Sending to Flame

What you need

• Flame 2027 on macOS or Linux.
• A license that includes Flame. Resolve, Flame and Baselight are licensed separately. A key that names no finishing system sends to Resolve only.
• The Flame project, set up and open. The cut is built in the project Flame has open, so open the one you want before you send. Konformista does not create Flame projects: for a new one, set it up in Flame at the timeline's resolution and frame rate, which the results page shows at the top, beside the clip count.

Choosing Flame

When your license covers more than one finishing system, a switch at the top of the results page's findings list picks where the timeline goes. Choose Flame and the list describes what Flame will carry, clip by clip, and the send button reads Send to Flame. The choice is saved with the timeline.

Export… is hidden while Flame is chosen: it writes a package for Resolve.

Where the cut lands

The cut is built in the project Flame has open. The send window's Flame project row names it. For a new project, use the timeline's resolution and frame rate: the results page shows them at the top, for example 1920 × 1080 · 23.976 fps, and the send window repeats them.

The media goes into one library every send shares, Konformista Media, so a second cut of the same footage uses the clips the first one brought in rather than importing them again. A send that stops with an error removes the library and reel it made, so nothing half built is left behind.

If Flame is closed, the send window asks which project Flame opens in: Choose project… opens the project you pick or type, and Project Flame opens with opens whatever Flame opens with. Konformista starts Flame there and builds the cut as it opens.

The first time you send to an open Flame, the send hands you one line to paste into Flame's Python Console. Running it builds the sequence and connects Flame, and every later send goes straight in.

While the sequence is built, Flame is busy; a long cut can take several minutes. The send panel follows the build and ends on Sent to Flame with a count of what arrived: picture events, offline clips, sound. The Project Hub then shows the timeline as Sent to Flame.

What arrives

• Picture: every clip on every video track, in its stacking order. Position, scale, rotation, crop, opacity and flips carry, and so do clips whose pixel aspect you changed with Interpret Footage. Each clip's position, scale and rotation arrive as an Action, crops, feathers, dips and clips above other tracks included, inside nested sequences too.
• Blend modes: all of Premiere's.
• Solids such as black video and color mattes, as clips of their color.
• Nested sequences as Flame containers, one on the nest's own track wherever the cut uses it, with the nest's own motion and opacity. Open one in Flame to work inside it. The whole nest is in the container, so it has handles to trim into. A nest inside a nest arrives as a container inside its container. A nest at another frame rate plays in real time, as it does in Premiere. Each nest is also in the send's reel as a sequence of its own.
• Timing: speed changes, reverse, freeze frames and time remapping, as Flame timewarps. So does footage you gave another frame rate with Interpret Footage.
• Transitions: cross dissolves and dips to black and to white, on clips and on nested sequences alike, including between two nested sequences. Wipes arrive as Flame wipes with Flame's default pattern. Any other transition arrives as a dissolve of the same length and alignment, and the results page names it. A dip to black between two clips with too little media either side of the edit for Flame's own dissolve arrives as a fade out and a fade in on the two clips, at its full length, as Premiere plays it. Where a dissolve runs past the end of a clip's or a nested sequence's media, the edge frame is held, as Premiere holds it.
• Titles as Flame Type titles you can edit: each text layer of a Premiere graphic with its wording, font, size, color and place, and All Caps written into the words. A font that is not installed on this Mac is replaced by the nearest one that is, or by Flame's own, and the send's report names each one.
• Adjustment layers that move or crop the picture, as Timeline FX on a gap in their place, with that framing and crop; the results page lists their other effects. Other adjustment layers, graphics and other generated clips arrive as labeled placeholder cards in their place, switched off.
• Sound: every audio track as a stereo Flame track, a mono clip playing from both sides as it does in Premiere, with crossfades as fades, clip volume (static or keyed, a nested sequence's own volume included) and constant speed changes. The pitch follows Premiere's Maintain Audio Pitch. A QuickTime file that holds sound and no picture arrives through a WAV copy in the send's folder, with the same sound and timecode, because Flame does not always read the sound in such a file.
• Captions as subtitle tracks, markers on the sequence, and the sequence's start timecode, so a note timed against your edit points at the same frame in Flame.
• Warning markers on the sequence, as in a Resolve send: one at each clip the results page flags as an error, a warning or for review, colored by how serious it is and naming what to look at. Where one of your own markers sits on the same frame, it keeps its name and color and the warning joins its note.
• Warning clip colors: each clip the results page found something on takes that finding's color in Flame's timeline, the same colors the results page uses.
• Your reference render, when the timeline has one, starting where its own timecode puts it on the cut. Flame reference, under the timeline, decides where it goes: in a version of its own above the cut's, to switch to, unless you choose below it; or on a track above the cut in Difference mode, as in Resolve, so that where the conform matches the picture plays black.
• Clips with an alpha channel, such as a ProRes 4444 graphic, show over the picture beneath, unless you set the clip to ignore its alpha in Premiere.

