Naming shot for VFX

So I'm investigating to use resolve as our main hub for the VFX facility, Now we use a combo of Scratch and Hiero.
But there are some major disadvantages to that workflow.

Resolve almost ticks all the boxes but there is just 1 major flaw that I can't get my head around.
There is NOT an option to name shots individually.
We would like to name our shots SH0010, SH0020, SH0030, etc, etc and a final name you would get "i_{sequnece}_{shot}_{plate or track}.########.exr" what would come down to "i_SQ060_SH0010_pA.00000976"
We can't use the metadata as that is attached to the clip as in a lot of cases clips are being used multiple times, so the same part of the clip is being used in SH0010 and SH0050.

we cant use edit index etc, as for VFX you most of the time have multiple plates.

I don't want to go down to the route of using subclips etc, if there is a reconform that would be a massive pain in the ****

This would be just a minor change to have a unique shot name to be used for export.
Flame, Hiero, Adobe, Scratch, and every other program I've ever used has this option except for resolve.

Could we take a look at this???

[Peter Chamberlain]

You can name clips individually, in media pool complete with auto naming based on metadata, but it sounds like u wish to name the instance of its use in the timeline based on its position in the timeline, by shot number?

yes but in that case, you still have to duplicate clips as sometimes 1 clip is being used in multiple shots.
Also, it would take way too much time to prep a full feature with 200 VFX shots.

And indeed on the timeline would very much be preferred/essential.
How we do it in Hiero is to set the VFX shots on separate tracks called pA, pB, pC, etc.
So let say you've a greenscreen shot with a background and a foreground those plate would be called
"i_SQ060_SH0010_pA.00000976" ,"i_SQ060_SH0010_pB.00000976" "i_SQ060_SH0010_pC.00000976"

In Hiero and flame, you can rename your selected shots on the timeline incremental.
This would be ideal, but that's not even a necessity as we can write a little python script to do this.

And it would very much be perfect if we could keep those names as they come in from an XML, AAF from other programs.
So if something is being prepped in Hiero or flame we keep the names they have been given there to keep everything clean.

If this is the case we would be able to convert our pipeline with resolve as the mainhub.

cheers
Robert

We need the equivalent of the old FCP "Make Independent Clip" function. It's a feature request.

For now, it looks like the workaround would be Find in Media Pool>Duplicate Clip>Rename>Conform Lock with Media Pool Clip. You can actually do it pretty fast from the keyboard.

yes indeed but like stated, when you're doing a full feature with over 200 vfx shots that's just not an option as it is too time-consuming and really prone to error.

If BMD wants I can make a video of what we really need

Premiere Pro had the ability to rename a clip instance, separate from the Clip Name assigned in the bin.

I found it useful as follows. The Clip Name might be something like Ceremony. That would get cut up in the timeline to the highlights, and the clip instances might be renamed Procession, Readings, Vows, Rings, Recession, etc.

I'm sure there are many ways an editor could use the ability to rename a clip instance separately from the Clip Name.

This has come up time and again here, and my impression has been that BMD has no interest or understanding of what a "shot" actually is in relation to vfx workflows. I'd like to be wrong.

I don't think I would want BMD to change their current definition of "shot".

A shot is a clip. Same thing. If you use multiple parts of the same clip, it's all the same shot. If VXF guys see it different, that's the outlier.

I think changing the definition of Shot from a Metadata perspective would cause problems.

No a clip is a clip and that doesn't have to change the way it works.

For VFX we work in shots (so in to out point of 1 part in the timeline), and we need to be able to have a name (usually it's metadata or a tag per shot base, not clip in this workflow)
The way clips work now would be very much impossible.

And I don't think anything on the clip-based part has to change.

This would just add a tag to a shot so you can make it unique or in case of multiple layers per shot the same name.

As for a PostHouse with VFX, resolve is now too cumbersome to use and the workarounds are so great and time-consuming that we couldn't work/trust it in full production.

We do sometimes 10 to 15 productions at the same time so it's vital that you can automate and always have the same result

This is indeed a very simple feature that I miss in Resolve and why we can't use Resolve for VFX workflows.
In Scratch I can easily give every shot/clip in the timeline either a note with the VFX name or rename the shot/clip/slot and use that information as a render token in the output.

