Animating the UI and Timeline - Please stop

Please. Stop animating the timeline actions. It is not cute, it s not "FUN".

Editors work all day. our eyes get tired. Reduce the amount of Visual clutter. I'm constantly watching undo, do double steps on a trim fore example, or watching items slowly animate towards an edit or action.

STOP. Leave animated actions to mobile devices or websites.

Actions need to SNAP quickly. Why slow us down too? This is just a bad idea.

We work long hours and get very fatigued. This is just brain clutter that is unnecessary.

Sometimes I wonder if I hit the key twice when I perform an action. Wondering if I made a mistake.

This is an example of programmers doing something because they can, rather than they should. Or getting bored or what ever. It is wrong. The software isn't a toy. Its an advanced tool to do a job. Some work 10hours +.


The UI should snap not "Transition" to an end result.

It is distracting. Its not a game. Its not "fun" either. It ridiculous.
Editors don't need to be entertained by animation in the timeline.

If all else, please give us a preference to turn this off.

sincerely
editor eyes.

pretty sure it wasn't done to be fun but to show you exactly what has happened and what has gone where, which I find helpful, though I appreciate that some would prefer everything to snap instantly.

I agree. Snap to result. The animation is a distraction, rather than a help, most of the time.

It is not cute, it s not "FUN".

It's not supposed to be either of those things. What it's supposed to be, and what it actually is, is helpful.

The animations make it very easy to see exactly what's happening and where, while before it was too easy for one to miss something.

watching items slowly animate

If the animations are slow for you, your system may have an issue. It happens in about 1/4 second for me. Very snappy and a great visual cue as to what's going on.

i can't possibly see how this is helpful for an editor. Edit in, then an animated ramped extension of the clip to the timeline? why? editors move fast. what is helpfull is cutting in and immediately backing up and watching. Not an animation of actions.

I don't think its my system. (aging Mac Pro Trashcan D700). If its related to system specs, all the more reason not to have it as it takes up cycles. If a slower machine would make these longer, I'd ditch Resolve as an editor. Editing doesn't need as high as specs as Color/Fusion. IN fact, in a post facility, assistant are usually cutting on lesser machines while the editor is with clients.

This is a distraction for fast editors. Especially when bouncing back in forth among other software that doesn't do it.

If you like it, great. I really don't understand that. But it is your opinion. So is mine, and every editor I show this too so far. In fact its a showstopper for seasoned editors coming from Avid, Premiere, Smoke.
Those who have to cut all day in front of clients. I have always been impressed with Resolve's improvements and features that help get things done. This isn't one of them and shows they don't fully understand an editors workflow and 10hour +days and nights.

Its gimmicky. Cheapens the experience.
Let's please have a preference to turn it off, at the very least.

Do what some cheese to go with that whine?

I don't think its my system.

It's *supposed* to be slow, on all systems -- otherwise you couldn't see it.

Watching these animations all day, day after day, is no fun. If they really must have it, it ought to be an option. If nothing else, there's a strong irritation factor.

And the odd thing is, who asked for it to begin with?

I don't think its my system.

It's *supposed* to be slow, on all systems -- otherwise you couldn't see it.

Watching these animations all day, day after day, is no fun. If they really must have it, it ought to be an option. If nothing else, there's a strong irritation factor.

And the odd thing is, who asked for it to begin with?

Most likely a UX Engineer.

I agree with OP. Just 1 exception. When press undo i find it handy.

Also, resolve is one of the most heavy NLE's out there. So i bet these animations are not helping with that.

watching items slowly animate

It happens in about 1/4 second for me.

Its way longer than 1/4 second. I just timed a few trims using hot keys. The delays/animations are over a second on longer trims or cuts.

How many key commands does an editor do a day? 100? 200? 500? it is a lot. Might be shocking, actually.

Cut - wait a second
Trim - Wait a second
Trim again - Wait a second
Oops. Undo. Wait a second.
Cut again - Wait a second.
Ripple Trim - Wait a second.
Oopsie, forgot a track selector. Undo - Wait a second.
Ripple Trim again - Wait a second.

Maybe BMD could make an option for enabling/disabling the feature. Then everybody would be happy.

I like it.
Maybe because my machines, while old, are fast.
Less than 1/4sec for any edit animation to complete.

Maybe BMD could make an option for enabling/disabling the feature. Then everybody would be happy.

