaps there is some odd conflict there? Worth a try.

Thank you for the suggestion...

Yes, I did give that a try, plus I swapped physical keyboards, and changed Win 10 software keyboard driver, tried a few different settings, making sure nothing was amiss within DaVinci preferences, but to no avail. I have a keyboard checking app to ensure that the Ctrl and Shift keys were being pressed, and all good. Other software I use perfectly recognizes those keys.

I can uninstall beta 7 and install beta 6, and all works fine. When I then install beta 7, it is back to not swapping clip positions, but literally dragging clips over others, rippling frame by frame, the same action as the normal Ctrl-Alt-Drag in previous versions. What was interesting was that Ctrl-Shift-, and . (comma and period) worked on beta 7 fine, swapping clips left and right... It's weird.

I could replicate it over and over again...

I am at a loss, so I am back to beta 6 for the moment. Maybe the developers will find something in time for beta 8... I hope so, as I use this function rather a lot

Look closely. What's happening is likely not an overwrite, but a partial swap (in the middle of a clip) if you end the mouse drag anywhere but an actual cut point.

Try it again, but don't release the action until you snap to a cut.

Look closely. What's happening is likely not an overwrite, but a partial swap (in the middle of a clip) if you end the mouse drag anywhere but an actual cut point.

Try it again, but don't release the action until you snap to a cut.

Hi John, yes, I can do that, and yes, I can get it to sit at an intersection, but previously it worked much better than that; I didn't have to release when it snapped into place. Clips should shuffle a whole clip at a time and snap automatically

Sorry, my language was a bit off... It is not over-writing, it is in fact doing a frame-by-frame ripple, moving the clip anywhere I want. If dropped on the middle of a clip, none of that clip is over-written, but is partitioned either side of the clip that was dropped onto it.

Like I said, it is exactly the same thing as under normal circumstances one uses the Ctrl-Alt-Drag action...

As per page 357 in the manual, prior to beta 7: -

1. With Ctrl-Shift-Drag I was able to shuffle clip(s) along the time line, and the clip(s) would be placed at intersections between other clips, rippling whole clips to the right or left as necessary.

2. With Ctrl-Alt-Drag I was able to shuffle a clip(s) along the time line, and the clip(s) could be placed at any point within another clip, rippling any partial and whole clips to the right or left as necessary.

In neither case, there wasn't any actual over-writing. With beta 7, when I use Ctrl-Shift-Drag, I effectively can do what normally happens in 2 above.

Hope that explains it better...

Cheers, and looking forward to any more suggestions you can all think of...

I'm seeing the same behavior as Cass. Beta 6 was more of a 'hard' swap, with the selected clip dropping only at clip boundaries. Beta 7 has now offered us a 'soft' swap, allowing us to drop the selected clip anywhere, including at clip boundaries when Snap is on.

I'm not sure I want to complain about the added capability.

I'm not sure mouse control is precise enough for this feature to be useful. And it's easy to miss the cut point, if your intention is to swap whole clips.

But to the OP's point, this feature does what it always did. It just does more now, whether the b73 modification is welcome or not.

I'm seeing the same behavior as Cass. Beta 6 was more of a 'hard' swap, with the selected clip dropping only at clip boundaries. Beta 7 has now offered us a 'soft' swap, allowing us to drop the selected clip anywhere, including at clip boundaries when Snap is on.

I'm not sure I want to complain about the added capability.

Hi there, yes, that's what I'm talking about

I agree it does now allow both ways, although now I have to think about it more, making sure I release the mouse when the clip snaps into place rather than previously I knew it would always snap into a clip-boundary position. The old method of Ctrl-Shift-Drag for shifting and snapping a clip at a time, and Ctrl-Alt-Drag for shifting anywhere (as you say, the soft swap) seemed to work better in my case...

Anyway, good to hear someone else sees the 'issue' (or is it now a feature?).

Thank you...

I'm not sure mouse control is precise enough for this feature to be useful. And it's easy to miss the cut point, if your intention is to swap whole clips.