At first I thought I could try it with compound clips in Resolve and rename those to the VFX names but than those compound clips are locked to the timeline resolution and you can't render them with handles.

It would be nice to have a working marker/note workflow where you can add a note/marker to clips in the timeline and use whatever text is in there as a render variable.
For example, whenever I add a marker to a clip in Resolve and name it "project_sc001_fx0010_pA" and use %MarkerName in the output, it comes out as blank. Does this feature even work?

Such a simple feature that is present in all other apps as stated by Robert before.

Another major feature that is lacking in Resolve is custom numberpadding in the output filename. For example, I have a timeline with 50 vfx shots and I want my output name to be PROJECT_VFX_SH001, going up to SH050.
If I use the %TimelineIndex variable without manually adding "00" it would come out as PROJECT_VFX_SH1
This is a problem after you reach shot 10 because than it will either be SH0010 with the manual 00's added or SH10 with just the %TimelineIndex variable. I want to make it so the first shot in the timeline will be SH001 and shot 50 to be SH050.
In Scrath for example, I can add [3,1] as a render token which will lead to always having 3 numbers in the filename and start with 001.

I also just want to chime in and request this. My VFX house uses Flame for conform and shot naming, then Nuke for compositing. It'd be so great to be able to use Resolve in the same way. It has so many other features it's so odd that it doesn't have this.

This would be such a useful feature. We would happily drop Nuke Studio in favour of Resolve for our vfx shot creation, if you could give unique names to each clip in an edit.

I can't see a way to do this at the moment except to do a manual rename with a 3rd-party utility once the clips (or the frame sequence) is rendered. There are quite a few renaming utilities that will let you sequentially number them, but figuring that out based on timecode would be tricky. I agree that doing it with 200 shots would be a nightmare. We just did that a few months ago with 67 VFX shots, and that required a lot of jumping through hoops. We got it all done, but zero fun was involved.

I still don't understand why BMD can't or doesn't want to implement something like this.
There are now indeed 3rd party solutions like prism or openpype.io but even with those it feels cumbersome and could/should be so much more with just a little feature.

But I've moved along and not considering Resolve a main hub for a pipeline anymore.

Revisisting this for v19.... is there still no way to name shots sequentially on the timeline for export into dedicated folders?

only thing I'm seeing with numbering is "%timelineIndex" which doesn't help much if shots get rearranged after making a batch export. Is the actual workflow for this to manually name each shot?

Back in 2021 when this thread was created, Peter Chamberlain the Resolve PM asked about the workflow. So at least back then it was on his radar. Who knows, maybe the renewed activity here will rekindle his interest.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but you can use the variables when naming clips on the timeline as well, not just when rendering. It's not perfect, as far as I know you can't control the number of leading zeros for example. But my point is you can rename them all in one go, using the Inspector.

The %{Timeline Index} variable is of course for the whole timeline, so if you need an individual index per track you have to disable the other tracks and just rename all the clips on a single track at a time.

Note that when changing the name of a clip (or clips) in the Inspector, you won't see the name change on the timeline immediately, you have to click away from the text box to update the timeline. The variables will resolve to actual baked-in values as if you had typed the values in, they don't stay as variables so if you move a clip the index in the name won't change.



To use these sequentially renamed timeline clip names when rendering individual files, use the %{Clip Name} variable.

I suppose it says something about the discoverability of features in Resolve that several people in just this thread are asking for something that already exists (even if it could easily be improved). But like I said, maybe I've misunderstood something and this isn't what you're all looking for after all.

Adding a %{Track Clip Index} variable and the ability to control leading zeros for all number variables seems like a reasonable feature request. Like %{Track Clip Index[4]} or something.

Thanks for chiming in Roger.

I think %timelineIndex works great for its purpose. However, VFX sequences need more control throughout a pipeline for a Resolve to be useful for this purpose. A lot of VFX tools use scripting outside of Resolve, and when you get accustomed to automating tasks, or steps in a workflow, Resolve becomes the bottleneck for these automations. Yes, there are workarounds that many of us have found and point out, but the workarounds are not usually viable at scale, so we end up not using resolve for those processes.

