Workflow-discussion: Lumiera Workflow Proposals (draft v4)

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doc/design/workflow/Verwijlen/WorkflowProposals.txt

@@ -1,16 +1,15 @@
 Lumiera Workflow Proposals
 ==========================
 :Author: Wouter Verwijlen
-:Date: 19 August 2025
+:Date: 16 March 2026
 :TOC:
 
-I would like to share a first version of a collection of workflow ideas for Lumiera. These ideas come
+I would like to share a collection of workflow ideas for Lumiera. These ideas come from
-from having cut hundreds (or possibly thousands) of videos over the past 20 years as a professional
+having cut hundreds (or possibly thousands) of videos over the past 20 years as a professional
-editor, working in Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro (from before it was called "Pro"),
+editor, working in Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere, Lightworks and DaVinci Resolve.
-Lightworks and DaVinci Resolve.
 
-This document focuses on analysing the behaviour of Non-linear Editors (NLE's), in other words
+This document focuses on analysing the behaviour of Non-linear Editors (NLE's): software
-software in which a user can edit films and videos, in order to discuss possible solutions for the
+in which a user can edit films and videos, in order to discuss possible solutions for the
 design of Lumiera.
 
 The main ideas behind these proposals are:
@@ -178,14 +177,311 @@ specific project in order to select the parts needed for the final edit. I will
 which different NLE's handle this and will propose possible directions for Lumiera to support
 certain workflows.
 
-[red]#To be written:#
+Project creation
+When starting a new project, a user often needs to set the project resolution and framerate. Adobe
+Premiere (optionally) shows an import panel immediately after this. The first time you drop a clip
+on a timeline, Resolve and Premiere will ask if you want to change your project settings to match
+the clip settings, when these are different.
 
