Extracting new projects from existing ones

[slowtiger]

Thanks to someone's very "personal" workflow I had to work with too big files recently which contained several scenes at once (you know who you are!). Each scene consisted of several layers somewhere in the timeline.

In order to make each scene into a separate project file I used 2 approaches.
- Duplicate the project and erase everything not belonging into it
- Select complete layers, copy the frames, and paste them into a new project, one layer at a time, then recreate timing and behaviours.

Both these ways are very time-consuming. I know I also could switch off visibility for unwanted stuff and export in DEEP format, but this takes too long as well because stuff is rendered instead of simply saved.

I'd like to have an option in the layers popup menu, like "create new project from selected layers". Opinions, anyone?

[Paul Fierlinger]

I don't understand the complexity you describe here. I would create a new empty clip go back to the one that needs to be semi-extracted, select only the layers you want to extract, copy selected layers and paste selected layers into new clip. Is that what you need?

[Animark]

1. Go to first frame (or last frame of prev scene???) of a new scene on your biiiig timeline.
2. use Animator Panel -> Clip -> Split Clip to separate your timeline into two clips (take a look to the project tab)
3. choose the next clip (the new one) and repeat from 1).

In the end you'll have a clip for each scene. Now you can make a new project of each scene by one click
1. Go to the project tab
2. choose a clip (or some more) and click (right) on it
3. choose "create a new project from selected clips"

thats it.

[slowtiger]

Unfortunately this "new clip" method only works as long as scenes follow each other in the timeline.

What I'm stuck with is projects in which different scenes have been drawn on top of each other at the same moment in time. (Don't ask.)

So it would be nice if I could just select some layers and press a single button to make a noe project from them. This would also be useful for building an archive or re-use stuff without loosing the separate layers.

[Paul Fierlinger]

That was what my answer pertained to. I understood your question because I've done the same thing to myself several times. This happens when I have two variations of animation for an identical event and I label the differing layers as "name A" and "name B". I mute all the B layers when I'm rendering to an A event and vice versa. Sometimes I have found this system confusing even to myself and decide it would be simpler to just create two separate clips and proceed the way I described above.

[slowtiger]

when I have two variations of animation for an identical event

Exactly! I know I tell people to get organized and plan in advance, but I'll end up with improvised stuff in the same project file myself ever so often. And since TVP is a software which encourages experimentation, I'd like it to encouage clean-up as well.

BTW, the newest film by Theodore Ushev is out to be watched, and it's a complex etude in handmade, painterly animation. Website: http://films.nfb.ca/lipsett-diaries/film.php
Here's the complete movie (only 5 days left to watch!): http://videos.arte.tv/de/videos/die_lip ... 591672.html

[Paul Fierlinger]

Exactly! I know I tell people to get organized and plan in advance,

which reminds me of the reporter who interviewed a 60 year-old lady who had completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe and asked, "Madam, did anything exiting happen to you during your voyage?' and was given the answer, "Why of course not! Excitment is the result of poor planning!"

Here's the complete movie (only 5 days left to watch!): http://videos.arte.tv/de/videos/die_lip ... 91672.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

How do you open it; the teaser looks astonishing!

[slowtiger]

Hm, don't you get a player on that page? Or is there a message like "can't show this content in your country"?

[Paul Fierlinger]

It's in German and all I could do was to guess, so I copied the skewed letters, CORRECTLY, and it kept giving me some message in Warning Red and made me copy more words until I gave up.

[slowtiger]

OK, I digged into the licence legalize on bottom of the page and found this is only visible in France and Germany - for one time the other way round ...

Seems like you're restricted to the trailer right now. Maybe next year or so NFB puts it online.

(The letter thingy you tried is only necessary for commenting on that page.)

[Paul Fierlinger]

At least I got to see the trailer, so thanks anyway. It looks like a potentially good film (the graphics for sure)though I'm a bit suspicious of the animated documentation of deranged minds.

[slowtiger]

Well, I could give you my own view of the film, but that would spoil your fun.

[Paul Fierlinger]

No it wouldn't; let's hear it!

[ZigOtto]

and here's the french version link : les journeaux de Lipsett
really impressive work ! ... also a bit bruising, specially in the third part, but I suppose it's more or less intentional, the subject being rather dark and gloomy.

[slowtiger]

OK, here it goes:

Of course Theodore Ushev is a good painter, in that art school sense of the word. The flickering textures work exactly as I'd expect in such a film. He uses all available tricks: painting freely as well as over existing footage, paintings-only as well as with the original footage still underneath, frame-by-frame, dissolves, overlapping exposures. Lots of paper and other textures. I was only put off in one shot where he too obviously used a cut out car, everything else flows smoothly and works as a whole, optically.

The material he uses mostly stems from Lipsett himself or from his movies, I'd say that's about 2/3 of the whole film. Only the "family memories" are completely invented. Ushev uses lots of fast cutting, like Lipsett himself. He's clearly from that "associative" school of filmmakers where you throw lots and lots of images to the audience to invoke a certain feeling.

We see young Arthur at home, we see glimpses of his mother, then later on we only see his work and some situations around it: a theatrical screening, a nice letter from Kubrick. There's no real character to follow through the film.

I couldn't really follow the story, or didn't connect to what was supposed to be Lipsett's inner voice. The emotions seemed to be affected only, I wasn't convinced about them. The voice-over doesn't help, and the soundtrack even isn't on par with Lipsett's own work.

My main concern is that Ushev used some old clichee "explanations" for Lipsett's state of mind, all that family business in the first part of the film (one day mother is gone) is just there to be used as reason for Lipsett's suicide in the end. I think that's much too cheap. (It's cheap in most other films too.) Maybe it's too much to be asked from a 14 minute film, but then why pick up a subject too big for that? In this condensed form all those sentences supposed to sound deep just sound pathetic.

(I should try and get "Le feu follet" by Louis Malle again, covering the last days of a man who commits suicide in the end. I remember to have been deeply impressed by it when I saw it 25 Yrs ago.)