New RV vs old RV - edits are gone entirely

I was using ‘old’ RV for dailies, reviews and tech checks for many years and found it to be spectacular, fast and my all-around go-to tool.

I could load an entire sequence edit, select a shot and compare a comp version to the edit ref to confirm a retime, rerack or any other edit-specific need, compare to previous versions on the fly, and switch between colour and RGBA channels or additional channels such as embedded dimattes.
I could select a portion of the edit and play that back, switch to the latest comp, switch to the latest publish of lighting or tracking or… anything, really.
Having the ability to load the edit and swap out shots for comps or other versions was an absolute must-have. It made dailies and reviews streamlined and efficient. Annotating frames and then publishing each note to shotgun- it was always one of the few things that always worked seamlessly in VFX production making the workflow less stressful and communicative.

All this immensely useful and efficient, productivity is 100% gone in new RV.
What exactly happened?
Why would such basic functions that made RV what is- was removed entirely?
Are we even getting this back???

It takes significantly more time to do reviews now, and even then the entire process is nowhere near as concise and detailed as it once could be. One simply cannot load an edit reference at all anymore- all you get are clunky thumbnails of individual shots.
You can no longer swap between colour channels.
You can no longer swap between different comp versions of other types of publishes.

All of this bizarre change to RV has removed the basic toolset that made RV so useful for VFX work.

While I am bewildered by this incomprehensible change, and would love an explanation, I am far more interested in seeing these rudimentary functions restored to RV exactly as they were.

I cannot possibly be the only one who has noticed this, certainly others out there have discovered that their dailies and review sessions are nowhere near what they once were.

Hi Aurore,

Is it possible that your RV is not properly configured? The features your mention are still available in the latest version of RV. The RV UI is usually configured through a file called .rvrc.mu located in your user folder. More information on this file here:

I hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply.
Not being a pipeline TD, I cannot say one way or another what might be the cause of this lack of functionality {I am merely an end user] nor what it takes to restore it, assuming it is possible to still be there. I do know I cannot find any reference to these capabilities in the help files, however, which merely reinforces their removal as being what has happened? it strains comprehension as to why they’d be removed, but no signs exist in the help files that I can find to indicate that these functions are still there.
Please do prove me wrong because they are critical functions for my normal workflow.

Can you provide a screenshot of your RV UI?

On my side I have this, and it still has the color channels selector tool.

I have that, yes. At least, until anything is loaded. Then it is impossible to switch to any individual channel viewing.
But that is only slightly less worrisome than not having edits capable of being loaded to compare shots to. All you get in RV now is a selection of thumbnails for shots in a playlist to play back and no way to compare them to an edit.
I am accustomed to having complete control over that and can’t find any sign that feature ever existed, TBH.

Is it possible you are using the SG Review package? That package is in a deprecation path and all its workflows are now in the Screening Room package. See this thread for more details:

I hope this helps.
Eric

Good guess, but nope. The stripped down version inside of SG isn’t much help unless you are doing something fairly rudimentary…

rv actual

This is actual RV.

Hi Aurore. Sorry that your problem is not solved. Feel free to open a support case if you need further assistance with this bug.

Thanks!
Eric

Do you use any custom .mu files in your studio?
You could try renaming your .rv folder in your user home directory so it gets recreated cleanly.
You could check you don’t have a custom RV_SUPPORT_PATH that points to out of date RV files?
One thing that was an issue for us was the namechange of files from “shotgun” to “shotgrid”… which broke our custom RV setup.
On that point alone, can I make a plea to the devs, if you changing the core namespace of an application, please add logic that will fall back to the old namespace if the new namespace isn’t being used :slight_smile: (I’m referring to the shotgun_fields.mu file in my case)

Hope that helps!