+1

[Peter Chamberlain]

watching items slowly animate

It happens in about 1/4 second for me.

Its way longer than 1/4 second. I just timed a few trims using hot keys. The delays/animations are over a second on longer trims or cuts.

How many key commands does an editor do a day? 100? 200? 500? it is a lot. Might be shocking, actually.

Cut - wait a second
Trim - Wait a second
Trim again - Wait a second
Oops. Undo. Wait a second.
Cut again - Wait a second.
Ripple Trim - Wait a second.
Oopsie, forgot a track selector. Undo - Wait a second.
Ripple Trim again - Wait a second.

If it takes this long you have something else going on.

I agree with the OP. Please remove all eye candy. It's distracting.

I like the animation. It is not slow on my setup.

It is a distraction. Please give us the option to disable it. Like NOW!
It causes fatigue and eye strain.


If those like the animation while they are working, fine. But NO OTHER pro app has this eye candy gimmiky stuff. Because we work on these for 10 sometimes 14 hours a day. any visual clutter should be avoided.

especially animating a business tool.

leave it for websites and apps.

The delays/animations are over a second on longer trims or cuts.

That's not normal.

The solution is to toggle the feature on/off set in preferences, that way you design the UI to suit your needs..A bit like my request to have the zoom in/out on the cut page, if this is set via the toggle, it hurts no one, and it creates a workspace that suits the user...

What is wrong with having a user defined workspace?? It is like office chairs, if you could set the height, the seat recline, with/without armrests, it would be very uncomfortable...and that is what makes office chairs better than the standard dining room chair, adaptability.

So really Blackmagic could you look into making DR16 or DR17 more user preference set-able...??

Maybe add an option to turn it off.
But in case it takes any longer than a blink of an eye, there may be something wrong anyway.

I think these animations are rather useful and smooth on both my Windows and Linux machines.

What is wrong with having a user defined workspace?? It is like office chairs, if you could set the height, the seat recline, with/without armrests, it would be very uncomfortable...and that is what makes office chairs better than the standard dining room chair, adaptability.

As a developer, I can tell you the number one issue with adding every little thing someone complains about on the internet is that it leads to a bloated slow code base.

A secondary issue is you end up with an even bigger UX problem than what you had before the complaints. You end up with a massive "settings section" that confuses most users.

You end up with a massive "settings section" that confuses most users.

Avid manages ok.

Avid manages ok.

Oh, that is not something I want Resolve to emulate.

Hi Dan
You say "You end up with a massive "settings section" that confuses most users", that might be true, I am certain it would be in this case, so I take your point, it is a problem, no idea how many folks are on the dev team over at DR16/DR17, a lot of head scratching and having to decide what to include and what is left out...

On the other hand, you could for example have the UX set to say basic, intermediate, advanced, developer, so that with each stage, more "features" are unlocked, or more settings become visible.. The problem is how to keep the coding within acceptable standards..I am sure Blackmagic have a solution...I agree it could get messy, something I did not think about...

On the other hand, you could for example have the UX set to say basic, intermediate, advanced, developer, so that with each stage, more "features" are unlocked, or more settings become visible.. The problem is how to keep the coding within acceptable standards..I am sure Blackmagic have a solution...I agree it could get messy, something I did not think about...

I've worked on legacy systems that use a setup like that, and it doesn't work well in practice. What ends up happening is you get a lot of users who are 99% happy with one level but they have to enable the next highest level to change that one thing they really want. So you end up with a lot of users in the highest configuration levels, who get overwhelmed.

The Underlying issue is that configurability and usability are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The consumer facing menu and settings windows most people are familiar with break down from a UX perspective when you get into the ream of hundreds or thousands of settings. I'm not sure how many resolve has exactly, but its definitely well into the several hundreds range. You can see how that has already lead to problems for users by browsing various threads on the forum.


At the enterprise level where you regularly have hundreds or thousands of configuration settings, the methodology switches to various forms of configuration files. I deal with stuff like this daily, but it's not the type of thing you want to expose most people to.

I'm not sure what web browser you use, but if you use Firefox and want to see a glimpse of what I mean, type 'about:config' in the address bar and Firefox will display it's underlying settings interface. It's a simple and very powerful GUI based settings manager, but still completely overwhelming to most people.

About the firefox config, ouch on that, wow...yeah get the point, I really fully get the issue now, and now I fully understand as a very basic user just what a task it has been to get any software to a certain point..

