Hello guys, I’m a Resolve and Baselight colorist before trying Flame. It really confused me that I cannot just playback a timeline in effects interface. Every settings of playback seems to work with only individual clips. Could I use it just like other color grading systems? I’m now consider using Flame as my color and VFX finish tool.
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It works, it’s just a different UI.
In the effects tools at the bottom you need to change the scope. It defaults to ‘segment range’, but you can change it to ‘timeline range’, and the playback covers the entire timeline.
Segment range is useful to get good resolution when keyframing, and to not jump to the next clip unless you actually want to.
There are ways to do pretty much anything you know from Resolve and Baselight, it may just not be obvious. And the manual is not as helpful as you’d like, and the learning channel isn’t oriented towards colorists coming from those apps. You may just have to ask here or on the Discord.
I’m using Flame for almost all my color work now, after years in Resolve, Mistika, Baselight for Avid, etc. It’s a great tool. Just take a bit of time to adapt to.
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Hey there @EddieTyrael - welcome to Flame! You’re definitely in the right place asking questions like this here.
I think the answer might be two-fold. You’d want to do exactly what Jan said, switching the scope of the Timebar to TImeline / Storyboard Range, but you might find that while scrubbing gets you to where you want to go, actual playing back still only displays the currently selected segment until the playback finishes, and then it switches to wherever the playback left off.
I know it might not be super self-evident, but instead of viewing the normal “Result” F4 view, if you instead switch to the “Storyboard Context” view with the 4 keyboard shortcut, you can see the timeline during playback.
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@Jeff Thanks for expanding on that. I hadn’t ever tried ‘storyboard context’. However, when I had just tested it before responding above it did work - what I didn’t realize is that it worked because I often keep my viewer in ‘Context - Primary Track’ rather than F4. And that also works.
I usually stay in Primary track so that my playback picks up any adjustment layer tracks with ‘view transforms’ while working on Image nodes in lower tracks.
Goes to show that Flame has so many ways ot using it. Flame On!
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Thanks a lot for your answer! It’s really helpful! To be honest, I am fascinated by your spirit in forums and communities. I’m Chinese and few people use Flame here. So I will absolutely be active on logik and other Flame forum. Thanks again.
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This works really well except in the cases where you’ve got a 100 clips on the timeline. There is no easy way to scrub through the current shot. I do know that if you hold down ctrl you can scrub within a clip. But it’s not a fine enough scrub.
Sometimes I do find myself wishing that Timebar could be zoomed in / out in the Effects environment or in Batch for those scenarios similar to what you’re describing. To that end I point you to Flame Feedback FI-00717, which I’ve upvoted and commented on.
But until that feature comes out, the way I look at it is catering the range scope to your current needs. I’ve graded a few feature length films before, so I’ve occasionally worked with upwards of ~800 clips in that little Timebar. The way I would view a shot in the context of the surrounding shots is to switch the scope to Timeline Range, select a few shots back in the Storyboard Reel view, press “4”, and hit play. Scrubbing is tough, but playing will play the shots in context just fine. Hopefully that’s what you mean by “scrub through the current shot”. If you find yourself using that workflow a lot, there’s a keyboard shortcut called “Cycle Timebar Range Mode” that is unbound by default, but can be bound if you find yourself needing it a lot. I was switching between Segment Range and Timeline Range quite a bit to jump around to different sections and play things in context.
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Out of interest, are you grading in Flame with a panel. I’ve actually had a couple of colourists try Flame for grading, both with a Tangent panel, and their responses were almost identical. They didn’t like grading in Flame as they had to interact with the GUI way more than they would with Resolve or Baselight so they found it harder to get in the grading flow.
I’ve also kept an eye on those colourists and others and they do tend to spend 80% of their time only using the panel so was wondering if you have found a way that works for you?
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It’s a mixed bag in my experience. But then I think landscape of control surfaces has changed - not only for color, but also in sound. As software has become more complex and is evolving faster, control surfaces have a hard time keeping up.
For Resolve, the mapping of the HDR toolset, the color warper, and the new slice tool doesn’t really fit existing panels. Same on the sound side - the proliferation of endless plugins and complex panners with unique UIs instead of mostly channel strips on big consoles.
Then it becomes an ergonomic conundrum. If you do need to reach for the mouse or keyboard frequently for ‘in the box’ interactions, then the panel and the keyboard fight for desktop space. The same is true if you no longer have single use workstations, but do many other things (or even just pull some After Effects asset), having a big board in the center becomes an issue.
They still make sense for some core functions where tactile feedback is valuable, such as the core color wheels, some knobs for contrast, etc. as well as some frequent toggles.
I have a 6 piece Tangent and use it all the time with Flame. Some customization of the layout. But the panel is behind the keyboard and tablet. The surface is for select tactile functions only, and special navigation like next/prev keyframe, hide, etc.
I find the Tangent panel mapped really well (and customizable) for Flame and Mistika. For Resolve it’s meh at best. Blackmagic panels are a non-starter for me, since they only work with Resolve and I use other apps as well.
Everyone will have their personal preferences.
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I have graded in Flame with a panel before (it’s been about 4 years though) and (if memory serves) I can definitely understand where those comments are coming from. The Flame panel experience is a lot of interacting with the GUI compared to Baselight or Resolve, but I am predisposed to look past those things because I am not in the market to switch apps.
The way I personally see it is that I don’t grade in Flame to get the most premium, most optimal, or fastest grading experience; I grade in Flame to leverage all of Flame’s other features that are one click away from the Effects tab.
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Thanks Jeff. Playing down a timeline is near impossible for me stress free. Anytime I filter the timeline for the one shot I’m working on, so that I can scrub it, I have to reselect my preset for continuous play of the timeline.
Nearly impossible to work client attended at this point.
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I’ll admit that it’s rare for me to have client supervised color sessions. I get a small number (1 to 3) color sessions a year, and they’re mostly unsupervised with maybe a brief video call “session” at the end to go over everything quickly, so I honestly can’t speak with as much confidence about just how “easy” it is compared to anyone else who does more of it than I do. A lot of my knowledge on this one is more theoretical than practical.
But that being said, I want to believe that with some solid keyboard shortcut rebinding to more comfortable keys, making the switch between different Range Modes, viewing the timeline in Storyboard Context, and switching between Loop & Once, it becomes doable. Sure it’s maybe not part of the normal set of shortcuts we’re used to using, but I want to believe that it can be done! This is easy for me to say after spending 5 minutes rebinding keys and playing with them in the comfort of my own home in some downtime, so definitely grain of salt here.
I do want to know more about what you mean when you say your preset for continuous play of the timeline. Toying with it for a few minutes, I found that leaving it on Loop seems to work fine from what I can tell, since when in Timeline range it never gets to the end so you can leave it on Loop and it just plays, but when you switch back to Segment mode it will Loop (as I would imagine you want it to do). But let me know more details and we can talk about how to maybe make things better.