After of years of hearing of its virtues and after seeing how beneficial it can potentially be to both sharing and managing materials (thanks Phil!) I’m starting to dip my toe into this “new” frontier.
In my first case of “oops am I doing this right” on a job last night, I had a batch that I rendered for a 16x9 delivery that had to be adjusted for social aspects. Seemed like the perfect use case for versions - so I had a version X shot with the 16x9 format, and I figured I’d just iterate and create version X+1 for social.
The problem is when I selected that open clip and changed the version in my social timeline to X+1, it propagated that version change to ALL my timelines, including my 16x9, so suddenly that timeline had the incorrect X+1 instead of X.
Is this expected behavior? And if so, is there a way to “BREAK” a specific open clip from changing versions with the rest? Or at that point should I just point to the EXR files as this is NOT how the versioning system is intended to work.
@Dwklink - this is something that is handled by connected conform:
You can keep all of your openclip versions conveniently tied together.
When you make your conforms, you make connected conforms to begin with and then you can make duplicated segments that accept different characteristics.
e.g.
30’ master broadcast has shot_01 openclip and is set to v01.
30’ master social has shot_01 openclip and is set to v02.
15’ master broadcast has shot_01 openclip and is set to v01.
15’ master social has shot_01 openclip and is set to v02.
Happy to jump on a call if you have time (I know how rabid your clients are)
@philm You, sir, are the best. Thanks for your reply. Sounds like perhaps we can cover this stuff next we speak, along with the permissions questions.
I will say, it was quite a magical moment when I selected that clip, switched versions and just watched it pop to the correct version (pulled off of lucid) a moment later. Fantastic stuff! Thank you!
There are two levels of ‘connected’ in the timeline:
First the Source. If you import something to the Media Panel, copy or insert into a timeline, flame knows those two things come from the same source. If you update your openclip version it will update everything coming form that same source.
If you want to use different versions of the openclip in different timelines, you can right-click the segment and “Duplicate Source”. This segment is now considered a different source and it will not change if you update the version in other segments. It is it’s own version of the source now.
The second type of connections is Segment Connection. This is the little chain-link icon you can apply to segments (or it happens automatically when you create a Shots Sequence). This type of connection is more about the segment in the timeline separate from the awareness of the original source material.
Here is what might be weird when you first use Connected Segments: You can have timeline segments that have different ‘Connected Segment’ associations, but if they come from what flame considers it to be the same source connection, they will all update when you change the openclip version.
So again… the way to use different versions of an openclip is to Duplicate Source.
It’s interesting because I definitely understand a workflow (which is surely the more “industry standard” workflow) where EVERYONE and EVERYTHING needs to be kept in sync at all times. One change here MUST ripple everywhere or everything breaks and chaos ensues.
Unfortunately our workflow is usually based around the complete opposite, where NOTHING can be sync’d unless I say it’s ok. And automagically rippling a version change through everything everywhere all at once can be disastrous.
Just gotta understand how the wizard behind the Flame curtain is pulling all the strings so I understand the implications of incorporating all this new “flame managed” tech and I actually improve my workflow rather than borking it.
@philm Yeah, that’s still one of my big remaining questions is how BFX all works into this as it’s not readily apparent to me (IE an openclip “WRITE NODE” solution to the BFX Timeline Render). All in due time as I’m sure you have the answers!