-- Asset organisation: bins vs metadata-based structures (+ search bins/filters)
+Premiere''s import panel
-- Viewing footage: single clips vs source reels; continuous playback from browser
+
-- Source monitor + program monitor vs a single monitor
+Projects themselves exist within an application's database (Resolve), or as a file/folder on local or
-- Creating selects: selects reels, subclips and keyword collections
+shared storage (Avid, Premiere, Lightworks, FCP).
-- On markers and notes
+One of the first things that needs to be setup is the organisational structure of the project, in other
-- From selects to editing in the timeline: Timelines in the source viewer: reel to reel editing
+words: the structure that's going to house all of the project's contents. Most applications use bins for
+this, a bin being simply a container for items like video clips. In a sense they are similar to folders
+on a computer''s storage, except bins usually only exist within the project in your NLE. Avid's bins
+also exist as folders on local or shared storage, but this is an exception.
+For top level organisation, bins can either be placed in other bins (Premiere, Resolve) or in
+groups/folders (Avid, Lightworks).
+As we'll see throughout this document, Final Cut Pro is usually the only application that takes a
+different approach. Projects are called 'libraries' and FCP sorts footage based on events (top level
+containers of timelines, footage and keyword collections), keywords (tags) and collections, instead
+of bins (timelines are confusingly called 'projects'). Footage, when imported, is placed in an event
+and from there all emphasis is on the metadata, in how you rate and tag (parts of) the footage. This
+also serves as a replacement of the subclips feature found in other NLE's.
+
+Final Cut Pro''s Keywords dialog. ``Travel part 1'' and ``Travel part 2'' on the left are events.
+
+In any case, when working in a professional environment, you will probably want to start with a
+template that defines your top level structure, instead of having to recreate your entire bin setup for
+every project. Surprisingly, at the time of writing only Adobe Premiere has introduced a project
+template feature (in version 2024). In other apps you will need to manually create your own
+template project and duplicate that, or even literally copy and paste bins from a template project in a
+file browser (Avid).
+
+Importing footage
+Every application works with clips: virtual representations of (parts of) the video files that exist on
+your preferred type of storage. Getting footage into your project ('ingest') will create these clips in
+your project. Most apps will offer several options to do this:
+1. Creating links to the original video files, wherever these may reside (on your computer,
+external storage, network storage or in the cloud).
+2. Copying your files to a dedicated folder managed by the application (this could again be on
+local or network storage). Importing to a dedicated application folder is very useful for
+feature film editing and TV production, but is less common elsewhere in the media industry.
+Its strong point is that when your media is managed by the application, you won't have to
+relink files when moving to a different editing station.
+3. Optionally, files can be transcoded during import. New media files will be created in either
+the app's dedicated folder or to a user specified location. The transcoded files will be much
+more optimised for editing, resulting in better playback performance. This is part of a socalled offline-online workflow, in which you work on optimised files, and once an edit is
+finished (picture lock), the clips on the timeline will be exchanged with clips that link to the
+original camera files. Often, after color grading in an external application, all color graded
+shots are rendered with their color corrections and placed back onto the timeline in the NLE.
+A specific type of offline-online workflow is the proxy workflow. The proxy workflow
+allows on-the-fly switching between the proxy files and the original camera files and will
+ensure that exports of your video will use these original camera files when rendering. When
+using a proxy workflow you can either create optimised files inside the application itself (or
+
+in Premiere''s case, via Adobe Media Encoder) or attach existing proxy files that were
+created by a third party application or by the camera during recording.
+After importing and possibly creating/attaching proxies, clip attributes might need altering. You
+might need to change incorrectly determined frame rates or, more commonly, change the audio
+channel mapping of your clips (e.g. setup clips with two audio channels as dual mono instead of
+stereo).
+
+Clip types
+We usually find the following types of clips in NLE's:
+* Source clips which represent media files (containing video and/or audio streams) to its full
+extent, and for other types of media (most notably still images) - these usually get a default
+duration upon import.
+
+* Subclips which represent a portion of a video or audio file.
+
+* Timeline clips: duplicates of source clips that only exist within a timeline. Properties of
+these clips can often be altered without altering the same properties of the source clip.
+
+* Compound clips/nested sequences: these are in fact (sub)timelines that can contain any
+number of tracks and clips.
+
+* Multicam clips (group clips in Avid), in which multiple clips are synchronized and
+combined into one. These clips contain clips with different camera angles (for video) or
+audio recordings for the same event.
+
+* Filler (Avid), FX clips (Lightworks) or Adjustment Clips (Premiere, Resolve) that can hold
+effects that are applied to all clips on lower tracks of a timeline, directly underneath.
+
+Bin types
+Often there are two types of bins in which these clips sit, withrResolve having a third kind:
+1. 'Normal' bins.
+2. Search bins (Premiere) / filters (Lightworks) / smart bins (Resolve) / smart collections
+(FCP): for these you setup certain rules based on clip names or metadata. All clips to which
+these rules apply are automatically added to these bins. This means that the same clip can
+simultaneously exist in a regular bin and a search bin, in contrast to normal bins, where each
+clip will only exist in a single bin and you'd have to duplicate this clip for it to be also
+placed in another bin (Lightworks being the exception here).
+
+Filter options in Lightworks
+
+3. Power bins (Resolve): these are bins that are accessable by all projects.
+
+Bin views
+Bins offer several views to see its contents. These include:
+* List View / Text View: all items in the bin are listed vertically. Multiple columns will show
+different kinds of metadata – the user can choose which fields are displayed and can
+rearrange their order.
+
