Clips vs Scenes

[Sewie]

Hello dear TVP friends,

Can anyone tell me what the difference is between 'deleting a clip' versus 'deleting a scene' in the Project Tab ?
The same goes for the other options (adding, duplicating). Does TVP handle clips in another way than scenes, for example...?

[Elodie]

If we compare the clip / scene to the insance / exposures :

A clip is like an exposure
A scene is like an instance

It means a scene groups together many clips. But a scene can also be composed of only one clip.

It's a little like in animation, with the instances and the exposures =)

[Sewie]

Ok, but in the project tab, how can a scene be composed of multiple clips? And, if so, where can I find these clips ?

Can I see scenes and clips in the project-tab window ? If so, can I see a difference between them ?
For example, if I choose "add scene" in the pull-out menu above. What does TVP do differently than if I would choose "add clip" ?

(I hope I'm being clear...)

[Paul Fierlinger]

I hate to make a single clip which serves no important role towards the advancement of the story -- it sometimes happens and I cringe when I let this slip by and have to watch it every time I have to watch my film in the future. To avoid this I have to clarify the purpose of each clip in my mind before I start to animate. Scenes are made of several clips to define just one segment of a story. If I want to make a scene expressing the thoughts of one character I will think of it as a mini-story within the bigger picture. It helps me to organize my thoughts and leads to a clarification of the story. But I will also organize these clips into scenes as I build the board.

As the story grows and I glance at my storyboard thumbs, separated by thick dividing borders defining scenes, I can keep reviewing and double checking the pace and rhythm of how I'm revealing the story. It often helps to be able to see that I have been spending too much time on one subject and not enough on a part that is much more important (try selecting the forth icon depicting a time line, which will at times help you get the bigger picture by stretching and shrinking the line of clips using the Z button.) So I might notice that I have been spending too much time on the scene which shows the character's thoughts and I'll go back to it to make the mini-story briefer.

But dividing a storyboard into scenes also helps when I need to make breaks and divide the storyboard into projects. When working on anything larger than three minutes I believe we all find a need to split the board into separate projects for better handling of memory resources. You know when it's time to split the project into several projects when each save you make takes too much time. Where do you then create the split if you have the whole board arranged like a run-on sentence with no periods or Capitol letters to define the beginnings and ends of thoughts.

Or think of clips as sentences, scenes as paragraphs and projects as chapters.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Ok, but in the project tab, how can a scene be composed of multiple clips? And, if so, where can I find these clips ?

Can I see scenes and clips in the project-tab window ?
For example, if I choose "add scene" in the pull-out menu above. What does TVP do differently than if I would choose "add clip" ?

(I hope I'm being clear...)

You should see the fat line define the border where you intend to create a new scene. When you click on the top of a thumb any entire scene will be made salient and stick out from the rest.

[Elodie]

As you can see :

sceneclip.png (44.25 KiB) Viewed 21759 times

I'ts a little like in animation with instance / exposures.

If you add a scene : you will create a new scene with 1 clip

If you add a clip : you will add a clip into a scene. It means there will a new image into your scene.

[ZigOtto]

Clip and Scene difference ? Scene is the upper level in the project structure hierarchy, (Project/Scenes/Clips/frames)
suppose you just created a new project, you got a single Scene/Clip project, with one frame,
if you [Add Clip], you will add a new Clip to the already existing Scene, so you will get a single Scene containing 2 Clips,
if, instead of adding a Clip, you [Add Scene], you will add a new Scene to the first Scene, so you will get 2 Scenes,
each one containing 1 Clip,
so I'm considering Scene tools as features to work on group of Clips,
(f.i. deleting a Scene will delete all Clips belonging to this Scene, that's all.

in the project tab (thumbnails view), the representation of scenes is the bounbing strip (beveled corners)
surrounding clips belonging to a same scene,
and the discontiniuty of this strip (vetical empty space) means passing from one scene to the next.

scene-clipVisSep.jpg (15.6 KiB) Viewed 21745 times

.. I'ts a little like in animation with instance / exposures.

your similitude doesn't sound exact to me :
an Instance's exposure is its head replicated in time, so all the exposures belonging to the same Instance are identical,
hopefully, clip's contents can be different for clips belonging to the same Scene ...

[Elodie]

.. I'ts a little like in animation with instance / exposures.

your similitude doesn't sound exact to me :
an Instance's exposure is its head replicated in time, so all the exposures belonging to the same Instance are identical,
hopefully, clip's contents can be different for clips belonging to the same Scene ...

You're right (Fabrice gave me yesterday the same argument )... That's why I only wrote "a little like". For me it's a little the same logical. But, it doesn't matter after, I think after our explanations (in particular yours), Sewie should understand what's the difference between clips and scenes

[Sewie]

Yes, I understand now. Thank you all for making that clear for me. I wasn't sure if TVP would use my computer resources in a different manner if I created (or deleted) a scene, or a clip.

And it's very helpful to read how you approach this new option, Paul.

[Elodie]

I think it couldn't hurt to update the (9.x) appendix to better explain this concept

It's named "TVPaint Animation 10 User Guide"...

TVPaint is only 10 members : 5 guys spends their time to develop new stuff and fix bugs on the current version for 4 different OS.
The 5 other guys (including me) spend their time to answer questions on the forum, by email, facebook, twitter and plenty other animation forums, both in French, Spanish, German, English and Japanese + all the commercial aspect (contacting new potential users, planing trips everywhere to meet new people, new studios, new schools, preparing packages, updating the database, etc...)

Re-writting the User guide from version 9 to 10 took me 4 months, and I'm just speaking about the 10 first lessons, and we needed at least 6 weeks to change it with the update to TVPaint 10.5.

So yes, it would hurt us to re-write an appendix for a version of the software released 4 years ago !

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How clips are made and how to identify how many clips there are in a scene (top left of the clip thumb)
How to rename clips
How to tell the duration of a clip
How to identfy a scene

=> http://static.tvpaint.com/downloads/man ... sson09.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A basic tutorial

On TVPaint 9 : http://www.tvpaint.com/v2/content/artic ... .php?id=43" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;