I think there is a huge benefit to be able to automate clip names on a timeline with control over naming sequentially and would benefit a lot of Resolve users.

It's a feature request at best unless we can get more interaction with the Resolve team on how to implement this more thoroughly, as all VFX pipelines/workflows are different depending on the vendor and project.

Sorry, it's not clear to me what the feature request is exactly. Sequential naming on the timeline already works (with the downsides I mentioned). What would you say is missing?

Hi Ryan, There is a script that can hack this by using grade names from the color page to auto-increment shot names.

I would love to see this added to the edit page token system, too. Since the timeline index has no spaces, you could never have a shot number inserted between as the cut evolves.

CUbuffskier was able to explain this much better than I was able too:

"..timeline index has no spaces, you could never have a shot number inserted between as the cut evolves."

One thing that I think that hasn't been clarified, is when naming VFX shots, they need to correspond to the same names outside of resolve. This is why using %timelineIndex doesn't work, because it's contingent on the placement in the timeline, if anything changes in the timeline order, everything gets messed up. Roger, I don't think you're missing anything when it comes to %timelineIndex, it's just the downsides that need to be addressed.

@CUbuffskier interesting that you can use grade names to auto-increment. Do you have reference to this script? I'm not seeing this documented in the scripting API.

Ah, I just figured you could use something like Robert suggested in the first post, where the clip name sequence is SH0010, SH0020 and so on, meaning you would just add a 0 after the variable when setting the initial name, giving room for adjustments. I understand there are many other details to consider.

The reason I'm interested in this is because I have a few years of experience using the public scripting API in Resolve and often when I see threads like this the programmer in me starts working.

Side rant... Often when there are requests like this I think that I could probably create a script or plugin for that. But then... people who need this kind of thing often work in larger facilities where third party binaries or scripts are either frowned upon or simply not allowed. I understand why that is but it's still a problem - Even if there's a way to possibly do it the target audience can't use it and in the end the incentive to make this stuff isn't always there, sadly.

Completely makes sense. However, discussing this has given me an idea of how to automate a couple things outside of Resolve due to the limitations, so having people question or clarify someone's logic is always good on these forms! I am by no means a programmer. I'm a hack when it comes to automation, but the small little tools I make save me massive amounts of time. This is just one of those areas if it is addressed on the Resolve level, my limited scripting goes a lot further than it does now. Most tools I build for myself and my team are like less than 50-100 lines long.

I'll keep looking for workarounds that still benefit my workflows. Thanks for your thoughts.

The problem is that there's no way to modify timeline clip's name that is unique from media pools' original clip name through scripting:

https://wheheohu.github.io/bmd_doc/docs ... Properties

We have a lot of options to modify TimelineItemProperties, but not name. With that ability we could probably cook up few scripts already.

One method that is viable, is to use color version name and then use that in name field like "sh0%{Version}" and it will change names. Because color versions are unique to clips instances on timeline.

Thanks Pavle, I'm not quite sure I understand how this works. When I use the sh0%{Version} in the clips attribute on the same clip, it names it all the same name. Is this a limitation when using multiple shots from the same clip?

This is one process iam following for vfx shots with custom names and numbers.

- Change the clip name in clip attributes on the timeline to the name we want for our vfx workflow(ex: PROJ-SC_SHT-01)
- in the deliver page set individual clips and custom name under the file section.
- Then in the Custom name Box type the variable %clipname_(this changes each clip to the clip name we assigned in the timeline. I give the "_" so that the frame number will be placed after that.)
- Then in the File Subfolder name place the same variable %clipname(this creates a folder for each clip with the clipname we assigned and no need of checking any other boxes). if you want to start the image sequence start at a 1 or 1001 like that means check "each clip starts at frame" and set the number you like.


this process includes some effort of renaming the clip names .. If any simple method alternative to this is in your knowledge kindly help me with that.

This is the script that uses color page versions to increment shot numbers. It can be run to increments of 10.