+* Icon View (Premiere) / Frame View (Avid) / Thumbnail View (Resolve) / Tile View
+(Lightworks): this will show a small frame from each clip in a raster. In general you're able
+to change which frame is displayed if you wish to see another.
+
+* Freeform View (Premiere): same as Icon View, but you can freely position the clips
+wherever you want. Note that Avid and Lightworks allow you to do this within Icon/Frame
+View itself.
+
+* Script View (Avid): similar to Text View, but with a frame being displayed for each clip and
+a large field for entering comments. In Script View, the vertical order of clips can be
+rearranged, in contrast to Text View, which only supports automatic sorting.
+
+* Metadata View (Resolve): similar to Avid's Script View, except you can''t reorder clips.
+
+* Filmstrip View (Final Cut Pro): similar to Icon View, but
+
+Avid is famous for allowing you to save your Text or Script View configuration as a preset that can
+be quickly recalled. Premiere allows this through its Metadata Display window, Final Cut Pro by
+Control+left clicking any column header and Lightworks via the Columns > Presets menu, but these
+methods are less straightforward than Avid's. Another neat feature that Avid has is a bin map: an
+overview of bin contents that can be toggled when in Frame View.
+
+Creating a custom view preset in Avid Media Composer, which can be selected from the dropdown menu in the top bar.
+
+Note that all apps offer a search/filter box (or button) on top of each bin view. Final Cut Pro and
+Resolve allow skimming clips from the bin view, simply by hovering the mouse on top of the
+thumbnail and moving it from left to right.
+
+Organising footage
+Once your footage is represented by clips in bins, organisation can begin. Wildly different methods
+exist for this. In the simplest version you will just drop your footage in one or several bins and be
+done with it. In professional environments there are often strict bin structures and naming
+conventions, and additional methods for organising are being used:
+
+* First and foremost: with multi-camera shoots and/or when audio has been recorded
+separately, now is the time to synchronise these. Create multicam clips and/or synchronise
+sound, either in the NLE itself, or in an external application. I personally create source reels
+first (see further down this list), export these to another application for syncing, import the
+synced reel back, and in case of a multicam shoot, split this reel into multiple reels and
+convert each to a multicam clip (Premiere and Resolve both support this).
+
+* Metadata. This is a very powerful way to search for or filter specific types of content and it
+could be a chapter on its own. Metadata is often created by the camera during recording,
+added during offloading by a DIT (digital imaging technician) or applied after ingest by
+assistant editors. Nowadays metadata is also added by AI/machine learning algorithms to
+help identify the contents of a clip, create transcriptions from audio, etc. Avid provides the
+option to (automatically or manually) connect clips to lines in a script (ScriptSync).
+
+* The aforementioned subclips are often used to extract sections out of a longer clip.
+
+* Sequence/timeline markers to mark points in time, or sections (so-called ranged or spanned
+markers; terminology is different per app).
+
+Plenty of marker options in Adobe Premiere
+
+* Timeline clip notes (Avid): these can be added to a timeline clip, and will stay connected to
+this clip. You can''t trim them off and they will automatically move whenever a clip moves.
+They can be burned into a render upon export. Premiere and Resolve offer clip markers
+instead – these are similar to sequence markers, but are attached to clips.
+
+* Tagging or rating (parts of) clips (FCP and to a lesser extent Resolve). FCP's rating only
+goes as far as letting you mark clips or sections as ``favorite'' or reject clips entirely, but its
+keyword system (as described later in this chapter) is much more elaborate and useful.
+Resolve has an option to add keywords, but its workflow is quite clunky when trying to
+apply this to a section within a clip.
+
+* Clip colors. Often there exist multiple levels at which a clip can get a color. Colors can be
+applied based on source clip (usually different colors for different media types), timeline
+
+clip, timeline track, offline footage, different framerates, and more. Avid has the most
+options in this field and lets you choose exactly which types of colors to display on the
+timeline. Manually set clip colors are a very useful organisational tool, e.g. to differentiate
+between camera''s, interviewed persons in a documentary or different locations.
+
+Avid has many options for choosing how clips are colored in the timeline
+
+* Flags (Resolve). Similar to markers, but these apply to entire (source) clips, while markers
+apply to a single point in time or a time range within a clip. Multiple flags can be added to
+each source clip.
+
+* Reels: source footage is divided over one or multiple timelines to be able to quickly navigate
+many clips without having to load individual clips in the source viewer. These are called
+'source reels'. A special kind of source reel is a 'sync map', which contains all footage of a
+day of shooting from multiple cameras synced and layed out chronologically.
+FCP doesn't quite support source reels and instead offers continuous playback from the
+browser window. Resolve has a 'source tape' option that works in a similar way.
+
+Simple example of a source reel (top), converted to a sync map (bottom)
+
+Viewing footage
+Once basic organisation is in place, the editor can start watching and adding further notes/comments
+to narrow down large amounts of footage and seek out options of useful content for the edit. Most
+apps offer two types of monitors for video playback: source and record/program monitors. FCP has
+only a single monitor that switches between these two functions. Some others (Avid, Resolve) give
+users the choice between single or multi viewer modes. Lightworks and Avid support an unlimited
+amount of floating viewers.
+
+You can open (and position) as many viewers as you like in Lightworks
+
+Viewers are usually coupled with timecode display and have a ton of settings. I won't go into details
+about these.
+In most applications you can also watch your source footage from the bin when in Frame/Icon
+View. You''ll be able to use JKL shortcuts for playback, mark in and out points and add it to the
+timeline, similar as to when the clip is loaded in the source viewer. Final Cut Pro lets you click and
+drag in-out regions in the thumbnail.
+
+Selects
+Time to create a selection of material to consider for the rough cut. One way to do this, as
+previously described, is by creating subclips or by tagging. Drop the subclips in a bin in Icon /