I am sure that certain settings could be reset, but at what cost? best to just learn to live with certain things as they are, thanks so much for the insight..wow.

UX developers claiming it would be "too hard" to give user prefs is a ridiculous argument. Its lazy, bad code or stubborn.

Apple IOS UX added motion animation to IOS and lots of people got nauseous dizzy, headaches etc. They added "Reduce Motion" to the user settings for those who don't like a ping pong interface.

If you can't reduce that kind of UI animation then its bad code. It is on top of actions. Cutting a clip into the timeline is the Action, the animation is the visual feedback. Changing the speed of the visual feedback doesn't make the Action less reliable.

If anything, it REDUCES resources.

Maybe BMD could make an option for enabling/disabling the feature. Then everybody would be happy.

+1

+ 1

UX developers claiming it would be "too hard" to give user prefs is a ridiculous argument. Its lazy, bad code or stubborn.

Apparently your reading comprehension skills are a little lacking. I'm a developer not a UX person. UX people are usually labeled as designers not developers.

Again if you actually read what I said, its not "too hard". It's easy to develop an interface to set preferences. The issue is once you reach a certain number of configurable preferences you the user get overwhelmed by it. You complain that you can't find it, because it's 6 or 7 screens deep. You can't find it because you can't remember what it was called. My all time favorite is when users go full circle and start requesting/complaining that various preferences should be removed because they are confusing redundant etc.

Just a few months ago, I removed a preference from a system, and the person who requested the removal what the person who requested it be added in the first place 3 years ago.

@Dan. I wasn't addressing this to you or anyone in particular. My apologies if I offended you.


I'd like the option, with One Parameter.
Animated UI On
Animated UI Off.

Kind of blows my mind that there are people who don't understand that the animations are so that you can more clearly see how things shift over in the timeline so that you can catch inadvertent edits.

Also, you're not that quick. These animations take 5 frames at 60 hertz. I counted. That's 83 milliseconds.

Kind of blows my mind that there are people who don't understand that the animations are so that you can more clearly see how things shift over in the timeline so that you can catch inadvertent edits.

Also, you're not that quick. These animations take 5 frames at 60 hertz. I counted. That's 83 milliseconds.

I’m surprised that you have to mention this, because it was clearly obvious to me from the first day this was implemented that this was the intention of the feature, and the intention was not for it to be just “cute” animation chrome.

I can attest that this feature has saved me from missing editorial mistakes on many occasions.

It would be nice if someone could do an A/B comparison between r16 and r15 of how Long it takes for edits to execute with the feature on and off. My hunch is that there is no difference, and it’s only an imagined slowdown, much like what happened when iOS 7 introduced zooming animations, and a lot of people felt that it made the UI slower. But if you measured a screen capture of the animation zooming feature on vs disabling it, it turned out that there was no difference in speed between them.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I can attest that this feature has saved me from missing editorial mistakes on many occasions.

I never explicitly said this in my own post, but it's helped me out, too.

YES. PLEASE .... im coming from avid - and this animation of the UX drives me crazy ... there go hours of my life watching the software doing stuff. i have airmail - they have this as well - and an option to turn it off.

please add an option for senior editors who know what they are doing to turn this off. it slows everything down.

i do understand that there are people who like seing what happens - but there are also a lot of editors who are used to a way faster system of editing. resolve is slow anyway because there is a lot of mouse action that cant be done by keyboard - speed bump 1 - and then these animations - speed bump 2

please please please, i wish that on the eveningstar!!

YES. PLEASE ....
please add an option for senior editors who know what they are doing to turn this off. it slows everything down.

i do understand that there are people who like seing what happens -

Yep. The entire Edit page is littered with stops, pauses, checks, selection checks, toggles and gotchas. Slowing down the entire editorial process. The lack of modifier keys is also ridiculous! Those that know.... know.

For all those that animating the timeline say it shows you what was done... its doesn't. It is not a "replay" of what you did.
In many cases, its adds stutter "slips" before a redo of a trim. It is wrong. It is distracting and it is unnecessary. The larger the timeline or clip, the longer the animation too.
please give us the option to reduce "motion". It is nauseating, intrusive and not desired by many.

I don't think they're animations. I think you're watching a script playing step-by-step and that's how fast it plays on your system. What you're asking for is to not update the UI until the script is finished, I think. Which will still be slow on on slow systems and we'll then get a lot of complaints that the system "freezes" and you don't know what's going on.