Your choices

The switches under the timeline decide what goes. Untick Audio, Graphics, Titles, Adjustment layers, Generated solids, Placeholders or Premiere markers and a Flame send leaves them out, with a gap where a clip sat. Untick Warning markers or Warning clip colors and it adds none of its own. Join through cuts, the video track collapse and NESTED TIMELINES shape a Flame send as they do a Resolve one: set a nest to Flattened clips and it arrives opened out, each of its layers on a track of its own, framed and cropped as the nest was.

What does not arrive

The results page lists each of these on the clip it affects before you send:

• Effects and grades: Lumetri and the other video effects, and opacity masks.
• A title's stroke, shadow and background box, and its animation: a title that moves holds the position it has halfway through.
• The exact look of a see-through clip over other picture. Premiere mixes it in linear light and Flame as the picture looks, so a partly see-through clip over another shows a little differently. A see-through black clip, such as a caption box or a fade through black, is set to show as much of the picture beneath as it does in Premiere.
• The pace of a dissolve. Flame's dissolve eases in and out where Premiere's Cross Dissolve changes at an even rate: halfway through they match.
• An anchor point moved on a clip of another shape than the sequence: the clip arrives framed around its center.
• Reversed or ramped sound, Essential Sound processing, and audio effects such as a plug-in. The results page names the audio effects on each clip.
• A nested sequence you sped up or slowed down, or one of another frame size than the sequence, arrives opened out, as does every nest you set to Flattened clips. A dip or wipe across an opened-out nest, or a dissolve between two, arrives as a cut.

Offline and unreadable media

A file that is missing arrives as a Flame offline clip in its place, carrying its path and source timecode, so Flame's relink can find it.

Flame 2027 cannot read some camera formats: ProRes RAW, Canon Cinema RAW Light (.CRM) and Sony's 8.6K XAVC H-I HQ. Clips from those files arrive offline too, picture and sound, each with a marker saying Flame could not read it. Relink them to a copy Flame reads, such as a transcode.

If something goes wrong

• "Flame has no project named …": the project you chose does not exist on this machine. Set it up in Flame first, then send again and choose it.
• "Flame has project … open, and this send is for …": the Flame running now was started before this version of Konformista. Restart Flame once.
• The send waits although you opened the project: check the name in Flame matches the one the send panel shows, letter for letter.
• The send hands you a line to paste every time Flame is open: Flame has not loaded the Konformista helper. Restart Flame, or choose Rescan Python Hooks in Flame. The helper lives in Flame's shared hooks folder, /opt/Autodesk/shared/python.
• "Flame's Console is open": close Flame's Console, then send again.
• "Flame would not make a reel for the cut": a window is open over Flame, such as its Console or Preferences. Close it and send again.
• "Flame's audio editor is open": an audio effect editor, such as a clip's Gain, is open in Flame. Close it with its EXIT button and send again.
• "Flame's audio editor is still open" at the end of a send: Flame sometimes leaves its audio editor open after laying the sound. The cut is in Flame; click the editor's EXIT button before you do anything else there.
• "Flame has not reported back": the send stopped watching after an hour. Look in Flame: the sequence may still be building, or Flame may have stopped with a message of its own.