But to the OP's point, this feature does what it always did. It just does more now, whether the b73 modification is welcome or not.

Yes, your first point. It was much easier 'knowing' it would snap to a boundary point no matter where one released the mouse using Ctrl-Shift. And If I wanted to release anywhere within a clip I had the option of Ctrl-Alt dragging.

EDIT: So to your second point, actually it does less now. We always had the Ctrl-Alt-Drag method to do what beta 7 does now (frame-based precise control), but we used to also have the original Ctrl-Shift-Drag method (clip-based coarse-control). So we have actually lost half of the functionality here.

It would be interesting to know from Bm if the beta 7 way is actually now 'by design'...

Edit:
I just read what easycass wrote.

As per page 357 in the manual, prior to beta 7: -

1. With Ctrl-Shift-Drag I was able to shuffle clip(s) along the time line, and the clip(s) would be placed at intersections between other clips, rippling whole clips to the right or left as necessary.

2. With Ctrl-Alt-Drag I was able to shuffle a clip(s) along the time line, and the clip(s) could be placed at any point within another clip, rippling any partial and whole clips to the right or left as necessary.

In neither case, there wasn't any actual over-writing. With beta 7, when I use Ctrl-Shift-Drag, I effectively can do what normally happens in 2 above.

I don't like the way, they have changed this feature. Not at all.
[Ctrl + Shift] should swap clips just like before beta 7.
Because the way it's working now is very dangerous and slows you down tremendously.
What good is a shortcut, if I have to zoom in to make sure I'm not cutting a clip in half? It's annoying and in the worst case it might destroy your edit without you knowing.
It was perfectly fine the way it was before.

I don't like the way, they have changed this feature. Not at all.
[Ctrl + Shift] should swap clips just like before beta 7.
Because the way it's working now is very dangerous and slows you down tremendously.
What good is a shortcut, if I have to zoom in to make sure I'm not cutting a clip in half? It's annoying and in the worst case it might destroy your edit without you knowing.
It was perfectly fine the way it was before.

Yes, I am right with you on that.

Essentially, before beta 7, it worked as per the manual. Ctrl-Shift-Drag allowed easy shuffling of clips to 'gaps between other clips' (coarse clip-based granularity), and Ctrl-Alt-Drag allowed easy shuffling of clips to 'anywhere, either gaps between clips or intersecting other clips' (fine frame-based granularity).

We have lost the former of these two functions. Instead of having two methods to shuffle clips, we now have only one method. To me it is a loss of functionality.

I will send a support ticket to Bm.

So, I got a reply back from support...

It is a feature that is still there, but there has been a change in how it works.
As per the release notes for R15 beta 7:
"Added support for swapping clips in the Edit timeline using Cmd/Ctrl+Shift and dragging"

The development team has confirmed that the behaviour seen in beta 7 is by design.
However, we are always open to feedback from our customers, and the team will monitor the feedback.

For now, if you want to do the same ctrl+shift behaviour as before, you will need to be more precise when shifting the clips.

So, even though they say in the release notes 'added' support for Ctrl-Shift-Drag, what they meant was, 'disabled the feature'. They changed the behavior so that the previous Ctrl-Shift-Drag now has the behavior of the previous Ctrl-Alt-Drag, and deleted the ability that we had with the previous Ctrl-Shift-Drag. There is no added functionality, but actually now only 50% of what we used to have.

Oh well, I guess I 'will need to be more precise'. Fancy making software harder to use instead of easier...

I will persevere nonetheless...

This is a perfect example of the difficulty of trying to meet all user requests. I remember a user request to change the previous behaviour to allow the two operations on one keyboard shortcut, to improve efficiency. I also prefer the previous behaviour.

This is a perfect example of the difficulty of trying to meet all user requests. I remember a user request to change the previous behaviour to allow the two operations on one keyboard shortcut, to improve efficiency. I also prefer the previous behaviour.

Yes, I know what you mean. I have just sent another support email to them, as I am still unclear what we have gained.

