Tell Me if I am Crazy....

[artfx]

From what I see now, the way projects are organized with clips and multiple soundtracks, one could conceivably:

• Quickly board out a sequence or even an entire short film, complete with proper timing.
  Create these sketches at the final project size and aspect ratio
  Add simple sound FX and temp music.
  Watch and enjoy and pretty much completed animatic or story reel.

When going to final, it is only a matter of updating each clip in the overall project... A final background, more complete animation... replacing the master soundtrack (as final work gets done)... It becomes a process of refinement to get to the final product, step by step! But those first steps could get the project roughed out in no time!

Am I imagining things or is this all totally possible?

[ematecki]

At least, that's the goal we fixed us when adding clips.
The only limitation will be the size of your project file, saving a 10GB takes quite a while...
"Line art" (rough drawings with the sketch panel) don't take up much space, so you can work as you describe.
But at some point when adding colors/backgrounds/FXs, the project file gets too big.
Then you split your project by exporting each clip and refining them.
You can use the "File>Export EDL" to import your rough sequence into an editing app.

[artfx]

I don't mind a big project which may take a while to save. I would be more concerned about any memory issues while working. Are al the clips and their info kept in memory? If not, for short sequences it might still be a cool way to work.

If not, it can't be very long before technology catches up allowing us to work this way for any project.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Terrence, your opening post describes exactly the way I've been working quite some time now, with no problems other than eventually seeing a slow down due to some complex clips, which fits Eric's description. Sandra paints the clips always as individual projects; keeping them in Projects makes no sense for painting.

But as Eric says, it is very simple to isolate any clip into a separate project and the time saved by initially laying out an entire segment of a story (up to 5 or 6 minutes of 1080p x 12fps in my experience)is well worth working in the Project tab. By the way, I got into the habit of working out the details in all the clips at the same time, not completing one clip before I progress to the next -- I touch up details all over the place, back and forth, which makes for a dynamic progression of story telling and fewer erasures in general, resulting in a noticeable time saver.

[artfx]

Thanks, Paul. That sounds exactly like how I would want to work. I could see building an entire segment, making adjustments to clip lengths, drawings, mayb playing with sound etc. until I get it just right. This would make the creative aspect flow and be fun, I think.

As soon as I get all set up again, I will really start playing with this workflow.

[artfx]

WHat is it that folks are doing that gets them 10GB project files? I saw that mentioned in another thread as well. I decided to look over a sequence I had done. It has 9 cuts of varying length. The sequence is about 90 seconds or more. It is separated out into separate projects per cut because I hadn't thought about putting it all in one project yet. The entire sequence folder is only 2.5 GB, and that probably includes some 3D project files and renders for the 3D elements in the sequence.

I think if I did a project, which each sequence was one project with all cuts contained therein, no project would still reach 10GB.

One note, though, I do not save panning backgrounds in my projects. I just save the FX Stack bin for such things. Could that be what is getting projects up in size?

[ematecki]

One note, though, I do not save panning backgrounds in my projects. I just save the FX Stack bin for such things. Could that be what is getting projects up in size?

That surely "helps" getting the file size up.
TVPA saves the images in a "differential" format, i.e. only saving parts of an image that changes relative the previous images (in fact it is a bit more efficient than just comparing to the previous image).
When all pixels changes like in a pan, TVPA has to save the entire image.

[Paul Fierlinger]

My current project is made of 12 clips which add up to 3 scenes which run together for 60 seconds. Each scene is made of 4 clips. The clips vary in duration from 1 second to 16 seconds. Altogether the .tvpp project takes up 454 MB but the project folder takes up 21.4 GB and this is because I have 50 backups of the .tvpp so far (but I am also almost done).

Every clip is in constant motion, animated in 2's on a 1080p aspect ratio at 24 fps. The frame per second rate is unusual for me and this is because almost every scene has a boat gliding through the frame, which needs to be keyframed at 24fps. Most of the time I animate at 12fps.

I render each clip out into a separate folder as 720p AVI's. The folder holding these AVI's comes to 8.04 GB. The 12 AVI's inside this folder range from 0.98 MB to 822 MB. But the smallest AVI happens to be the longest clip (16 seconds) because it has one distant boat gliding across the scene, But the boat is made of three layers, each with a Faux-Fixe effect of a different length. The layers have individual cycling objects such as a flag, fluttering sails and a small wash trailing behind the boat. There are 5 more layers in the scene making up the background and other boats at anchor with no motion.

There happen to be three clips of 13 second duration, each with two to three characters in constant motion. Each clip has between 10 and 15 layers.
None of this is in color yet and there are no separate pan backgrounds involved. Each keyframed pan is made of a single moving object, the boat, which is made of several layers merged into a new, key framed layer.

Except for the 24 fps rate, this is a pretty typical .tvpp project for me.