[Cin] Tool for timelinging and multitrack exports

[Stefan de Konink]

On Sunday, January 29, 2023 2:21:13 AM CET, Andrew Randrianasulu wrote:
> While I think I can't even start on implementing those ideas I have
> question: did you tried to use 'split timeline' feature, so each cam put on
> same teack but at wildly different time and you have 2-4 zones for working
> on each one? (mostly by cutting things to another track?) Or I completely
> misuderstand how split timeline works in cin ...

I cannot find the term 'split timeline'. But started looking; do you mean 
creating a clip from the main timeline. Open it with "Open EDL" in 
resources, and start editing that?

<https://cinelerra-gg.org/download/CinelerraGG_Manual/OpenEDL.html#6784>

I was not aware of this feature, but it would certainly make it easier to 
edit clips. Maybe this is more related to my second email "Workflow issues 
for multitrack editing". What I would still dislike is that my "0" EDL 
would be the initial place to align the material, and not the 'final' 
timeline. There is still no separation of concerns.


> but how you will tell users there is like 1, min of content, and there is
> 5m? By some markets? Should those 'edits' expand individually when needed?

I would envision an entire project to be available, like it would be now 
when all content is aligned. The timeline would be something where the 
X-axis is creation time and duration. Resources are just placed on this 
timeline. This functionality would be a different presentation of the 
"resources file list".
 
Before we get into the academic discussion of Cinelerra has frames and not 
seconds. You may express this in relative frames towards each other as 
well.

 

>>  1. "automatically" construct such timeline each track(group) being
>>     from a single device, which typically atomically can only produce
>>     a single stream of content by means of metadata
>
> how you think should work,  is there something like cameraID or you need to
> associate some user-know metadata key to specific camera, so you can say
> send all medias with this metadata to specific track or media bin?

When I compare the photogrammetry software Meshroom it has two variants. It 
can bundle assets based on camera serial number or a folder on disk. My 
current cinelerra projects are also organised by the same principles. I 
have nikon-50mm, nikon-35mm, nokia and tascam folders.

Within resources we are just lacking this group information (the asset 
producing device) and the ability to pair between them (between devices).


>>  2. having some tooling that can do macro alignment, independent
>>     of metadata (for example by audio fingerprinting)
>> 
>
> interesting idea, does any libre NLE currently have such functionality?

In our previous discussion;

 - cinelerra can do aligning
 - kdenlive
 - for kdenlive someone also made an external tool
   <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mypKKK-Se7A>



>>  3. having some tooling that can do micro alignment
>
> Like 'move this segment few frames left/right' as context  menu option?

Exactly, having multiple viewers available so you could ultimately also use 
it to view a clapperboard.


>>  4. export this in either some EDL format or multitrack format
>>     being NLE independent
>
> ---
>
>
> I'll try to look into it a bit more, but no promices (cmx3600 only had few
> audio tracks, but may be there were unofficial extensions ...)

MOV files certainly support it. It can obviously be used as an exchange 
format, but from performance perspective, playing a file that is 300MB/s is 
sub optimal. So even then you would like to split it in chunks that can be 
easily used. A (format)proxy may obviously solve this issue.
 

-- 
Stefan