I’m trying to set up a Cuts/CutItems workflow and I’m having trouble getting RV to respect the cut_item_in/cut_item_out of the version linked to the CutItem or even the “base” version linked to the Cut.
See the image below for details of the CutItems I’m working with:
It’s the second CutItem (cut order 2) that’s causing me issues. It’s linked to a Version for the full length mov of the cut reference, and I’m trying to set it up so that the the cut_item_in/out trims down the full video to fit in the slot between our actual shots*.
*CutItem 2 represents a part of the sequence we won’t be working on.
You can see that the cut_item_in/out are quite different from the CutItems representing Shots because the timecode of the cut reference mov is different to the Versions create for the shots, which are render jpg sequences.
I can load the Cut in RV 2021.0.2 using the Screening Room browser, and the 1st and 3rd CutItems/Versions for my Shots work fine, but the 2nd CutItem/Version is just a still frame of the first frame of the mov.
As far as my understanding of the Cuts/CutItems workflow goes it seems like its designed to be able to handle this kind of workflow of assembling Versions into an EDL and play it back in RV, but I can’t seem to get it to work.
If anyone has any tips or advice for what I might be doing wrong that would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
PS: One detail that may be relevant is that the Versions created for CutItems 1 and 3 only have sg_path_to_frames and CutItem 2 only has sg_path_to_movie filled in. When switching the source to either the frames or mov the CutItems 1 & 3 will always play back but CutItem 2 is always stuck on the first frame. This happens if I use the Shotgun>Swap Media>Play Frames/Movie or the Shotgun>Current Source Prefs>Play Frames/Movie
Contrary to my understanding, it seems that the cut_item_in/cut_item_out are not what control the in/out point of media loaded… but instead the timecode_edit_in_text/timecode_edit_out_text control this instead. I was under the impression that the timecode_edit_[...] fields were for representing the in/out points within the overall cut… but they seem to control the start/end point of the version being played.
This image shows the final setup of the CutItems that seems to be working*:
*NB: The Version first/last frame fields seems to have no effect, and note that the Version field doesn’t need to be filled either… it picks up correctly from the Cut’s “base” version.
I have to admit I’m still not sure I really understand with confidence how this is supposed to work… but it’s working and that’s what matters at the end of the day!
If anyone has and more info to be able to clarify what the difference is between the cut_item_in and the timecode_edit_in_text fields are that’d be really helpful to my understanding of the system
I think the reason why it works in your final setup is that you removed the Version from the 2nd CutItem. Because of that, the Cut’s Version is used. In that specific case, we do not use the cut_item_in/cut_item_out fields, we use the edit_in/edit_out instead. This makes sense since the Cut’s Version’s timecode are in record-time (cut), not source-time.
Now I don’t fully understand why it did not work in your original setup. In this case, cut_item_in/cut_item_out should have been used. If you manually import the .mov file in RV (not through screening room, but by simply doing a file–>open in a new session), what is the full time range of the media? Does it contain frames 87,383 to 87,482?
Also, are you sure that this 2nd shot uses the path_to_movie and not the Shotgrid-transcoded mp4?
I hope this helps, let us know if you get more information.
Yeah I’m not sure either…The Version that I’d linked the CutItem to is the same Version that’s linked to the Cut. It’s better that they’re not linked as it makes things clearer about what’s a Shot and what’s not, as well as having less linking to do in the back end.
However it’s good to know that the when the Cut version is being used the edit_in/out are the only thing that matter (even if that does feel a bit odd to my non-editor brain! )
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