Lots of feature requests from a new Resolume user

[KevinHughes]

I love Resolume, what an amazing app! After being asked to supply live visuals for a rock band's 18-song set, I bought Avenue and tried it out. With it I've been able to take their show to the next level. A huge thank you to the developers/software magicians involved.

Being a long-time power user of many pro apps that I use to prepare assets (Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, Pro Tools, Sketch, Resolve, etc.) I've found a lot of tiny nits that I would love to see implemented, all of which would save me tons of time.

I know some of these have been mentioned in the forum before, but I'll mention them again from my perspective.

Autopilot enhancements

In the Autopilot section I'd love to be able to specify "after X beat(s)" and "after X second(s)". This would allow clips to transition to the next thing before their natural end. This in turn would allow for much better cross-dissolves while both clips are playing. Currently when the layer transition time is not zero Autopilot simply goes to the next clip when the current one ends, freezing on the last frame of the previous clip during transitions, which really breaks the visual flow.

It would be great to be able to trigger the next, previous, first, last, random, or specific column. Sometimes I want to play many layers at once automatically after a single clip to visually mirror what the musical arrangement is doing - a solo instrument for two measures and then a big drop where the rest of the band comes in, for instance.

Transparency in gradients

In the Gradient effect it would be nice to allow a gradient color to be transparent - this would allow quick and easy shading effects to add depth (such as to a tunnel effect).

Inner drop shadows

In the Drop Shadow effect it would be nice to allow an inner drop shadow by specifying a negative distance. This also can add a feeling of depth and layering to designs.

An aspect ratio parameter for all shapes

In all places where you can make a shape (Shape Mask, etc.) it would be nice to have a consistent aspect ratio parameter so one isn't limited to circles and squares. I want to make ovals, rectangles, and stripes too without having to add another Transform effect later on.

A concentric ripple effect

I've seen these used to great effect at venues, especially on top of live video of played instruments in sync to the music. Since there's already a global Ripple effect, why wouldn't this already be a built-in effect? This could combine well with lots of other built-in effects like Terrain.

Cross-dissolves in looping video clips

It sure would be nice to be able to specify a transition time for infinitely looping video clips so the loop appears seamless. This is great for things like skies, landscapes, starfields, etc. I have spent hours in Resolve making these manually. Sometimes one needs a lot of infinite loops to cover live musical sections that vary in duration, and for slow songs jerky loops don't feel right.

Numerical value nudging with arrow keys and/or the mouse wheel

I've used this in many other design apps, and it saves an incredible amount of time.

Sometimes it's a huge pain to adjust numerical values just right to make effects work, especially when I need to tweak a value by .001. Doing that by typing is really tedious. Moving the mouse left and right while clicking on the value is OK, but sometimes I run out of screen space doing this, and I don't always get the precision I need.

I'd suggest adding the ability to adjust values up and down by clicking on the field and then using the up/down arrow keys as well as the mouse wheel.

For precision, the position of the cursor would specify the step value. So with a value like "12.34", if I click to the right of the "2" and tap the up arrow (or move the mouse wheel up), the value increments by 1. If I click to the right of the "4" and do that, the value increments by .01.

For clips with an adjusted speed, show the actual play time

I like adjusting the speed of clips to fit specific sections of music. But doing this doesn't show how it affects the actual playing time of the clip, so I need to calculate that value manually. Perhaps update the duration value accordingly when the speed is changed, or show the calculated value elsewhere?

I preview different clip speeds in Resolume to see how they feel in performance and then sometimes put the calculated value into Resolve to render super smooth retimed video. Showing the actual playing time value gives me an accurate picture of how much time the clip will play for, all so I can design the visuals to fit the music better.

More clip metadata

Where the clip's format and resolution are displayed (in the Clip view), it would be nice to see the clip duration and the video or image file size.

Showing the clip file size in this spot would really help me keep a tab on how much space everything's taking up in place while I'm designing, so for instance I can trim a DXV clip a little closer to save a few GB here and there, or I can optimize just the assets that make a multi-layered effect (I notice that in certain situations very large images can slow things down - I do all my work in 4K - and more compression helps).

Support for the webp image format

I've compressed noisy, complex 5MB JPEG files to literally 50k in webp without any noticeable loss. It sure would be nice to support this insanely efficient image format, and it supports lossless as well as lossy compression, alpha and animation too!

More navigation shortcuts

It would be nice to use keyboard shortcuts to move around composition cells, such as by using the option-up/down/left/right arrow keys, which would be the equivalent of using the mouse and clicking on a clip name. That way I can go to a specific clip to get ready to trigger it or get a clip's information while performing without having to take my hands off the keyboard or MIDI controller to use the mouse.

A better way to deal with imported decks

I like to create backups of my composition files just in case, but when I've tried to import a deck from a backup it seems to completely overwrite decks with the same name in place. It would be nice in this case for Resolume to detect this and name the imported deck to "Deck Name (2)" or something like that, and add it to the end of my existing deck list.

Asset relocation/listing needs to be way faster

I like to keep one folder for my composition assets, with subfolders for each deck (each which represents a song). When building and performing compositions I prefer to keep the folders on my computer but move them to external drives for backup, archiving, and reference. I've found that for large compositions with many decks and assets in subfolders the relocation process, largely due to the very slow searching process in the Media Manager takes many minutes of manual work. Why can't I just specify a new top level location for all of my composition assets and have everything in all the subfolders and decks be located instantly, like via a "Relocate Media..." dialog in the Composition menu?

At a minimum please speed up the time it takes to list files in the Media Manager. I have 736 items that take up 320GB and it takes 30 seconds (!) to build the list. And the "Cancel" button never works for me either. At least cache asset information, lazy load metadata, or store asset metadata in the Composition file, or in a database, or something! Like in other apps like Pro Tools that have media managers this asset list should appear instantaneously, especially if it blocks the media relocation process.

Better file naming in Alley

In Alley it would be nice to supply a custom file suffix (before the period in the file name) for converted files such as "DXV" rather than the long built-in one, or none at all. So when I convert the file "My Loop.mp4" it would generate the file name "My Loop DXV.mov" or "My Loop DXVHQA.mov" (which stands for DXV, high quality with alpha). I have to type this in manually every time I convert a video, and after a few dozen times of this it gets pretty annoying.

[Zoltán]

There are good suggestions here, some we have ideas for, some you can already do like:

Gradients can have transparency, set the color to RGB, and there will be an alpha slider.

Numerical value nudging with arrow keys and/or the mouse wheel

You can use ALT + drag to make fine adjustments on values.

More clip metadata

make the panel wider, so it has more room to show you things

Better file naming in Alley

You can use

Preset names can also be applied to the file name within Alley, when you have selected a preset, and add a new file to the conversion.
There is some inconsistency in how that works, I'll make a ticket for that.
If you convert to the source folder, the preset names are added to the file name automatically.

Support for the webp image format

Higher compresion will mean more time and resources to decode. You'd only save on disk space while making playback worse. Try DXV for these files, they will be one frame when converted with Alley.

or store asset metadata in the Composition file, or in a database, or something!

File name and modify date are not enough to identify a file. Storing something that is unique, and will identify the file needs calculation. When you encounter the file in a new location, you can only be sure that it's the same file if you do that time consuming calculation again.

[KevinHughes]

Thanks for your quick reply and helpful tips! I completely forgot there was an alpha slider in Gradient colors.

[Arvol]

Anywhere you see a color picker in the UI there will be an alpha channel associated with that.