Copy takes between scenes

[mave1969]

Is it not possible to copy takes (audio and puppet) from one scene and paste them into another?

I find I can copy the individual inputs from a puppet and paste them into another existing puppet in another scene, but it's quite counter-intuitive to try copying the puppet track and pasting into a different scene and getting the unhelpful "Select the target track or take in the timeline" message, when the whole point is that you don't have a target track or take yet - I just want to use what I'm copying from another scene!

Worse is that you seemingly can't copy or paste audio takes at all! The only way is to right-click the track, reveal in the project, then manually drag that take down onto the timeline of the desired scene. If you've got half a dozen takes, that quickly becomes tedious trying to position them all in the same way, and even worse if you did any splitting/trimming.

It's NUTS that you can't perform one of the most basic actions in what seems to me would be a very common situation. I've only been working on this for about a day and already I needed it. How come Adobe doesn't seem to realise this?

[oksamurai]

Yes, you can only currently copy and paste takes, not whole puppets. So the general workflow is to make a new puppet and scene first and then paste the takes there. This is the most common workflow we see.

The audio one is weird, I hadn't tried that before but you're right! I'm not sure why that is. I would say that CH isn't the best audio recording/editing tool - for single takes it's fine, but for anything beyond that I would recommend recording/editing/mixing in something like Audition and then brining it in. I talk about my way of doing it at around 4:15 here: https://youtu.be/VhCKD5vl848?t=255

[mave1969]

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@oksamurai wrote:

Yes, you can only currently copy and paste takes, not whole puppets. So the general workflow is to make a new puppet and scene first and then paste the takes there. This is the most common workflow we see.

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That's kind of self-fulfilling though, isn't it? If that's the only workflow available, then of course it's the most common one you'll see…

Has no-one considered the possibility that users would choose to copy whole puppet tracks if that was available?

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The audio one is weird, I hadn't tried that before but you're right! I'm not sure why that is.

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I don't want to be rude, but I'm honestly baffled that it hadn't occurred to anyone at Adobe.

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I would say that CH isn't the best audio recording/editing tool - for single takes it's fine, but for anything beyond that I would recommend recording/editing/mixing in something like Audition and then brining it in.

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And here's the problem of seemingly not understanding the issue.

Take a look at the attached screenshot. A fairly basic but fairly common situation where a single take has been split and trimmed a few times to remove mistakes/dead air etc.

I now decide that I want the last 3 sets of puppet tracks and audio takes (from about 1m15s onwards) moved to a new scene. How does Adobe imagine that task should be performed? How do you imagine Audition would be any help at all?

[oksamurai]

Yes, it has been considered, but I haven't heard it as a user request until yours just now - but we'll keep listening and see if it comes up more. We didn't have copy/paste takes in previous versions, and added it because there was such high demand for it.

The audio situation is a byproduct of how the track item model works. The way the timeline is displayed Character is more like After Effects than Premiere; so if you edited audio in After Effects you would see the same thing, where you get one "bar" per line. I agree this isn't the best workflow here — for years I've wanted a single "Voice" track where multiple edits can live inside the same single track. I'm hoping we get there one day, because the "staircase" treatment from your screenshot is indeed not great. That's why the alternative - and more common workflow for recorded pieces - is to record and edit voices / background music / sound fx separately in audio editing software and import it in. And that's why I can't remember the last time I tried to copy and paste audio in Character, because it's rare I'm doing any audio editing inside of it.

So to answer your "How come Adobe doesn't seem to realise this?" - we definitely do! It just hasn't been brought up in user feedback enough to be prioritized above other issues - so thank you for your feedback, and hopefully we can make this better in the future for you.

[arielf8195474]

it is really needed!

please make it possible.

thank you

[mark@headTrix]

hey there.

I have been using Character Animator since its Beta... and surprisingly I have never come across this. I. guess I just duplicate a scene if I want a new scene with the same puppet, audio etc. Or I can easily export that scene and audio if I wanted to use it again. But what I normally do is Dynamically link my puppet from Character Animator into Premiere so I can better edit, scale,   composite my stuff  together.  The workflow is amazing, and it makes it much easier to tell your story,  and edit between characters, add a drop shadow of your character in motion, etc. And when I update my character in Photoshop and press save, it then updates my animation inside of Character Animator, and updates the link inside of Premiere! Sorry, it gets me excited! So why not duplicate your scene -- so then you have a copy - and import the character Animator file into Premiere and create your story. If you need to make changes, go back to CH, update the character, and Voila! And you will be able to access all the audio, to cut, copy, repeat, speed up, slow down - so much control. 

And of course this is also how you can add titles, fade to black, add backgrounds, audio backgrounds,  place characters on top of real video,or a presentation, and easily add Motion Graphics with free MOGRTS (Motion Graphics Templates), and of course export to various platforms.

May sound like a work-a-round ---  but I think its just the best way to work!

have fun!
Cheers,

Mark