flame top questions

[rainbowss]

I’ve got a few questions on things that have been niggling me; i’m sure there are hard and fast answers out there, so here she goes;

1. why can’t i copy a clip in my timeline? smoke has drag+f –> but i can’t seem to find flame’s variation? at the moment i’m having to go out to my desktop + copy the clip, but surely there’s a hotkey i’m missing?

2. i’ve got four tracks on my timeline; my edit is on the bottom, above this are 3 layers of soft fx. when i’m on my desktop, i want to replace a clip. even though i’ve got my primary layer as the edit layer, when i replace my clip on the desktop, it deletes all my 3 layers of soft fx above the clip i’ve just dropped in. i’m working around this by dropping my new clip at the end of my edit, and then manually going in and replacing it – but this is slooooow. am i asking too much of flame’s timeline?

3. i’ve seen another op do this and i’m not sure what hotkey it was. two clips on the timeline; offline and online. op matched/locked (?) these clips so when he scrubbed through one, the other scrubbed at the same time. i’ve tried locking but didn’t seem to be that…?

4. what’s the best way to offline/online compare? cropped axis as a soft fx on timeline?

5. i’ve got six clips to output to tape. i know i don’t have to do these one by one, but how? deliverables?

6. painting in batch + on desktop; no individual paint strokes? one chance to undo? my patience runs very short. anyone know of any flame specific paint tutorials, perhaps i’m missing the good stuff?

thanks!

[Anonymous]

thanks for the speedy reply! much appreciated!

you could deactivate the tracks you dont want to affect – still i would prefer to do this in batch, where you can define src+rec & edit with hotkeys AND you see whats happening in a MultiTL

– ahh yes src+rec in batch, thanks. and i’m sure this is obvious once i’m infront of the kit, but how would you deactivate the tracks?

[/I]3. i’ve seen another op do this and i’m not sure what hotkey it was. two clips on the timeline; offline and online. op matched/locked (?) these clips so when he scrubbed through one, the other scrubbed at the same time. i’ve tried locking but didn’t seem to be that…?

also in batch – set a context on the offline & put it in the ref buffer – or add a logicOps behind Offline/Assemble & set a contex there, while dragging through the assembled TL.
As a very light version for a rough compare you can also link 2 reels on the desktop (L+cick)[/I]

Ahhh I think he was linking.

4. what’s the best way to offline/online compare? cropped axis as a soft fx on timeline?

see above – batch is your friend

But if you did this in batch you wouldn’t be able to watch them both simultaneously realtime?

5. i’ve got six clips to output to tape. i know i don’t have to do these one by one, but how? deliverables?

>library>select all 6 > output clip

Sorry should have been more specific. they’re all going in at different t/codes.

6. painting in batch + on desktop; no individual paint strokes? one chance to undo? my patience runs very short. anyone know of any flame specific paint tutorials, perhaps i’m missing the good stuff?

desktop paint is serious – 1 undo only – you could use graphics > polygonIcon (open) & draw a bezier curve > outline mode, which is editable … – could need some improvement though …

Eeeek. ok. that answers that.

[shannones riders]

There are pretty good tutorials about Paint here: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/discreetuk?tf=2&

It helped me a lot.

pH.

[claudio antonelli]

Batch Paint has multiple undos.

No per-stroke controls or layers in the photoshop sense, but I like it’s options much more than desktop paint (though I do miss auto-paint for marker removal…)

[shannones riders]

Hey Andy,

Just a quick question. Why do you use autopaint for marker removal? Why not offsetting with front source in action? Autopaint seems to be much slower and less flexible for me.
I’m just curious because I can’t see the idea behind autopaint+tracking.

Thanks.

[claudio antonelli]

I agree that using source offsets in action is generally quicker and due it it’s non-destructive nature a better place to start.

There’s times when ofsetting & cc’ing and & blurring won’t cut it, and that’s when I get into using autopaint. I use the smear tool a lot for this, I can smear in from all different directions and soften the marker right out, and with an autopaint track, it’ll do that per-frame–spearing from whatever angle my paint strokes come from. So you can start out using the track and applying a base clone, which is effectively a front source offset, but then you can go back to frame 1 and do cleanup with a smudge brush.

The one thing to note, after you have your track and have recorded your autopaint strokes is to take the autopaint record timeline bar and drag it so the head and tail are both on frame 1. That way it will do all the autopaint strokes per-frame. Otherwise you’ll get a traditional autopaint where it does a little bit per frame, which is useless for this technique.

Thanks go out to Josh Puente for showing me that you can use autopaint with a 1 point track.

[sweryagf rrfr]

@rainbowss 30043 wrote:

5. i’ve got six clips to output to tape. i know i don’t have to do these one by one, but how? deliverables?

>library>select all 6 > output clip

Sorry should have been more specific. they’re all going in at different t/codes.

short answer: give them a TC before outputting
long answer: “Outputting Multiple Clips” in the user guide

[claudio antonelli]

To lay off multiple clips make sure they’re all in a reel with no other media and their timecodes don’t overlap (change timecode in the “format” area of the desktop). Hit “output clip” in the library area of the desktop and hold ALT down, then click one of the clips. They should all be loaded in the output module and you’ll just have to hit “process” or “insert” (depending on which software version you have–it changed to insert in 2010 I believe)

[Ramazan]

Just bare in mind that if you work left to right it will lay them off in reverse order so on the list of clips in the output module you can do a sort on the timecode field.

[shannones riders]

@andy_dill 30138 wrote:

The one thing to note, after you have your track and have recorded your autopaint strokes is to take the autopaint record timeline bar and drag it so the head and tail are both on frame 1. That way it will do all the autopaint strokes per-frame. Otherwise you’ll get a traditional autopaint where it does a little bit per frame, which is useless for this technique.

Thanks andy. I’ll try it next time.

[Author]

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