I don't think they're animations. I think you're watching a script playing step-by-step and that's how fast it plays on your system. What you're asking for is to not update the UI until the script is finished, I think. Which will still be slow on on slow systems and we'll then get a lot of complaints that the system "freezes" and you don't know what's going on.

No, it's not a script dependent on resources. It was added in v15. (Any animation takes CPU/GPU cycles.)
My main system is one of the fastest 2019 Mac Pro's you can buy with VEGA II DUOS , and these animations are the same as our older Trashcans.

The longer the clip and action such as trim, the more animation and stutter steps. Its most evident in timeline film strip views. They go oneway and then the other, they even "ramp/ease in". It is deliberate and a stupid UX assessment for business use. it adds visual clutter and distraction. It might be cute for demos, but not for editors who work for ten or more hours a day, or those that bounce from one software to another.

It is not a replay either, but gamifying of the UX. One that people use for business.

@BMD - please let us turn this off!!!

I like the timeline. Please keep doing what you're doing.

I like the timeline. Please keep doing what you're doing.

The timeline with no animation you would love even more.

The timeline with no animation you would love even more.

I wouldn't. Makes it more difficult to follow what's actually happening when it's instantaneous. The very short animations are a great aid here.

Something that tripped me up recently is the UI animation for yanking in/out sections. The waveform of the affected audio track to the left of the playhead visibly moves, in a way that made me fear I was deleting something else entirely.



The flying keyframe/spline icons are very distracting too.

Seems to be a lot of divided opinion here, but for what it's worth, Blackmagic if you are considering removing animation, please make it an option like others have mentioned! It's saved my bacon (and all of us in the office) a bunch of times with accidental ripple trims.

As for efficiency, I've done heaps with Resolve's API + Autohotkey to make it as fast as possible for our use case and the eye-candy doesn't bother me. Maybe it comes down to workflow. We do a lot of keyframing and speed-ramping, not so much trimming and inserting.

(And it really helps with undo.)

There is no debate from professional editors. Or Editors that work in other applications as well as Resolve during the course of the day. Every editor I show this too, is immediately turned off by it and would never migrate from Avid or Premiere because of it. (Let alone the lack of editorial features). In fact, many are ditching Resolve because of it.

Again. During an "Undo", the animation is not a replay of what you did. The end result is. This is no different then if it snapped. Even if it did represent the action, slowly replaying it doesn't change the end result and is no less helpful to what you know you already did.


Animation just distracts, takes longer and in many cases, gives a false representation of what happened.

This is most evident when zoomed into the timeline with Film Strip Views on. Especially longer actions.

There is no place for ease in/ease out or stutter steps or move one way then another way animations of actions in professional applications!!!

BMD PLEASE LET US TURN OF THIS MOTION ANIMATION!!!!

There is no debate from professional editors.

What makes you think that all of those in this thread who have disagreed with you aren't professional editors? Editing is my full time job and I've used Avid, Premiere and Resolve for years. This comes down to opinion, not enlightenment. The different kinds of content people work with have a huge effect on this too.

Again. During an "Undo"

Sorry, I didn't quite explain what I meant by "undo". I just mean that if I accidentally perform a destructive edit, like with "q" or "w", the animation as that edit takes place actually helps me notice that it's happened. It doesn't even need to be realistic or accurate. In the years I used Premiere for the same work, I ran into this issue every once in a while.

Each to their own. I think an option to turn it off would be a win-win for everyone.

many are ditching Resolve because of it.

Well that's just silly.

Animation...gives a false representation of what happened.

That is just...false.

The point of the feature, the usefulness of it, and the consistent operation of it, is to give the editor a visual representation of exactly what is happening. There's nothing at all 'false' about that representation.

Animation...gives a false representation of what happened.

That is just...false.

The point of the feature, the usefulness of it, and the consistent operation of it, is to give the editor a visual representation of exactly what is happening. There's nothing at all 'false' about that representation.

How do you explain the movement of the audio track in my GIF then?

Dear BM team, can you make the Plain mode in Video View Options, which minimizes all track height and displays each clip as a solid color along its length without animation of timeline, please?

Dear BM team, can you make the Plain mode in Video View Options, which minimizes all track height and displays each clip as a solid color along its length without animation of timeline, please?

Please don't. If this is to become an option the it should be an option for all viewing modes not just one, and neither would I want a particular clip viewing option to be forced without animation.