For completeness, I have pasted in my email to them below: -

Prior to beta 7

1. Ctrl-Shift-Drag - SHUFFLE clip(s) along timeline a full clip at a time, always dropping between other clip boundaries (requiring less precision)
2. Ctrl- Alt-Drag - SHUFFLE clip(s) along the timeline a frame at a time, dropping to anywhere within or between other clips (requiring greater precision)
3. Drag - MOVE clip(s) along the timeline a frame at a time, dropping to anywhere within or between other clips (requiring greater precision)

Beta 7

1. Ctrl-Shift-Drag - SHUFFLE clip(s) along the timeline a frame at a time, dropping to anywhere within or between other clips (requiring greater precision)
2. Ctrl- Alt-Drag - MOVE clip(s) along the timeline a frame at a time, dropping to anywhere within or between other clips (requiring greater precision)
3. Drag - MOVE clip(s) along the timeline a frame at a time, dropping to anywhere within or between other clips (requiring greater precision)

The highlighted feature above is no longer present. And now, both Drag and Ctrl-Alt-Drag do exactly the same thing.

The previous ability to only drop between clip boundaries is a tremendous time-saver, and saves one from inadvertently splitting another clip when doing the shuffle. We have lost the feature entirely. Unless I am missing something, I do not see any 'added' functionality here.

Thank you again for all your help. I am not one of those horrible disgruntled customer types, honestly, but just trying to get to the bottom of something that to me seems a little illogical...

We will see how we go...

This is a perfect example of the difficulty of trying to meet all user requests. I remember a user request to change the previous behaviour to allow the two operations on one keyboard shortcut, to improve efficiency. I also prefer the previous behaviour.

Did anyone agree with them? Now I have to turn snapping on mid edit (since when editing I prefer it turned off) just to get functionality that is less reliable than before.

How often is swap insert used by anyone anyway? Serious question. It should be more easy to perform the function that is used more often, so if it's not just me that barely uses swap insert but a majority, then this change in function does not have a leg to stand on.

I'm working on a documentary based on a lot of historic archive footage. My director asks me to make a lot of swapping here and there. This new behaviour, without an immediate snap to the edit is a nightmare!

I'm working on a documentary based on a lot of historic archive footage. My director asks me to make a lot of swapping here and there. This new behaviour, without an immediate snap to the edit is a nightmare!

I know what you mean. No matter how much information I threw at support (and I mean lots, with videos showing how much easier it was with the old facilities, how much harder now, etc), I couldn't convince them to give us the feature back. And even on this forum, if you read around, you'll see that because certain people don't use this facility, it surely can't be needed.

What get's me is that BlackMagic say they made it better by 'deleting a feature and adding nothing extra'. How does that work? I don't understand progress sometimes... Moving clips in a large granular form seems like the basics of mouse-driven editing, and we have lost it. A shame...

Here is the last information I sent to BlackMagic... I show three GIFs that show the three modes of operation we had prior to beta 7: -

1. Ctrl-Shift-Drag - Full clip ripple move - Place your clip between other clips

1 - Ctrl-Shift-Drag.GIF
1 - Ctrl-Shift-Drag.GIF (998.59 KiB) Viewed 126 times

1 - Ctrl-Shift-Drag.GIF (998.59 KiB) Viewed 9450 times

2. Ctrl-Alt-Drag - Partial clip ripple with snapping on - Place anywhere and snap between clips

2 - Ctrl-Alt-Drag.GIF
2 - Ctrl-Alt-Drag.GIF (751.3 KiB) Viewed 126 times

2 - Ctrl-Alt-Drag.GIF (751.3 KiB) Viewed 9450 times

3. Ctrl-Alt-Drag with snapping off - Partial clip ripple - Place your clip anywhere

3 - Ctrl-Alt-Drag no Snap.GIF
3 - Ctrl-Alt-Drag no Snap.GIF (888.54 KiB) Viewed 126 times

3 - Ctrl-Alt-Drag no Snap.GIF (888.54 KiB) Viewed 9450 times

If you look at the first GIF, just see how useful and easy it 'was' to shuffle a clip between other clips. The above has been a feature at least from version 14 (see page 357 in the v 14 manual).

