Since I don’t see this on the roadmap… would it be reasonable to have the filter paste button, when multiple clips are selected, paste the filters into each of them? Currently it is rather tedious to apply clip-specific filters (fades, etc.) to each clip (I’m specifically thinking here of filters that it does not make sense to apply to the entire track).
Alternatively, a keyboard shortcut would greatly speed up this process, but I think it would be cleaner (and more intuitive!) if pasting filters pasted them into all selected clips.
You can easily copy/paste a whole set of filters to a selected clip or to all clips on a track if you select the whole track. Just move the clips in separate track if you want to apply filters to special clips only I think it could be done with all selected clips as well - why not - but there is an easy work-around.
I think you just read my title and thought you understood the request, without actually reading the request. Otherwise, I do not understand your answer. Could you demonstrate this with simple “fade in” filter? I want each clip on the track to fade in. Applying “fade in” to the track is absolutely not the same thing.
I did read your post - completely!
I guess (not sure) the fade in filter only works on each individual clip. You know of the special problem SC has with transitions and undo of transitions? I think this is the cause of the problem resp. the cause why this filter only works on individual clips - you normally won’t apply it to the whole track.
If you just mean fade in from white or transparent this might be different from transitions where you overlap 2 adjacent clips, not sure tough…
I am not talking about transitions, I am talking about filters. This behavior is not at all specific to the “fade in” filter, I am just using that as an obvious example. There are plenty of filters which are best applied per clip - not per track! It is the same for White Balance, Levels, etc. Hopefully you can see what I am asking. I want to be able to copy filters and paste them to multiple clips. Right now, they are only pasted onto the first selected clip. With no keyboard shortcut either, it is currently a very tedious operation with the mouse to click back and forth from the filter panel’s very small buttons, to a clip, back and forth and back and forth.
Please tell me how to perform your easy workaround.
Most things is about finding a workflow, so you doesn’t need to add the same filters to many clips.
Some examples.
You can add filters for color correction etc. to the source clips in the playlist before adding them to the timeline and start cutting, then all the clips from the same source will have the need filters.
Use many tracks with different filters on the track, and move clip to the track that contain the needed effect, you doesn’t need to have all your video clips on the same track.
To be good at video editing and find good ways to works, you need to practice, not just making you video projects, you need to make example projects, just to learn stuff. It will reduce the time you spend on your real projects a lot. It is just like playing piano or golf
How many clips are we talking about needing the same fade in filter? If its 10 - so whats the problem - a matter of less than 30 sec. i guess. If its hundreds - you probably should use another approach, like the ones i already mentioned. Your request is obvious somehow - but every editor is also limited somehow. Maybe they will improve it some day, but be aware that the development power for a freeware is very limited here. You have to live with the restrictions and get used to it - i guess - or look for something else or another optimized workflow for you purpose.
Imho this is very much related to transition handling (fade-in of clips is a kind of transition). This is really restricted in SC - i agree. For all other filters i dont see the need so much to apply i set of filters to multiple clips. And if you need it - there is the workaround
As I already explained, this is completely unrelated to transitions. You’ve fixated on the similarity of “Fade In” to a transition. Forget that specific filter for a moment, and let’s use Levels instead. If you have a collection of clips requiring different Levels, you cannot accomplish this by applying it once to the track.
You also have yet to explain or demonstrate your “workaround”, though I have asked many times.
No, it is not about that. The correct workflow has been identified and has been optimized as far as is possible given the current constraints. Whether or not you are able to understand it, my form of video requires some degree of manual optimization for each of many clips. Simply the realities of the apparatus and the limitations of a camera sensor vs. the human eye. I have merely identified a “pain point” in the process and proposed a simple request.
A multi-paste or paste shortcut would resolve the issue entirely. It’s not a demand, it’s a feature suggestion. And there’s no point trying to tell me I don’t actually have a use for the feature I’m asking for.
You still can use copy/paste to add filters to multiple clips with the same settings as in the copies.
I don’t see much sense in your example with the levels filter. This is a typical filter that needs to be adjusted to each individual clip or even just parts of a clip - so there is really not much use to mass copy and paste it. If all your clips have the same “error” in levels you could also apply the filter to the whole track affecting all clips on that track.
Maybe i still dont get your point right?
Maybe you should also think about optimizing your workflow before editing - to be more efficient. Not all tasks can be done efficiently with editing if the source video is bad in some or more aspects. Just think of shaky video or wind noise e.g. Its much easier to avoid this at capture time then it would be afterwards via software!
I do understand the request being made by @BlivetWidget. The situation comes up frequently in narrative films of any significant length.
Imagine a documentary with four general sections and ten scenes per section (for sake of round numbers).
In terms of workflow, each section would likely be a separate .mlt project file, with exported sections being stitched into a final deliverable at the end of production.
But there are still ten scenes within each .mlt file. It is not practical to put a White Balance filter on a track head and say “put clips on this track if they need that White Balance” because there are ten different scenes to consider, each scene with its own unique white balance. Using a dedicated subset of tracks to provide filtering for each scene will quickly make the track count unmanageable, not to mention ruining preview performance.