+Frame View and you have a good visual overview of selected shots. This is great for selecting Broll or for projects that require a very visual approach, f.e. trailers, music videos or aftermovies (not
+hoping to ever cut one of those again though, but that''s a different story ;).
+Another way to select footage is to cut selections from source clips or source reels to one or more
+selects reels: these are timelines that hold your selections and are only used for that purpose. Selects
+reels can then be loaded again as if they were a source clip, in order for an another selection to be
+made. This is called reel-to-reel editing. Many apps allow seeing the source timeline, either in their
+own panel (Premiere) or window (Lightworks), or by switching the timeline panel between a source
+and record mode (Avid, Resolve). A method known as ``pancake timeline editing'' works when an
+application supports viewing multiple timelines simultaneously. By stacking timelines above each
+other you can easily drag selections from one timeline to another. This is possible in Premiere,
+Lightworks and Resolve.
+
+Pancake timeline editing in Lightworks
+
+Reels can be further managed by using markers to describe certain points in time or sections, and
+these markers can be viewed as a list in their own panel. When selecting a marker in this panel, the
+playhead of the corresponding monitor will jump to the (start) frame of this marker. Markers can
+have multiple input fields and a color. They are one of the most important tools to be able to make
+notes and navigate large amounts of footage over extended periods of time. As an aside: Lightworks
+has an option to turn ranged markers into subclips, quite useful, as it allows you to use markers to
+make your selection.
+Some NLE's have a 'ripple markers' option for timeline markers. This means markers will move
+when clips in the timeline are shortened or extended.
+FCP has ``todo markers'' that can be checked. And when tagging clips with keywords in FCP,
+keyword collections are automatically created in which all sections of clips with the same keyword
+can be found. It's also possible to manually create keyword collections and drag and drop clips or
+tagged sections ('content ranges') there.
+Back to the reels: one advantage of reel-to-reel editing is that it's very useful to see the audio
+waveforms of your source clips on an actual timeline: this way you can freely zoom and scroll.
+Final Cut Pro will only display a clip''s waveform at the bottom of the clip preview in the browser,
+but when an interview is an hour or longer, this waveform will be squeezed in a way that's of little
+use.
+Another advantage of reel-to-reel editing is a sense of space: you get an idea of where certain
+footage can be found (more to the left, in the middle, or at the end of a reel). Combined with
+markers, clip colors and gaps between sections, this makes it easier to find things back later. A third
+advantage is that it's easy to filter in rounds: you can narrow down your footage in multiple reel-toreel selection passes.
+I personally often use a variation of reel-to-reel editing, in which I lift sections in my source reel. I
+then duplicate this reel, remove the first video and audio track(s) and keep the lifted parts to create
+my selects reel. The advantage here is that I can rate sections as ``not useful'' (V1), 'possibly useful'
+(V2), 'quite useful' (V3) or 'highly useful' (V4) by lifting the video clip one, two or three tracks up –
+see it as a 4-star rating system. I''ve seen other editors use this method for selecting footage,
+although in all fairness I''m not sure how widespread this technique is.
+
+Lifting selections; also note the use of clip colors, gaps and markers for organising the selects reel.
+
+In FCP you can create your own rating system by using keywords (as shown in the screenshot at the
+start of this chapter) and then having everything filtered through keyword collections, as described
+in this blog post at Frame.io. Quite handy as well!
+
+Proposals
+* Which system(s) of organising a project and selecting footage should Lumiera support? I
+would say: most. They don't interfere with each other, so let the user choose. Definitely
+support source timelines and let people rate, tag and mark all they want. Subclips might not
+be necessary when a tagging/keyword system is present, as Final Cut has proven.
+
+* Metadata-based organising, searching and filtering of content are must-haves.
+
+* I would include a native rating system (1 to 5 stars should suffice) that works both on clip
+sections and entire clips, rather than FCP's favorite/reject system, as it's more granular.
+
+* As for bins-in-bins vs bins-in-folders: the first one is more flexible (bins can contain both
+media files and other bins, while folders can only contain bins) and more closely resembles
+how folders work on a PC, so my preference would be to go that route, although there's also
+something to be said for the strict division of function that folders+bins have.
+
+* I would like to propose an option to automatically create source reels based on rules you can
+set, for example: one source reel for every day of shooting. These automatic source reels
+could have a filter function to select which clips are being displayed on the timeline. This
+way it becomes easy to say something like "show me all clips from the second day of the
+shoot from camera A".
+
+* A versioning system for timelines is something that only Resolve has recently picked up
+with its Create (and Restore) Timeline Backup feature, and honestly I've been amazed by
+how this hasn't been a core feature in NLE's for decades now, as it makes so much sense to
+have. Let users make snapshots and perhaps make one automatically every day, without the
+need to manually duplicate and rename timelines and putting them in some sort of archive
+bin.
+
+* Importing: auto-import based on watch folders could be very useful during certain stages of
+an edit. Setup which folders to watch and whenever a new file is dropped in that folder it
+will be imported into a bin of choice. Especially handy when working with sound effects.
+However, we might not want to be scanning folders all the time.
+
+* About sound effects: there's a free application called Metadigger that let's you quickly filter
+your sound collection by metadata and then copy sound files to your project folder with a
+keyboard shortcut. Something like this, built-in, would be quite handy for those of us with
+local sound effect libraries.
+
+* A small one: I'd like each project to remember the last location you imported from. I often
+switch between projects and each time I want to import something in current NLE's, the file
+
+dialog points to the last used directory, which is often the wrong one. Not a big deal, but not
+ideal either.
 
