The sequencer is in need of urgent first aid if it is to be useable. There are MAJOR bugs that makes it difficult to get anything done.
I’ve seen posts about more than one of the below bugs, but no solutions and in many cases no developer responses either!
Adding camera to Timeline (“Camera cuts”) deletes already edited cuts in timeline
This is my biggest problem right now, I cannot add a new CineCameraActor, as it takes over the timeline/“Camera Cuts” and deletes current cuts.
If I scrub to the beginning, it deletes all cuts, if I scrub to the end it still deletes cuts from before the cursor.
This also happens if I turn off “Key all channels”
Changing names of CineCameraActors do not change the names in the timeline.
They still pertain their original names, making it very difficult to discern them from one another.
Camera transform>Rotation + CameraComponent>Manual Focus Distance will reset or move without instruction between key frames.
I’ve seen other posts about this, and yes it can be rectified withcurve editor, but it’s a bug and should be fixed.
Rendering with codecs does not work, and no compression is available.
Even though there’s a field to specify codecs, it has no effect. Setting compression also has no effect, export is rendered uncompressed to *.AVI container.
I’ve seen other mentions of this, but not one developer response.
I have tested rendering to *.PNG which works fine, have yet to test *.JPG with compression.
I have found several other minor bugs I can work around, but the above are real issues!
A mention of a minor bug:
Keyframes are not created automatically when camera is moved, a keyframe must be set first, then the action can be performed.
Adding camera to Timeline deletes already edited cuts in timeline
I’m using 4.18 and I haven’t reproduced what you’re describing. Here’s what I did, I pressed the “Create a new camera…” button in the sequencer toolbar and that created a camera and a camera cuts track. Then I pressed the “+” button on the Camera Cuts track to create a few camera cuts using the same camera (obviously no change in the viewport, I’m just trying to get some camera cut keys). Then I pressed the “Create a new camera…” button again and it doesn’t mess with the camera cuts track I created previously. That’s what I would expect, but your report indicates it removes it? I’m a misunderstanding your steps?
Changing names of CineCameraActors do not change the names in the timeline
Yes, that’s how it is at the moment. We could fix this by updating the track name. The reasoning is that the actor and the track itself have different labels. In the future, theoretically, the track is supposed to be able to drive multiple actors. So that’s why it has a label that’s separate. But I can understand why this might be confusing.
Camera transform…key frames
I think you’re describing interpolation. By default, the keyframe interpolation is set to “Auto”. You could change that to “Linear” in the Editor Preferences under the “Content Editors - Level Sequence Editor” page. That should default your keys to linear so that you don’t have bezier interpolation.
Rendering with codecs…
We haven’t had the opportunity to develop this further. At the moment, in house, we render as uncompressed image sequences. It’s on our long term roadmap to add more options to the video recording mechanism.
Hardts – I agree with you, I found two things in Sequencer that made it quite frustrating. I too found the camera transform (“interpolation”, I guess?) frustrating until I found it could be edited in the graph view. I like the bezier interpolation *most *of the time … it’s those few times when I really don’t like it that are annoying.
Adding to your list:
– Camera rotation
It seems that directly from the editor, the angles the camera rotates are limited to a certain number of degrees (maybe 360?). According to Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-22228), it is marked as fixed.
– Child actor references break after save and reopen
It is likely that I’m doing this wrong, but hear me out: I have been able to drag doors onto the timeline from my level that are created in a blueprint, and then have them rotate at a particular axis in the timeline. However, after I save and reopen the project, the references disappear.
"- Adding camera to Timeline (“Camera cuts”) deletes already edited cuts in timeline
This is my biggest problem right now, I cannot add a new CineCameraActor, as it takes over the timeline/“Camera Cuts” and deletes current cuts.
If I scrub to the beginning, it deletes all cuts, if I scrub to the end it still deletes cuts from before the cursor.
This also happens if I turn off “Key all channels”
"
I am getting this too. Strangely, it does ACTUALLY delete the cuts, but makes the whole camera cut timeline look like they are. Going in and trying to select a single cut selects the entire range, essentially making this unworkable. Any help would be awesome.
I’ve had this and a number of similar issues. I’m a relatively newbie to Unreal. However, I have lost character/prop animation before and found it strangely embeded in the camera track. So I ended up continuing with adding more animation.
Perhaps I’m doing this wrong but to animate anything, I drag it from the outline onto the sequencer thus creating a new track for me to start keyframing transform properties etc. Last night, my sequencer ended up with about 15 cameras for 15 shots and about 10 different character with basic transform animation + mocap. Everytime I restarted the programe I got an error saying the sequencer didn’t resolve properly on shutdown. I hit resolve and it works fine. Unfortunately, just as I was finishing up, Unreal crashed. I can still access the project but If I open up the Sequencer to see my animation, Unreal crashed. Unreal doesn’t seem to even recognise the autosave files. So, just how buggy is the Sequencer?