Nest behavior across project files in a Production

Thanks for the help, Matt.

New territory for everyone. Always takes a bit of exploring ...   😉

Neil

Matt,

It's very common to split a Job into sections ... by scenes say. A typical workflow in a stand-alone project was to have separate sequences for each section/scene, and then nest them together for the full job. You could open and work each section, the changes rippled through. Except for if you changed the total length of a nest, of course. Those you have to go to the Main sequence and manually adjust the various nest lengths. Sigh.

But it seemed like in Productions, this would be an easy task. Split each section to a different project file, then nest the main sequence of each section into the full job sequence project. Different people could be working different sections at the same time, and it all would auto-update. But clearly, that doesn't work as hoped.

How would you advise doing that now?

Another use is when certain parts of a job have some complex work, and it's better to do part of the work, nest, then apply the rest of the effects. Quite often those are handled as separate sections or sequences to have them available for the person with that skillset to "grab", work, and finish that part. Again, this seemed like an "obvious" thing to split that bit off into its own project file so it could be worked on while other parts were getting worked.

And when nested, it would ... voila! ... appear on the main sequence.

But it doesn't, does it? The "clip" still looks like a nest, but doesn't really behave like one as a user expects. Which is why I think an update to the Reference manual making this very clear and obvious is necessary toot-suite.

So it seems that as far as is "expected" behavior, the users need to manually replace the project segment they've been working on in the main sequence every time a change is made to each segment of it.

Is that correct? Other than Paul's creative use of Multicam, I don't see any way around it.

Neil

Matt,

I thoroughly understand and appreciate this is not "designed" behavior. But it's needed behavior. From your post ...

I think once a user understands that sequences don't link across projects they will be able to find a workflow that works for them. Ultimately it still comes down to users organizing how they want to work. If you want to split up scenes and then recombine them later you can do that, but it takes an agreed upon process to do so.

Do you have some suggestions how to work this part? Clearly, the Hollywood group that worked up the entire Productions process has had to deal with this! What do you suggest or envision?

As short of that, Paul's suggestion is going to be used. Granted, under proviso that the development team doesn't endorse this ... but on the other hand, they haven't given any useful guidance on accomplishing this task either ... So try this and see if it works. "We can't guarantee anything."

To anyone else ...

I've had some communications with Paul and this is the full process he's been using:

Matt,

Could you update the Productions manual about this? I mean this is a freaking mess for some projects, and it's not one that most users would anticipate.

I understand about the underlying issue. There's both conflicting needs for the user as well as the issue of the structural relationships of project files in a Production folder process.

I think most users need to know this ahead of time: that nesting is no longer a viable means for splitting scenes and combining them in a project file with the ability to still re-work each scene and have that work ripple across the project.

In fact, in a Production process, I don't see how one can do that if one splits by scene.

So for multi-scene/act working, we need to put ALL scenes in one project file in order to pass work up.

But that means only one person can be working on any scene at any one moment!

Unless you have a suggestion for another way to do this I haven't heard of yet?

Neil

Neil,

You're correct about the behavior where nests do not link across projects. This is on purpose because sequences themselves do not link across projects (nor would most people expect or want them to) and nests are actually just sequences. Nests don't rely on existing inside a sequence.

If you have Nest A inside Sequence 1 and then you delete Sequence 1, Nest A (in the project panel) does not also get deleted. Because of that expected/desired behavior, we aren't able to have nests behave in a special way in a Production.

Matt