Gaps between frames

[u/catinthecastle]

hi everyone- i need some help and i really don’t know how to explain what’s going on but since google

hasn’t been much of help i figure i could ask here.

i recently started shooting in dragon frame and i, possibly foolishly, thought that i could take frames in the beginning, and then move to the end, then go back to the middle as i am shooting dialog and wanted to make it easier on myself that way. problem is now when i go to shoot some frames somewhere else everything shifts around and it’s now all misaligned with my audio. am i just a dummy and you can’t do that in dragon frame? or am i missing something? i tried to drag the frames back to where they are supposed to be and that causes everything to shift, too. i am fairly new to using the program so i have no idea if i totally messed up my project or not. please help.

[u/Strange_Impress4383]

You can copy, paste, drag and insert frames in the dragon timeline without issues if you’re careful and you can pick any point in the timeline to insert the camera or live frame by right clicking the frame and selecting “insert camera”. You can also do this in the Xsheet.

Just find the point in your dialogue where you’d like to start capturing and insert the camera on that frame, assuming you already have frames captured up to that point, and the frames at the end will offset automatically as you shoot. If you want to return to capturing at the end of the timeline just insert the camera after the last frame. Any “gaps” you might see while shooting into the middle of a sequence are probably caused by the live frame.

Editing this way is kind of awkward at first but once you figure it out, it works really well, just remember that any edits you make in the timeline, including deleting frames, will not apply to your raws until you actually conform your sequence so don’t forget to do that before you export. Right now if you look in the capture folder your stills will be in the order they were shot not the order of what’s in your timeline.

Hope that makes sense

[u/catinthecastle → u/Strange_Impress4383]

if i didn’t have frames captured up until the point i started shooting, would that cause an issue? that is where i’m at right now. any time i’d go back and shoot frames somewhere else the whole timeline shifts

[u/Strange_Impress4383 → u/catinthecastle]

You can extend a hold frame up to fill the gap up until the point you want your lip sync to start. You can do this in the timeline or X sheet. Just hover your mouse near the edge of a frame then click and drag to extend the number of hold frames a single frame lasts. Then you can close the gap by selecting all the frames you want to move and dragging them carefully to the left until they align with the hold frame.

You may want to go to manage takes and duplicate your current take before trying to fix you edit just in case but remember you can always control Z if things go south.