 Chapter 2: the timeline
 -----------------------
@@ -723,10 +1019,10 @@ Most NLE's have functions for selecting many clips at once, called ``select forw
 backward''. In Adobe Premiere these are tools: click and you select all clips to either the left or right
 of the mouse cursor, and using Shift will toggle between selecting all clips on a single track or on
 all tracks (it doesn't respect track activation status though, which it should). Other NLE's (Resolve,
-Avid, Lightworks) only have keyboard shortcuts for these functions, which do only affect activated
+Avid, Lightworks) have keyboard shortcuts for these functions (in Avid you can place a button in the
-tracks. This is a bit faster: in Premiere you need to switch to the Select Forward/Backward Tool,
+GUI as well), which do affect activated tracks only. This is a bit faster: in Premiere you need to
-make your selection, then switch back to your previous tool. With a keyboard shortcut you only
+switch to the Select Forward/Backward Tool, make your selection, then switch back to your previous
-have to press a single key (if your track selection is correct).
+tool. With a keyboard shortcut you only have to press a single key (if your track selection is correct).
 
 Arranging clips
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -789,7 +1085,7 @@ entering trim mode.
 * Lightworks has a trim mode that defaults to ripple trimming, unless you specifically use the
 “drag to black” feature by Control-clicking trim edges when entering trim mode. When
 using the keyboard, one needs to mark a section and use the Remove command (similar to
-Avid''s ``lift'') to create a gap.
+Avid's ``lift'') to create a gap.
 
 Next to ripple/non-ripple trimming there are three other edit operations closely related to trimming
 that need to be mentioned:
@@ -1100,6 +1396,12 @@ Chapter 3: finishing
 --------------------
 [red]#To be written.#
 
+- Nodes vs Layers
+- Audio mixing
+- Color grading
+- Visual effects compositing
+- Titling
+
 Chapter 4: a broader GUI concept
 --------------------------------
 [red]#To be written.#