From beta 7 onwards we have lost entirely feature 1, and now Ctrl-Shift-Drag is changed to replicate what we had before with Ctrl-Alt-Drag.

I dunno, just seems like a loss of a very nice little feature to me.

Anyone with a solution for this problem?

I saw two commands:

Edit>Swap clips towards left Ctrl + Shift + ,
Edit>Swap clips towards right Ctrl + Shift + .

And I can`t see the logic behind this - remove the functionality from the mouse, but leave it in the menus

Anyone with a solution for this problem?

I saw two commands:

Edit>Swap clips towards left Ctrl + Shift + ,
Edit>Swap clips towards right Ctrl + Shift + .

And I can`t see the logic behind this - remove the functionality from the mouse, but leave it in the menus

To date, I have not been supplied any logic from either another user or Blackmagic, to removing the functionality from the mouse. We had three types of clip-drag and ended up with two. Nothing gained. I actually now use the keyboard shortcuts you describe to achieve the functionality.

Yeah, not much editing flow with the shortcuts

Yeah, not much editing flow with the shortcuts

Yes, what can I say. I mentioned this issue as soon as it happened, during the v 15 beta phase, and after raising with support, was told it is by 'design'. When I explained that the 'design' lost us functionality, I got no reply. They cannot explain logically why we lost the functionality, and what's worse, many 'experienced' users I have tried to drum up support from, don't get the point, and tell me to use a workaround. So we seem to be in the minority on this one I am afraid...

I am having exactly the problem you described. The current V15 manual states that the clips should automatically swap when using ctrl-shift. Page 42 "Adjacent clips will automatically switch places with the selection of clips you're dragging, until you drop in in the desired location.".

That's not happening for me. The clips don't swap places. The dragged clip is inserted into the middle of whatever clip it is dropped on. I think it must be a bug. It's supposed to work they way it is described in this video at 0:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... W-BVneF3yQ

Hello,

Be careful to pay attention to one thing.
By default, the keyboard is configured 'Davinci Resolve' for keyboard 'US'.

Here keyboard 'FR', so I made a Keyboard Customization to replace the key combination with my keyboard 'FR' and everything works fine.

And when we make a CTRL + Shift + mouse drag, be careful to get the small vertical bar and small triangles that indicate that the drag clip is on a CUT (before releasing the mouse).

ctrl_shift_drag.jpg

...be careful to get the small vertical bar and small triangles that indicate that the drag clip is on a CUT (before releasing the mouse).

Hi Jean Claude, thanks again for your tips. But what you are saying we now must do 'be careful' was not necessary before. One could boldly drag whole clips in the knowledge that they would not 'split' other clips accidently, but instead, 'whole clips' would just swap or shuffle along. It used to be 'easy', but now one needs to 'be careful'...

That is the point of this whole thread. We have lost the 'ease of use' functionality. Yes, you can still do it, but now one must be careful, as you pointed out.

Hello Cass,

With (custom) keyboard shortcuts it's much more efficient and accurate ...

swap.gif

Look closely. What's happening is likely not an overwrite, but a partial swap (in the middle of a clip) if you end the mouse drag anywhere but an actual cut point.

Try it again, but don't release the action until you snap to a cut.

Thanks! That was my problem too. Why BM don't put "like" button to each post. It would be a better way of appreciation. They could also add statistics. That would additionally boost the community spirit and clean appreciation post like this one.

And easy cass - thank you as well. Awesome posts, guys.

Hi,
I'm really trying work efficiently in Resolve (as a Premiere pro user) and it is another "little thing" that slow down my workflow. I was looking for solution to shuffle clip along timeline without that horrible "insert mode", when I found this post. So this feature was before in Resolve... I don't understand why anyone would like to remove thing that really speed up sorting clips in timeline? It doesn't make sense. Simple CHOICE to turn on/off that option in settings would be better than remove it totally.

So... any chance to bring back that funcion?