Does anyone know where I can toggle frame number to default to starting at 1 instead of the frame number of TC?
When use ctrl alt T I get this gobblydegook.
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Great thanks. I didn’t find this in a search earlier. Strange that my project start frame is 1 and I still get this behaviour though…
Project start frame dictates the default start frame value for anything that doesn’t already have a start frame. Even though that number you’re seeing is obscure, it is most likely, correctly the start frame of that media. My guess is the media in question was exported with frame numbering of “use timecode” which would make the start frame what you’re seeing there.
well yes it is - all tk scans are exported with TC as frame number - are you saying that flame will forever interpret this media with ludicrously large start frame numbers unless we change the scans to have something more sensible?
Have we lost the old way forever? I can’t be arsed to right click every flipping plate.
I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs so maybe I’m missing something that someone else can fill us in on but I think the answer is yes this is how start frame works now.
But I can see a few pathways. Aside from doing what you said and getting the film scan frame index / start frame to be more aligned with what you want, I do think there are ways to adjust the start frame of multiple clips at once if that’s an option for you.
Going into areas I know less about, you could explore using Python to help change the start frame, but I’m not 100% sure if all of the things you’d need are exposed.
And finally you could make a feature request to see if others feel the way you do to try to add features in that would allow you to do what you want. Maybe a preference that sets all media’s start frames to be the default set in the project settings.
What a massive pain in the hole.
In all seriousness, this doesn’t really work for me. I could get the media scanned starting at fr1001 but what about handles? There’s got to be another way.
@FrancisBouillon @fredwarren
Do you have any insight on how I can work around this?
What you see as a pain, others might see as a more transparent way to view and understand important metadata that often needs to be preserved and passed through in a number of different pipelines. It’s just a matter of perspective depending on your needs.
Hi Jeff, I do appreciate where you are coming from but timecode is in the header and metadata is implicit not explicit - this is absolutely unnecessary - we’ve been working this way for years - it adds nothing. It’s regressive and curtails functionality.
Try communicating with a team of artists, all of whom probably have ADHD and dyslexia and tell them to change something on frame 177514 rather than fr16 and you’ll see my point.
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I can’t get into my flame right now (power in the building is out) but when you go to import the clip, maybe under image settings, are there any options you clan flip to how it is treating TC or frame number?
Found this in the manual - introduced in 2024 with a lovely video by @Jeff
Sadly the 2025 prefs look a bit different to this bit that’s pasted into the manual from 2024 ie I can’t seen the button shown below.
Media Import
The file sequence index is now used to set the Start Frame value: a clip named
SH01-Car-Beaty.1001.exrnow imports with Start Frame 1001.Open Clips and pattern browsing of file sequences also use the file index to set the Start Frame.
https://help.autodesk.com/view/FLAME/2025/ENU/?guid=GUID-85275C7C-A1C5-42A0-9900-4970DDD59D38
Is this it?
Still when you’re pulling in extra plates they have funky frame ranges - could do with a button to change this on import to start frame.
*Apologies for my stream of conscious posts - I exited the beta program for a few years as all my spare time was taken up with a divorce All this has come a rude shock.
Yes, the settings you’ve screenshotted with the New Batch Group set to Use Start Frame Value and the unchecked Use Start Frame Value under Create Batch Group should make it so any new Batch Groups created don’t have the start frame dictated by the image sequence’s timecode frame index, and will be set to your project’s start frame.
We number all clips to 1001 from first frame of heads before handing out plates to CG and to comp. Seeing the file’s frame number is actually really useful. Especially when getting renders back from CG. If they aren’t rendering full handles it’s still easy to align the renders to the plates.
I’d suggest working a renumbering into your conform process. Just as I’m sure you aren’t handing out clips with the name as assigned in the camera…
A001C009_blah_blahblah_20250213_etcetc
I’d like to add actually that numbering shots from 1001 is something we’ve always done as I believe it’s fairly standard practice. However historically you had to do it on export which weirdly left Flame as the only machine with frame numbers from 1 while the rest of the pipeline was working from 1001.
Where I used to work we used to start at fr 1, but always exported from Batch with a write node that had an offset of 999, so that first frame of picture was 1001, (slate was on 1000).
Yep. Export as 1001 for nuke and cg. Just weird to have this fr574274 start in source plates. I get it.
Thanks for your patience.