Code: Select all

import DaVinciResolveScript as dvrs

# ########## Global variables ##########
# Scripting Engine
resolve = dvrs.scriptapp('Resolve')
# Project Manager
projectManager = resolve.GetProjectManager()
# Current Project
project = projectManager.GetCurrentProject()
# Media Pool
mediaPool = project.GetMediaPool()
# Get the root bin
binRoot = mediaPool.GetRootFolder()

# Get the currently opened timeline
tl = project.GetCurrentTimeline()

# Get the start frame of the timeline
tlStart = tl.GetStartFrame()

# Get a list of all clips in the video track
clips = tl.GetItemListInTrack('video', 1)

i = 1000
for clip in clips:
    # New clip name
    clipName = 'MyClipName' + str('%04d' % i)

    # Timeline start frame needs to be subtracted from clip start as the first clip always starts at 0 - no matter the timeline start TC
    clipStart = clip.GetStart() - tlStart
   
    # Clip duration
    clipDur = clip.GetDuration()

    # Add a marker for each clip displaying the custom name
    tl.AddMarker(clipStart, 'Red', clipName, '', clipDur, 'Renamed')
   
    # Add a color version as an attribute to use for subfolder generation
    clip.AddVersion(clipName , 0)
    print('Added custom name "' + clipName + '"')
    i += 1

Thanks Pavle, I'm not quite sure I understand how this works. When I use the sh0%{Version} in the clips attribute on the same clip, it names it all the same name. Is this a limitation when using multiple shots from the same clip?

Ryan, you can use script that Chad Wick provided, and then use my method to use those color Version names on actual clip names.

It all comes down to this, that we're lacking in ability to access clip names via scripting - otherwise we could go bananas with lua/python tools etc.
Hopefully BMD will listen on this one and bring that ability soon.

Thanks so much guys, this is extremely helpful! Even though it's not idea.

And I 100% agree, if we had access to setting or changing the clipName we could avoid so many of these workarounds.

Just dropping a line to show my enthusiasm

Still blown away that they haven't built something comprehensive for this into Resolve. It's such a joy to conform in, if only it could handle the naming side of things it would provide a nice alternative to Flame / Nuke Studio for holding a VFX timeline.

Here is a video from my youtube channel on how i do it.

I start in Avid, since that is where a lot of the features i work on come from. This involves adding markers to the clips in Avid, and then using those markers and their names as the source to create the render queue in Resolve. Not perfect, not totally automated, but solves a lot of the problems for me. At some point you have to double check your vfx names against a spreadsheet anyway, so i use that opportunity to add the markers in Avid, and let this workflow take it from there.

There is also a comment attached to the video with a tweak someone else did to my script to place each shot in its own folder, based on the filename as well.

There is some scripting work in here that was originally done by Roger Magnusson who is part of this thread, so thanks to him for his scripting work.

Any thoughts on how to get rid of the 01, 02, 03 etc naming convention that i end up using a renamer program for is certainly welcome.

Glenn

Any thoughts on how to get rid of the 01, 02, 03 etc naming convention that i end up using a renamer program for is certainly welcome.

You can replace this part

Code: Select all

"CustomName": f"{i:02}-" + mf[i][1],

with

Code: Select all

"CustomName": mf[i][1],

or with

Code: Select all

"CustomName": "" + mf[i][1],

cheers,
Dorin

Thanks.

I hope BMD is behind this issue and will release it soon. In my studio we are in the process of moving to Resolve from Flame and it is an issue that Flame operators find very useful in our productions.

[Peter Chamberlain]

yes indeed but like stated, when you're doing a full feature with over 200 vfx shots that's just not an option as it is too time-consuming and really prone to error.

If BMD wants I can make a video of what we really need

Let’s see your video. Please include how a reload of the same xml/aaf will locate all the original clips with the correct I/O and yet place them in the timeline with different names, even if they are the same source clip.

Great video Glenn! This sure does seem like a useful thing to have native to the Resolve Delivery tab. A big expansion of utility compared to the current "individual clips" setting.

Honestly, all we need from Blackmagic is simply the ability to change the name of a clip instance in the timeline using the scripting API and we can solve this ourselves.