1 Like

reply to Eric: well I had emailed what I thought was support last year but had zero response to it, and our pipeline TD did as well more recently and has also had no reply so I don’t really know how to proceed. I am just trying to saturate the system right now so it gets a little traction because it was excruciating trying to deliver our last 2 shows without having actual proper dailies functions and I don’t want a repeat of this.

reply to Patrick: really cannot answer that. I’m not the pipeline TD, just the poor unfortunate trying to engage dailies sessions without 99% of my RV functionality I apparently took for granted before.
At this point I don’t know if RV isn’t set up correctly, of if it did in fact change, and I am still firmly in the ‘horrible redesign that removed all logical functionality’ camp, because nothing in the manual indicates the functions I was using for the past decade plus even exist today.
I have no idea where to even begin hunting this down.
can we start someplace simple? can you just confirm you even know what functions I am talking about that I see as being gone?

You mentioned a few features that are missing. I looked at the color channels but they are still available.

About loading edits, no I am not 100% sure I know which workflow/feature you are referring to. I assume you are talking about cuts. Can you provide specific steps and screen shots? Also, how do you invoke RV? Is it from the Shotgrid Web App? From a terminal? From a custom integration?

Hi Aurora, can you make sure that your support request was done through this link?

Contact Customer Support | Autodesk Knowledge Network

Have a nice day!

Hello all I am the pipeline TD at @Aurore’s studio, I think I can help illuminate some of issues we have been having. (:wave: @Patrick )

We have a pretty straightforward RV setup. We launch from ShotGrid and the only custom config we have is a automatic OCIO profile loader. (see attached)

Issue #1: is that RV turns off channel vieweing when OCIO is turned on. I raised a ticket about this last year (Request #123573) which seems to have been incorrectly marked as complete. I have attached a gif to show what happens.

Issue #2: Now I havent seen the toolset to which Aurore is reffering to as that was in another studio, but the way I see it Cut playback in RV should solve this problem. Playing back artist versions and comparing to the plate and client cut reference is all part of the cut playback tool. Cut playback is available on the website but I just cant seem to get it to appear in RV.

I have seen other people in the community have this issue as well:

In my ticket for the issue (Request #123328) the support staff who replied to that ticket linked me to a reported issue (SG-20549). However I have not been able to track the progress of this issue?

rv_settings (1).py (3.1 KB)

2022-03-08 19.20.37

Hi @Aurore - just to add to the above, but the wonderful thing about RV is it’s ability to be customised - that’s what makes it such a popular pipeline tool.
Could it be possible that the functionality you’re referring to, was enabled by custom tools built by the studio you were working for? It’s very common for studios to build and extend RV’s capabilities through custom UI and hooks, and roll those out to all users.
The functionality you’ve described is close to what we’ve provided in some of the tools we’ve integrated with RV (Screening Room, Review, etc) so any screenshots etc you can provide would help us narrow this down.

reply to Mason; interesting. i am unaware of whether or not this was anything custom built but if so i’ve seen identical customization are several shops.
if that sort of [excuse me for saying it] basic functionality has to be customized, it says a lot about what is missing in RV, does it not?

That information helps, thanks @Aurore The integration that we have that’s closest is Screening Room for RV - which I think you were directed to in a previous post.
To reiterate: if you can get a screenshot from any one of your previous shops showing the UI (no media necessary) we’ll be able to offer better guidance.

not really sure i can get a screenshot of an RV setup where i no longer work but I’ll let you know if i can figure out a way to do so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

screening room for Rv is most definitely not it. its about as different as can be from what i had before.
i still think autodesk removed the functions entirely.

Hey Aurore,

If these where any of the big companies it would have definitely been customized tooling.

I could imagine MPC has sold their ReviewTool integration to other studios for example.

they are smaller than mpc by a large margin.
But the more I think about it the more I believe it is a custom-built function.
However it just reinforces the question; seems what made RV so amazing all along is starting to look like a custom plugin that everybody uses.
So it is either a huge coincidence they all made it the same or they all got it from the same place.
Either way, it points out a massive lack of operational efficiency that should simply be there as a default function.