User Manual

Table Of Contents
How Reel Names Are Identified
The “Assist using Reel Names” checkbox in the General Options panel of the Project Settings is
an extremely important setting for controlling how the conform process works. By default, it’s
turned off, and reel names are left blank. This is fine for conform workflows where all you need
is the file path or file name and source timecode to successfully identify which media files
correspond to what clips. However, if you need more information than that to reconform the
clips in your project, you can turn on the “Assist using Reel Names” checkbox to enable
DaVinci Resolve to use one of four different methods to automatically define reel names for
every clip in the Media Pool.
Automatically Defining Reel Names
When you use the “Assist using Reel Names” options in the General Options panel of the
Project Settings, reel names are extracted dynamically. This means that any time you change
the method of reel name extraction in the Project Settings, the reel names of all clips in the
Media Pool automatically update to reflect the change. This can be seen in the Reel Name
column that’s visible if you put the Media Pool into List view. For example, were you to change
the “Assist using reel names” options from “Source clip file pathname” to “Mediapool folder
name,” the contents of the Reel Name column would visibly change. This is useful when you’re
importing a project for which all clips use the same method of determining their reel name.
Manually Choosing Reel Name Definitions for Individual Clips
You also have the option of manually choosing the criteria for how one or more selected clips in
the Media Pool have their reel names defined, using the Clip Attributes dialog. This is useful
when there are certain clips in a project that need to use a different method of reel name
extraction, or manually entered reel names.
To manually define reel names for one or more clips:
1 Select one or more clips in the Media Pool.
2 Right-click one of the selected clips, and choose Clip Attributes from the
contextualmenu.
3 Open the Reel Name panel of the Clip Attributes dialog, choose a new option,
andclickOK.
Once you’ve used Clip Attributes to change the reel names of clips, those clips no longer
automatically update when you change the “Assist using Reel Names” options in the General
Options panel of the Project Settings. For more information on using Clip Attributes, see
Chapter 12, “Using Clip Metadata.
Methods of Defining Reel Names
There are five options that are available for automatically determining how reel names are
extracted from the source media when “Assist using Reel Names” is turned on, and one
optionin the Clip Attributes Reel Name panel for manually defining reel names. The use of
reelnames is critical in EDL and AAF workflows, but isn’t necessarily as important in
XML-centric workflows.
Source clip file pathname: Obtains the reel name by extracting it from each media
file’s path. This makes it possible to extract a reel name from all or part of the file name,
or from all or part of the name of any folder in the path that encloses that file. This
extraction is defined using the Pattern field.
Pattern: A code that defines how a reel name should be extracted from the source clip
pathname. More information about creating patterns appears later in this chapter.
Chapter – 47 Conforming and Relinking Clips 905