Neither is it practical to make each scene a separate .mlt file. Background music sometimes spans across multiple scenes. Yes, a parent .mlt project containing all 40.mlt clips could be made and the background music applied in the parent project, but that locks in the length of each scene too early in the workflow. Nor can the volume levels of voice, effects, and music be easily balanced to each other when they are stored in separate .mlt files. Changing the length of a .mlt clip in a parent project then resyncing the music track is also tedious.
The suggested request allows someone to select the clips of Scene One and apply the necessary White Balance for those clips alone. This prevents a track head filter from interfering with multiple scenes. This keeps the track count manageable, and keeps each track usable for any purpose.
The Levels filter is not necessarily adjusted per clip. A common use case is to tweak HLG footage to provide the right exposure or contrast or rolloff for that camera angle. The same settings could be used for all clips in that scene (assuming the camera isn’t physically moving into a different exposure environment). If nothing else, a multi-clip paste provides a good baseline to all clips for further individual tweaking.
Agree, paste filters to selected clips would be a nice feature, with many good use cases.
But there is also some use cases, where you can reduce you work with a lot with a better workflow and to have a plan about what you want to make. fx. adding filters to a clip before starting to cut it up, so you don’t need to apply them to each sub-clip, but just need to adjust the parameters.
Agree, applying filters before cutting does help a lot, and is an efficient workflow for many projects.
Multi-clip paste could have benefited me on two documentary-style projects I did where less than 10% of the source footage made it into the final edit. With that ratio, time would be wasted applying filters before cutting, because we don’t know until the rough cut is complete which clips will actually make it into the final edit. When clips are rapidly dropped and added to the timeline for legal or production or license cost reasons, or to get the project runtime down to a specific length, it basically means we can’t start color work until we freeze the rough cut. Starting color work earlier would have potential to be wasted effort on clips that get deleted, or not used at all.
I agree that smart planning can make for better workflows on small and tightly-controlled projects. But I also understand the practical side of legal issues, indecisive clients, and midnight creativity turning a project timeline into a chaotic frantic mess in a hurry. It’s nice to have tools that can handle both scenarios.
I would also like to vote on this feature as very useful and a good way to implement it would be to add a right click menu in the filter list and there have some copy to… selected clips option. Being a menu it could also add a “copy only this one filter” entry which is requested from time to time.
I would also use this menu as a special case when right clicking a filter on a track(or output): apply the filter to all track/timeline clips. My use case for this is: I usually split my tracks into separate cameras so I can apply different color gradings to the entire tracks instead of copy pasting the filter to each clip. But of course there’s a few clips shot in the wrong lighting/later in the day which need different settings so I now create a new track to move those with individual color grading needs over there.
And pushing the note a bit now that I’ve mentioned the above, I remember from a while back when I played around with the Blender app, it had this notion of shared/linked materials where you would only need to create a “filter” once and assign it to multiple objects as a link, and any change to the original filter would update all the objects. This makes a lot of sense with what I mentioned in paragraph 2 above, it would allow me to keep all videos on the same track (or categorize them better, not by camera source) but still quickly apply color grading on only part of them.
As long as such a basic feature isn’t present, and it is basic because it’s just a loop of “Apply n filter to selected clips”, I’m forced to copy&paste filters like I’m in the software stone age.
That’s not my interpretation. “Multi-select” reads to me like you will be able to select multiple filters at a time (I’m not sure to what end though, since you can already copy several at a time if they are checked).
What I’m wishing for is a better way to paste than that tiny little button (which takes focus away from the timeline so you cannot move from clip to clip with the keyboard and have to do the entire operation via mouse). Off the top of my head, the two best solutions would be either a paste hotkey or updating the paste function to paste into every selected clip, rather than just the first selected one.
this allows pasting of a saved group of filters to a clip. kind of klunky, but it worked. i’m guessing that the xml file should be editable if one wanted to cut down the number of filters the xml saves. no experience with that, though.
second, multi-selection of filters seems like it would be foundational to such requested menu options as:
copy selected filter(s)
copy all filters
having the additional option to save either the selection or all filters as a group/chain/stack would be very useful.
as for adding filters before editing, it’s not useful in my experience. color choices can change as the work progresses and that initial grading can be rendered obsolete. it can also lead to filter redundancy or cancellation, rendering the careful planning advocated here also obsolete.
just some thoughts from someone who’s been at this for a very long time on pretty much all of the platforms.
I’m glad that’s useful to you but it doesn’t address my request. I can appreciate that my request is “not useful in [your] experience” but it would be in mine and several others who have posted here.
then, by all means, do it. it’s not like i’m advocating the removal of the capability.
as for your original request, i’m surprised it’s not already the default behavior. i’d expect an option or modifier key for distinguishing ‘paste to selected’ or ‘paste to all in track’ or ‘paste to all.’ maybe even an additional ‘on selected tracks’ or ‘all tracks’ option.
and, now that i’m thinking about it, a ‘save selection’ and ‘recall selection’ option might be helpful here too, so that, in an instance in which you only want to paste to one of the selected clips, you could save the selection, select the clip to paste to, paste, recall the original selection.
I think it could be done with all selected clips as well - why not - but there is an easy work-around.