Here's the feature request for that, add your voice!
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=156136&hilit=+name

As soon as that's added there will be a free tool for batch renaming clips in the timeline for VFX delivery, with incrementation, padding, and metadata variables.

Honestly, all we need from Blackmagic is simply the ability to change the name of a clip instance in the timeline using the scripting API and we can solve this ourselves.

Here's the feature request for that, add your voice!
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=156136&hilit=+name

As soon as that's added there will be a free tool for batch renaming clips in the timeline for VFX delivery, with incrementation, padding, and metadata variables.

Absolutely this!

Thanks Joe. The process works very well.
I agree, having the ability to change the clip name on a scripting level would be awesome.
The question remains about identifying the clips i want to change. Most of my timelines are simply coming into Resolve for these pulls, and originate in Avid or occasionally Premiere, so we still need a way of identifying which of the 500 or more clips on the timeline need to be renamed for VFX purposes, and we also need to identify how those names are progressing. Quite often those names were already decided in offline, and depending on the order of how they were named, will change the cadence of the naming.
It is not unreasonable to have names that go 10, 20,30, 35, 40,50,55,56.57.60...etc, depending on when someone decides a shot needs vfx work. At some point, i think you still need to roll up your sleeves and manually enter these numbers, which is what the markers allow you to do. Then we can have resolve take over with scripting afterwards. But i'm not sure you can simply say scripting will automate the entire process. Love to be proven wrong.

But i'm not sure you can simply say scripting will automate the entire process. Love to be proven wrong.

Depends on the process. Lets imagine shot codes have a coupling with some metadata field. You could generate them by reading the clip metadata and then doing some tricks if need be, like incrementing in sequential order or whatnot. If there is something, anything, that describes the linkage or logic, it can be scripted. If it is ”I’ll name this shot like that because I like it”, it will be manual.

If shots already go 10, 20, 25, 27, 30 then obviously someone has already done some work somewhere to inject the added shots 25 and 27, so it is a matter of pulling that data in.

To do what's being asked would be to introduce a timeline based custom metadata ability but I guess that is already there since you can use markers and they are kept per clip. So something like accessing and creating custom Metadata per timeline clip?

Then if you renamed the clip it would automatically create the new metadata set and assign a name of "Custom Name" to the table. The Custom Name would then present in the timeline. Heck at that point you'd now have the ability to create any custom metadata per clip. It wouldn't necessarily need to be the clip name. You could just add a new one called "VFX Shot", right?

I guess it would be available if you also export the timeline as XML.

But i'm not sure you can simply say scripting will automate the entire process. Love to be proven wrong.

Depends on the process. Lets imagine shot codes have a coupling with some metadata field. You could generate them by reading the clip metadata and then doing some tricks if need be, like incrementing in sequential order or whatnot. If there is something, anything, that describes the linkage or logic, it can be scripted. If it is ”I’ll name this shot like that because I like it”, it will be manual.

If shots already go 10, 20, 25, 27, 30 then obviously someone has already done some work somewhere to inject the added shots 25 and 27, so it is a matter of pulling that data in.

That is kind of my point. This process doesn't start with the person being asked to pull vfx shots.
Typically it started much earlier with an Edit Assistant tagging shots in the edit program timeline with TC burn ins, and vfx name burn ins so everyone could see what was proposed to be done to the shots. And then shots are added and dropped, and the spread sheet expands. Sometimes some of those shots go out early, so renumbering during the process is difficult, so the "inbetween" numbers get used when shots are added in the middle of two existing vfx shots. That all happens manually during the edit process, which is why we just use that already completed work, and make markers from it, and than that builds the vfx list in Resolve.
Again, i'd love the original idea of having the clip name being part of the scripting language, it would simplify the workflow a bit on the script side, but i can't see it automating the process any more than my workflow already does.

Sure, there are two sides to this coin: ability to manually add shot names (or any custom metadata per shot) and ability to do it through scripting API. Both should be there. In softwares that have solved this rocket science there is usually a hybrid solution: you select one or more shots and then apply an automated naming action to them, to name with increments, modify current name or whatnot.